Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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 I also asked him to stay in contact with me even after his mother had been admitted to the nursing home, which had its own practicing physician. By maintaining a link between the primary physician and the nursing home physician you enable the two doctors to trade notes on your loved one. This communication can also result in your loved one receiving attention from the nursing home physician that she otherwise might not receive. |
| When it came time to put his mother in a nursing home, I gave him this advice: Make sure to form good initial relationships with the nursing home staff. They are humans just like anyone else, and the better relationship you form with them, the more inclined they will be to provide better care for your loved one. I also asked him to stay in contact with me even after his mother had been admitted to the nursing home, which had its own practicing physician. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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 SIGN OF THE TIMES
Approximately half of nursing home residents older than 65 years are incontinent. In fact, incontinence is often a major factor in the decision to place an elderly person in a nursing home.
Not all leaking problems are the same. For example, if a little pee drips out when you cough, sneeze, laugh, or exert yourself, it may be a sign of stress incontinence. In this condition, the muscles under the bladder can't hold up to the stress of the bladder filling up with urine for any one of a number of reasons. For example, the urethra doesn't close properly. |
Dr. Abram Hoffer, MD, FRCP (C) and Dr. Harold D. Foster, PhD
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 The oldest was in a nursing home, bedridden and psychotic, and the youngest brother had also been placed in a nursing home, where he died 1 year after admission.
The patient's symptoms began when he was 40 and gradually became worse. His original weight had been 165 lbs, but had fallen to 130 lbs due to muscle tissue loss. He was so weak that it took all his energy just to survive: to eat, dress, and look after himself. He was tired all the time. He walked with a jerky limp. He had no hallucinations, but his cognition was affected. |
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II
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 Not long ago, one of my best friends suffered a difficult surgery for cancer and spent his last years paralyzed in a nursing home. During the many visits I made to the nursing home, I never failed to come away with a deep appreciation for the health I still possess in my old age. It was not uncommon for me to go to the nursing home to visit my friend and hear that one of the new patients in the home was someone whom my friend and I knew from our earlier days. Too often, they had Alzheimer's and were housed in a special section of the facility. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I used to volunteer at a nursing home; I brought water to residents, told them stories, and gave them hand massages. When you do that, you get a pretty good sense of knowing when people just aren't mentally present. It's like the lights are on, but no one's home.
I've seen this in literally hundreds of nursing home patients, but lately I've been noticing more and more of that same "nobody's home" look in the people walking around in everyday society. It's as if our nation had turned into a giant nursing home. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Diabetic nursing home residents are much more likely to have dangerous falls than those who do not have diabetes, researchers report.
THE RESEARCH A study of 139 residents at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in Riverdale, New York, found that 78% of those who had diabetes fell during the 299-day study period, compared with 30% of residents who were not diabetic.
"Our study clearly indicated that nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and others that care for the elderly should consider diabetes a significant risk factor for falling," says researcher Dr. Mathew S. |
Bob LeBow, M.D., M.P.H.
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 As the major payer for nursing home services (an irrationality of its role—why shouldn't Medicare be the payer?), Medicaid expenses for nursing homes have been fairly untouchable. Since nursing home reimbursements represent about half of Medicaid costs, states are fairly hamstrung when it comes to cutting services. It has become a reverse "lifeboat" paradigm: dump the women and children first. Meanwhile, the nursing homes are incredibly squeezed and care is inadequate. A government study released in February 2002 reported that over 90 percent of U.S. nursing homes lacked adequate staffing. |
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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| By maintaining a link between the primary physician and the nursing home physician you enable the two doctors to trade notes on your loved one. This communication can also result in your loved one receiving attention from the nursing home physician that she otherwise might not receive.
