San Diego Home Care Assistance Blog

CHOLESTEROL TIPS THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE

Cristina — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:10:36 +0000

CHOLESTEROL TIPS THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
posted by Cshedenhelm January 24, 2012

Here is an interesting fact: nearly half the people who suffer heart attacks have normal cholesterol levels.
Doctors have determined that the size of the cholesterol particles, along with excess LDL, or “bad” cholesterol can lead to deposits forming in the arterial walls, forming plaque and causing
increased blood pressure, which ultimately leads to heart attacks.

However, not all bad particles equally affect the arteries. If they are small ,they can pierce the arterial lining and deposit plaque. If they are large, they bounce off the walls , causing no harm.

THREE WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR HEART

1. While most of us check our cholesterol annually, very few of us get tested for particle size. These tests are generally covered by insurance, so ask your doctor to include this test.

2. Should your doctor tell you that too many of your particles are small, you can improve quickly through lifestyle change and medication. The healthier your diet and exercise, the more your LDL particles will resemble healthy, or larger particles. As your waist shrinks, your LDL particle size grows!

3. Drug therapies are available, a class of medications called fibrates has been used successfully to decrease triglyceride levels. They also increase your levels of HDL, or “ good” cholesterol. Fibrates also increas

Marine Corps Thanks Home Care Assistance

HCASD Admin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:19:37 +0000

Wonderful surprise yesterday, we received a United State Marine Corps Certificate accompanying an American flag that was flown over the Headquarters of Company C, First Combat Engineer Batallion in Camp Dwyer, Helmand Provice, Afghanistan. The “thank you” certificate was in appreciation of over 1,000 books that our clients donated to our troops and the HCA staff packed and shipped to Afghanistan.

Marine Corps Certificate received by Home Care Assistance of San Diego

Resistance Chair Can Help Seniors Stay Independent and at Home

HCASD Admin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:14:43 +0000

Many exercises are possible with the Resistance Chair.

This overhead press exercise is done seated in the chair, making it safer. More information about the Resistance Chair can be found on their website, www.VQActionCare.com

Senior can benefit from exercise and we think the Resistance Chair is one easy way to get that exercise in the comfort of your own home.

Great Recipe for Salmon

HCASD Admin — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:03:13 +0000

This nutritious, easy to prepare main dish for two is from the Home Care Assistance Balanced Care Method™ recipe collection.

Wild Salmon with sauteed Mushrooms, Spinach and Thyme

2 pieces wild salmon, 4 ounces each (avoid farmed Atlantic salmon)
10 oz mushrooms, cremini, oyster, baby bella shitake or white button, all work
1 clove garlic peeled
sprig of fresh thyme, leaves only
3 cups of baby spinach (one half bag, stems removed)
2 Tbs. olive oil
½ tsp. sea salt
½ tsp. black pepper

Directions
Remove salmon from package. Pat dry with paper towel, season with ¼ tsp. salt and ¼ tsp pepper. Cut
mushrooms into ½ inch pieces. Smash garlic clove.
Pour 1 Tbs. of olive oil into pan set on medium high heat.
add garlic clove. Sautee for 1 minute. Add mushrooms,
season with fresh thyme, ¼ tsp. salt and ¼ tsp. pepper
sauté mushrooms for 5 minutes until golden brown.
Remove mushrooms from pan, set aside. Place remaining
1 Tbs. olive oil in pan on medium heat. Add salmon, skin side down.
Cook salmon for 3-4 minutes, turn over and cook another 3-4 minutes until cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside. Add baby spinach to pan and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute just until it wilts.
Serve immediately. Place a mound of spinach on the plate, place the salmon on top of the spinach and spoon the mushrooms on top of the salmon.

TCV’s Caregiver of the Month-Zoe Kelly

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:45:20 +0000

Congratulations, June “Zoe” Kelly From San Diego Home Care Assistance, for being named The Caregiver’s Voice, Caregiver of the Month.

Zoe has been honored by The Caregiver’s Voice for her passion and dedication in home care. Only weeks after joining San Diego Home Care Assistance, Zoe showed great leadership in helping one of our clients through the grieving process after the death of a spouse.

Zoe has also fully embraced Home Care Assistance’s Balanced Care Method, and has used its principals daily in the workplace.

Get the full story Here.

Take medication regularly

HCASD Admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:15:29 +0000

Failing to take medications regularly can increase falls among senior citizens.

