How Sharing a Life Story Helps Dementia Caregivers...

Conveying personal info lets others connect with your loved one One day while I was volunteering at a local adult day care, we had a new visitor who was confused and very unhappy that her daughter had left her there with us. She was agitated and was trying to leave. Luckily, when they first arrived, her daughter had handed us a one-page life story about her mother who had dementia. After reading it, I was able to more easily connect with the lady. Sharing Your Knowledge As we discussed her career as a teacher, her agitation slipped away and we ended up having a very nice conversation. Without that knowledge, things would have been more difficult for both of us. If you’re the primary caregiver of a person with dementia, you know your loved one’s likes and dislikes. You can read their moods. You know their routines and the people in their world. Nobody can care for them the same way you do. But the act of sharing your loved one’s life story empowers others to better understand his or her traits, to connect and to provide better dementia care. In turn, you receive peace of mind when you take time for yourself. A Different Reality The reality of a person with dementia often slips into a past era of their life. For instance, it may be typical for the person to prepare for work each morning as they did for many years. Or they might start preparing to send their children off to school although their kids are fully grown and have left the nest. When the people around them don’t understand this different reality, they often struggle to accept what seems like strange behavior. They may even...

How One Patient Researched Her Own Cure...

She’s cracking her DNA code for answers to a life-threatening problem Kim Goodsell is relentless. An extreme athlete, she kite-surfs, climbs mountains and cycles up to 50 miles a day on a high-performance carbon fiber bicycle. She also happens to be at the epicenter of a growing digital medical revolution. The 56-year-old self-financed and conducted genetic research on her own life-threatening health problem — and discovered a genetic mutation linked to her disease. Goodsell has also invented a device to help others live with debilitating conditions. Her doctor — cardiologist, geneticist and researcher Eric J. Topol, of La Jolla, Calif. — has dubbed her “the patient of the future.” Discovering What Was Wrong A former world-ranked endurance athlete who dropped out of University of California San Diego to live more closely to nature, Goodsell started to notice problems in 1997 while running a triathlon. Something did not feel right. “I began presenting with a particularly lethal cardiac arrhythmia, ARVC,” she says. Goodsell received the most powerful implant on the market, an internal cardiac defibrillator. When it kicks in to correct arrhythmia, the shock it delivers is so violent it “lifts me and my bike off the ground,” Goodsell says. “It’s like a bomb exploding in my chest.” This kind of traumatic shock often results in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that patients experience for months and even years. Goodsell describes her relationship to the medical device in her chest as ambivalent. “On the one hand, it is my lifeline. On the other, it is a terrorist,” she says. DIY Genetic Sequencing Soon after the defibrillator was implanted, Goodsell began to experience motor dysfunction and systemic arthritis, which over more than a decade deteriorated into crippling pain and neurological dysfunction.  ...

What Should You Weigh?

Figuring out what the scale should say, not what you want it to, is worth the trouble You probably have the number in your head right now. Most of us do. It’s the weight you’d like to weigh, if you had your druthers. It may be a long-ago weight — before you had kids, before you were married, even when you were still in school. Or it might be more recent — the number on the scale when you were training for, say, your first marathon in your 30s or when you did aerobics nearly every day. It could be time, though, to put that fantasy number to bed and focus on reaching or maintaining a healthy weight — the figure at which we feel strong, energetic, like our best self. So what is that number? Good question. Figuring it out is not an exact science, says Lisa Young, an adjunct professor at New York University and author of The Portion Teller Plan: The No-Diet Reality Guide to Eating, Cheating, and Losing Weight Permanently. That said, “it’s important to strive for something that’s realistic and healthy, and that’s usually a Body Mass Index [BMI] of 18.5 to 25,” which is considered normal weight, says Young. But BMI Has Its Limits No doubt you’ve heard of BMI, a fairly simple number crunch of weight and height to estimate how much fat a person has. Though widely-used, it’s not a perfect way to measure the link between weight and health, says Dr. Rexford S. Ahima, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Years ago, “the World Health Organization came out with some standards and [said that] if you have a BMI of 30 or higher you...

Volunteer Puppy Love: Raising a Service Dog...

Service groups rely on volunteers to socialize their dogs. Could you be a puppy raiser? Today’s new breed of service dogs provides assistance in a variety of ways beyond their best-known role as escorts for blind companions. They retrieve household objects for people with limited mobility, act as ears for hearing-impaired individuals, monitor children with life-threatening food allergies and more. Some researchers are even exploring the role dogs can play aiding adults suffering from dementia. All of these impressive adult dogs, though, start life much like any other puppy, growing up in a home where they’re loved, socialized and taught basic obedience. Volunteers are a critical part of this process. Because of the high demand for service animals, most training organizations rely on outside help to oversee their dogs’ early care, usually from the time a puppy is about 2 months old until sometime between his first and second birthday. “We could not do what we do without our puppy raisers,” says Nancy Fierer, director of Susquehanna Service Dogs in Pennsylvania, which has more than 60 puppies receiving early socialization in volunteers’ homes at any given time. Who Makes a Good Volunteer? An extensive background with dogs is not required to raise a service pup, says Joyce Thielen, board member (and three-time puppy raiser) with Canine Partners of the Rockies in Colorado. If you want to bring some puppy love into your empty nest — and make a difference in your community — becoming a volunteer “puppy raiser” may be for you. “Puppy raising is an opportunity for someone who is nurturing and interested in the way a puppy learns,” Thielen says. “You’re expected to give the puppy your time, energy and love and attend regular training sessions.” Agencies...

When Should You Step In to Help Your Parents?...