I would also urge you to e-mail the leaders of your local Alzheimer's disease chapter and express the belief that money raised for AD should be invested in care and prevention, and not just in the race for a cure that may never be forthcoming. |
| Further, as is done in the nursing home in Oslo where Arne Naess lives, nursing homes of the future can use video cameras and GPS devices to track patients and monitor them if they get lost or fall. Personalized digital devices can hold individualized music, photo, and video files that can be used to stimulate or calm an individual with memory problems as the need arises. Integrating technology into our care for the elderly is an increasingly feasible endeavor. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 If your family member is uncontrollable at home, you may need to consider a nursing home. If the nursing home staff feels your loved one is uncontrollable, they will most likely want to give him or her antipsychotics; you may need to put your foot down and insist that they not do so. I also urge you to join one of the many groups and organizations for families dealing with Alzheimer's; sharing frustrations and experiences with those who can relate and sympathize can provide some comfort and support. |
Bottom Line Health
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| Previous studies identified gait or balance disorders, vision impairment and medications as risk factors for falls among frail elderly nursing home residents. However, diabetes has not been recognized as an important risk factor.
. , The National Institute on Aging can pro-— vide more information on how to prevent falls and fractures at www.niapublications.org/ agepages/falls. asp.
When Going Downhill' Is Good
Astudy has found that walking downhill increases glucose tolerance (a person's ability to use blood sugar) by 25%, compared with only a 9-4% increase when walking uphill. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 Does anyone really want to live past 100 if his or her last several decades are spent in a nursing home? Our true goal is probably better explained as the effort to increase the likelihood of "dying young as late as possible" by extending our "health span," not just our life span. There are many ways that green tea's polyphenols improve the quality of a person's health and extend the health span. For instance, as we reported in the preceding chapters, green tea helps prevent heart disease and cancer, which together are the top two killers of Americans and account for 60 percent of all deaths. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| You can offer free nursing home care for the aged; or, as in the novel Soylent Green, you can have old people euthanized when they outlive their usefulness. You may guide medical research in any direction. Every facet of medical care merits your expertise, because right now greedy pharmaceutical corporations have that goal in mind — complete control.
When you have finished describing your "ideal" medical system, use a separate piece of paper to identify your role, your position in the system. Will you be the chief of staff, the pharmacist, or the janitor? |
Ray D. Strand
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 These were patients who had been normally active and were not admitted from a nursing home. Hospital staff checked their vitamin D levels and found that 93 percent were deficient. Surprisingly, those patients who were taking a multiple vitamin were also deficient in their vitamin D levels 93 percent of the time. This finding is critical when you realize that you don't absorb any calcium without vitamin D!
The study concluded by stating that everyone should be taking vitamin D supplements and at a level significantly higher than the recommended daily allowance. |
| Walk through a nursing home and you will understand why I am so concerned.
The principle of optimizing our own natural antioxidant defense system is paramount when it comes to protecting the cells in our brain against our common enemy, oxidative stress. Remember, we must focus on prevention and protection, because once a brain cell is destroyed it is not readily replaced. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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 The results should be taught in medical school and driven home with health insurance companies and posted on the bulletin boards of every nursing home in the country, where nearly a fifth of the residents have depression. If everyone knew that exercise worked as well as Zoloft, I think we could put a real dent in the disease.
