Hands to Help Seniors

If you are looking to meet new friends, there is a group called "Dine Out Seniors" which is having their next meeting on July 31 for lunch at 11:30 a.m at Applebee's on 1301 North Davis Road in Salinas.  Seniors who are divorced, widow/widower or new to the area are invited to attend.  Please call 917-1269 or 442-0133 to reserve your spot.  At Family inHome Caregiving, we believe the key to longevity is good nutrition, the proper amount of exercise and plenty of social stimulation.  Without the latter, you can feel lonely and depressed.  This is a good opportunity to make new friends!

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After decades of increasing their daily caloric intake, Americans are now eating less, which hopefully will reduce the number of diabetes cases.   Calories consumed daily by the typical American adult, which peaked around 2003, are in the midst of their first sustained decline since federal statistics began to track the subject, more than 40 years ago.   The declines cut across most major demographic groups — including higher- and lower-income families, and blacks and whites — though they vary somewhat by group.  The reversal appears to stem from people’s growing realization that they were harming their health by eating and drinking too much.  The awareness began to build in the late 1990s, thanks to a burst of scientific research about the costs of obesity, and to public health campaigns in recent years.  Still, more than a third of American adults are still considered obese, putting them at increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  Americans are still eating far too few fruits and vegetables and far too much junk food, even if they are eating somewhat less of it, experts say.  Hopefully, this trend will reverse, resulting in a reduction in overweight Americans.

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There's a dearth of drugs on the market for Alzheimer's disease, a debilitating condition for which there is no cure.  Sadly, the drug-industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, recently released a report calculating that 123 experimental therapies for Alzheimer’s disease failed between 1998 and 2014 while only four drugs made it to market.  One ray of hope;  Those with mild Alzheimer’s disease who started taking an experimental drug developed by Eli Lilly & Co. early in the course of their disease fared better than patients who started later in a clinical trial.  Called Solanezumab, the drug may slow the decline of memory and function in mild Alzheimer’s patients, despite prior studies with negative results.  A separate, continuing study due to end in late 2016 is designed to more definitively test its efficacy and safety.  The new results showed that the patients who started therapy earlier retained an advantage in cognition and daily function over those who started later, and that this difference persisted for two years.  Unfortunately, most of the drugs which have been brought to market only last a year or two, there is no long-term cure.  Regular readers of my blog know that both my grandmother and my father had this terrible disease when they passed away, and I have been working diligently with the Monterey Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association to raise money to find a cure.  In addition to being the largest private funder of Alzheimer's research in the United States, they have support groups and a 24-hour hotline (800-272-3900) where a dedicated staff can help you if you are struggling with caring for a loved one with the disease.  Family inHome Caregiving will be attending the Monterey Memory Walk on September 26 starting at Custom House Plaza in downtown Monterey.  We are currently the number one fundraising team.  If you would like to walk with us, to join our team or to donate, please click here.

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Government pension cuts, it turns out, are not that easy to do.  A flurry of cities and states across the nation have tried to slash pensions, only to be met with a flurry of lawsuits.    There have been perplexing results in the litigation.  In Arizona, California, Oregon and New York, for instance, the courts have ruled that pension plans for existing workers cannot be cut.  They can be cut, however, for new hires.  But in Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico and South Dakota, the courts have given government officials free reign to cut pension benefits.   “It’s a real hodgepodge, and in a lot of states, I don’t think it’s completely clear,” David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told The New York Times.  I guess we should be thankful we live in a state where pension benefits are guaranteed.

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Women with signs of early memory issues decline significantly faster than men at the same stage of dementia, according to a new study that shows women's vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease.  The results come from an analysis of 398 people with mild cognitive impairment enrolled in a large, national, long-term study called the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, or ADNI.  Over an eight year period, the women’s condition worsened nearly twice as fast as the men’s on both a standard scale of memory and other cognitive tests, as well as on a measure that assesses how well one is able to function as reported by a spouse or caregiver. As time went on, the women’s decline appeared to accelerate relative to the men’s, according to P. Murali Doraiswamy, the senior author on the study and a psychiatry professor at Duke University.  Regular readers of my blog know that both my grandmother and my father had this terrible disease when they passed away, and I have been working diligently with the Monterey Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association to raise money to find a cure.  In addition to being the largest private funder of Alzheimer's research in the United States, they have support groups and a 24-hour hotline (800-272-3900) where a dedicated staff can help you if you are struggling with caring for a loved one with the disease.  Family inHome Caregiving will be attending the Monterey Memory Walk.  We are currently the number one fundraising team.  If you would like to walk with us, to join our team or to donate, please click here.

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