They may brush off your offers, so search out their true needs A parent may ask for the occasional favor, but most won’t ask for help around the house or with their daily activities, even when they need it, says Alberta Chokshi, a social worker and director of quality improvement for Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. Chokshi, who has been working with families for 40 years, says that instead of seeking help, it’s typical for elderly parents to adapt and adjust their activities and routines. They do household chores more slowly (or not at all). They may use adaptive devices, such as a cane or a reacher or a magnifying glass. Perhaps they’ve lined up someone to pick them up for errands and appointments. And — often just to please their children — they will wear a medical alert bracelet or necklace. What Our Parents Don’t Admit But they usually aren’t admitting — especially to their adult children — that they tend to drop heavy pots, trip on the basement steps, are confused about when to take their medications or back into things with the car. They don’t think it’s any of their kids’ business. Or, they are in denial about what’s going on. Try To See The Big Picture Denial isn’t all on the parents’ side. Adult children are often deep in it, too. They don’t want to admit that a parent is declining and needs help. They may resist accepting that familial roles are starting to reverse and that they need to step in, either helping a parent themselves or lining up support. If you’re guilty of denial, it’s time for you to take a hard look around for the telltale signs that things aren’t going well...

The Sly Tricks Marketers Use to Get You to Buy...

Tips to guard against them from a ‘Hidden Persuasion’ co-author As a consumer reporter for more than two decades, I’ve come to consider myself a savvy shopper. I thought I knew most of the marketing gimmicks and advertising “gotchas” and that my buying decisions were completely rational. But after reading ‘Hidden Persuasion: 33 Psychological Influence Techniques in Advertising’ I now realize, sadly, that’s not the case. The book, written by Dutch social psychology professors Matthijs van Leeuwen and Rick van Baaren and visual design art director Marc Andrews, lays out clever techniques used in advertising, packaging and websites that are designed to get you to buy. Hidden Persuasion is a graphic romp that’s both eye candy and eye opening. You’ll never look at an ad, an online shopping site or product packaging the same way again. One of my favorites from the book: The three “e’s” on Heineken bottles are slanted backwards, designed to be smiling at you so you’ll be more inclined to buy them. I spoke to van Leeuwen, an assistant professor of Social Influence and Persuasion at the Radboud University of Nijmegen, to learn more about these sly tactics and how we can avoid falling for them and spending money on items we don’t really need. Here’s an edited excerpt of our conversation: Why did you write this book? van Leeuwen:  Consumers have a lot to gain in understanding how they’re influenced. They see ads, but believe they can resist because they believe the only tricks used are the smiling faces, the humor and/or the persuasive arguments made to sell a product. But there are many social-influence techniques that affect consumers unconsciously. By informing consumers about these techniques, we hope they will be better able to...

Why I’m Not Buying the Retirement Gloom...

In the emerging Unretirement movement, you are your best investment Gray wave. Age wave. Geezer tsunami. (Pick your favorite — or most hated — euphemism.) Catchphrases like these capture the realization that we’re living longer and that older Americans make up a growing share of the population. As economist Laurence Kotlikoff and columnist Scott Burns say in The Coming Generational Storm: “The aging of America isn’t a temporary event. We are well into a change that is permanent, irreversible, and very long term.” Living longer should be a trend worth celebrating. But many people believe that America’s boomers can’t afford retirement, let alone a decent retirement. They fear that aging boomers are inevitably hurtling toward a lower standard of living. And here’s their evidence: We’ve just been through the worst downturn since the 1930s, decimating jobs and pensions. Retirement savings are slim. Surveys show that boomers aren’t spending much time planning for retirement. The prediction that the swelling tab for Social Security and other old-age entitlements will push the U.S. government and economy into a Greece-like collapse seems almost routine. The Unretirement Movement Don’t buy into the retirement gloom. I’m not. Here’s why: The signs of a grassroots push to reinvent the last third of life are unmistakable. Call it the “Unretirement” movement — and it is a movement. Unretirement starts with the insight that earning a paycheck well into the traditional retirement years will make a huge difference in our future living standards. You — and your skills and talents — are your best retirement investment. What’s more, if society taps into the talents and abilities of sixty-somethings and seventy-somethings, employers will benefit, the economy will be wealthier and funding entitlements will be much easier. The Unretirement movement...

What You Know About Millennials Is Wrong...

10 lessons from what they really think about life and boomers It recently struck me how quick we are to generalize about entire generations and spark polarized, often mean-spirited, viewpoints, instead of fostering more balanced, open-minded perspectives. So, I decided to join the chorus of voices addressing Millennials and boomers in hopes of injecting some positivity into the conversation and providing takeaways that can help build essential bridges. My thought was to interview Millennials who could overturn or broaden commonly-held conceptions about their generation by answering questions about typical topics (e.g., their own traits, views of boomers) as well as issues that they rarely, if ever, consider or discuss — namely, middle age and growing older. I enlisted my 24-year-old son to round up nine Gen Y’ers for me to interview — folks who grew up in towns all over the country, attended college away from home, graduated and then moved to urban locales within the last two to five years. Most of their boomer parents are still alive and married (though not all still live together) and they’re caring for one or more elders. I boiled down the thoughtful and insightful comments I heard to 10 points that hold important lessons for both generations: This is a confusing and tumultuous period for Millennials, but they’re dedicated to figuring things out by being productive and creative. The classic labels slapped on Millennials — lazy and entitled — don’t apply to those I interviewed. They are, of necessity, self-focused and striving to forge a useful path in life. Laura Shoaps, 25, who is from Lansing, Mich. and focusing on international human rights in law school, underscored the tendencies of her peers: “Given how things are now, we’re forced to be...