Reading between the lines of the SMILE study gets at the complex issues that have kept exercise from being accepted as a medical treatment. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Chiara Nursing Home:23-31. 1981
Cristoni A & Magistretti M. Antiulcer and healing activity of Vaccinium myrtillus anthocyanosides. Farmaco; 42(2):29-43. 1987
Detre Z, Jellinek H, Miskulin M et al. Studies on vascular permeability in hypertension: action of anthocyanosides. Clin Physiol Biochem; 4(2): 143-149. 1986
Dombrowicz E, Zadernowski R, Swiatek L. Phenolic acids in leaves of Arctostaphylos uva ursi L., Vaccinium vitis idaea L. and Vaccinium myrtillus L. Pharmazie, 84:680-1, Sep, 1991
Forte R et al. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 However the new programs decided it would be just the opposite of that: coverage for nursing home residents but no coverage for those in state mental hospitals. The number of state mental hospital patients declined more between 1965 and 1966 than at any time previously.25 The next year saw an even greater decline.26 The following year's decline was greater still.27 Obviously, any state could save large sums by transferring state mental hospital patients to nursing homes, and that is exactly what they did. |
Robert Whitaker
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 Those laws provided federal subsidies for nursing home care but no such subsidy for care in state mental hospitals, and so the states did the obvious economic thing: They began shipping their chronic patients to nursing homes. The number of patients in state hospitals declined by nearly 140,000 patients from 1965 to 1970, while the nursing home census rose accordingly. Then, in 1972, the federal government passed welfare legislation that provided social security income payments to the disabled. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Today, up to 60 percent of all hospital patients and up to 80 percent of all nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient. What's worse, 76 percent of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient. To get the disease-curbing benefits of sunlight, you need to get outside at least three times a week, for a minimum of 15-20 minutes each time.
Pharmaceutical companies have also recognized the importance of vitamin D in the cure of cancer and other illnesses and now produce expensive drugs that contain synthetic Vitamin D. |
Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea
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 About 3% of all ED visits were made by patients residing in a nursing home or other institution. Of these, about three in eight were admitted to the hospital, the same proportion for all persons over age 75.
How many visits are really emergencies?
Of all patients who visit emergency departments, about 12% were direct admissions to intensive care, critical care (see below) or a coronary unit. This does not mean that the other 88% are not emergencies. In 1.5% of all cases, the patient leaves the emergency room without seeing a physician. |
Joan Liebmann-Smith, Ph. D., and Jacqueline Nardi Egan
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| In fact, incontinence is often a major factor in the decision to place an elderly person in a nursing home.
Not all leaking problems are the same. For example, if a little pee drips out when you cough, sneeze, laugh, or exert yourself, it may be a sign of stress incontinence. In this condition, the muscles under the bladder can't hold up to the stress of the bladder filling up with urine for any one of a number of reasons. For example, the urethra doesn't close properly. As a result, even slight pressure on the bladder can squeeze out some pee. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 REPPED: Here are some words of caution for those of you who have someone in the hospital or a nursing home or retirement center. You have probably already figured this out yourself, but, if not, pay attention. Don't leave your loved ones in the hospital or nursing home without you being there, because the nursing staff and physician assistants are screwing up. They are giving your loved ones the wrong medication, forgetting to turn them in bed, not paying attention to them and not giving them enough water. Often, they are just feeding them foods that are going to make them sicker. |
John J. Ratey, MD
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| As for my mom, after about six months she got back on her feet with the help of a walker, and we were able to avoid putting her in a nursing home by having a live-in aide. But it slowed her down—she was shuffling instead of walking—and her osteoporosis was progressing more rapidly, curling her spine and forcing her into a stoop. When her body slowed down, her mind followed suit: she stopped playing bridge and started watching soap operas. A friend took her to church on Sundays, but otherwise she didn't get out much. |
Lynne McTaggart
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 If you feel bold, you may even try this with a local nursing home. First, be sure to obtain permission of the patient and those in charge.
Report any results by writing in to The Intention Experiment website: www.theintentionexperiment.com.
GROUP INTENTION EXERCISES
Assemble a group of your friends who are interested in trying out some group intention exercises. Create an intention space where you will meet each time. Select a group target in your community. Here are a few possibilities:
?improving the weather
?reducing violent crime by 5 percent
?reducing pollution by 5 percent
? |
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II
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| During the many visits I made to the nursing home, I never failed to come away with a deep appreciation for the health I still possess in my old age. It was not uncommon for me to go to the nursing home to visit my friend and hear that one of the new patients in the home was someone whom my friend and I knew from our earlier days. Too often, they had Alzheimer's and were housed in a special section of the facility. |
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