-Dr. Kathy Johnson, PhD, CMC

According to the latest edition of Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological and Medical Sciences, older adults increase their chances of falling by not taking their medications as directed. This information comes from a recent study of Boston-area residents over age 70, which found those who sometimes neglected their medication experienced a 50 percent increased rate of falls compared with those who did not.

“Falls can now be added to the growing list of poor health outcomes associated with non-adherence to medication,” said lead author Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH, a research scientist with the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston.

“Because non-adherence is common and easy to screen for, health care providers should discuss this subject with their patients.”

Berry and her co-authors are the first investigators to study the association between falls and medication adherence. The team used data gathered from subjects in the Maintenance of Balance, Independent Living, Intellect, and Zest in the Elderly of Boston (MOBILIZE Boston) Study, a community-based cohort of seniors recruited for the purpose of studying novel risk factors for falls.

They examined responses from a total of 246 senior men and 408 senior women with an average age of 78. Between 2005 and 2008, 376 individuals in this group reported a total of 1,052 falls.

A participant was characterized as having low medication adherence if he or she answered yes to any of the following questions:

Do you ever forget to take your medications?
Are you careless at times about taking your medications?
When you feel better do you sometimes stop taking your medications? Sometimes if you feel worse when taking your medication, do you stop taking it?
High adherence was defined as a “no” answer to every question. In total, 48 percent of the respondents were classified as having low medication adherence.

Those in the low-adherence group experienced falls at an annual rate of 1.5 times that of the high adherence group. This association persisted after adjusting for other variables, including age, sex, cognitive function, and total number of medications.

Cancer prevention techniques

HCASD Admin — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:42:17 +0000

The anti-cancer lifestyle

-Dr.Kathy Johnson, PhD, CMC

When David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., discovered he had a brain tumor, he was forced to reevaluate conventional cancer-beating methods and dig deep for something new and promising. Schreiber decided to take a deeper look into what factors cause cancer and how it can be prevented.
From his research he realized that all of us have cancer cells within our bodies and it is our own protective systems that keep two thirds of the population cancer-free. For the other one-third of the population that will most likely get cancer, however, Schreiber writes that we must protect our immune systems in order to make it harder for those cancer cells to take over the body. Some of these prevention techniques include lifestyle changes such as more exercise and stress-reducing activities such as breathing exercises.
Schreiber identified several behaviors that could help fight cancer that one might not have guessed would help battle this disease.

-Avoid refined sugar
-Add spicy foods to your diet
-Exercise regularly
-Practice yoga and mindful meditation
-Avoid household toxins like Teflon

Although Schreiber has been living with cancer for 16 years he feels much happier and healthier after his lifestyle change.

HCASD Admin — Sun, 23 May 2010 16:29:48 +0000

Why late-in-life depression is harder to treat: seniors’ abnormal reaction to emotional stimuli.

-Dr. Kathy Johnson, PhD, CMC

In a recent study led by Toronto’s Baycrest had found that older people with depression do not respond normally to emotional stimuli, such as when they see happy, sad or neutral faces. This has led scientist to find a clue in understanding why people who suffer from depression later in life are harder to treat and keep well in the long term.

Their study which appears online in this week s American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, is one of the first published data to focus specifically on emotional processing in un-medicated older adults with late life depression.
“In our study we found significant differences between older depressed subjects and older healthy subjects in how they emotionally respond to and perceive facial expressions,” said principal investigator Dr. Linda Mah, a clinician-scientist in the Mood Clinic at Baycrest.

Emotion dysregulation is already well established in mid-life depression and some studies have shown it to be predictive of a relapse of mood symptoms. But the majority of late-life depression studies have concentrated on the link with cognitive decline, suggesting that the more impaired the cognitive functions the greater the chances of a poor prognosis in depression.

“Our data suggest that we need to also focus on emotion to better understand the neurobiology of late-life depression, so we can treat it more effectively and help people feel better longer,” said Dr. Mah.

In the study, 11 un-medicated outpatients with major depressive disorder, and 11 healthy comparison subjects, participated in two tasks that involved looking at photographs of faces with happy, sad, fearful or neutral expressions. The age range of participants was 60 to 87.

In the first task, participants were asked to make judgments regarding a physical feature of faces, rather than judging the emotional expression. In the second task, participants were asked to label the emotional expressions on faces.
The study found that healthy controls were 16% slower in making judgments about physical features of the faces with positive or negative emotional expressions (happy, sad, fearful) relative to neutral faces – an indication that they were distracted or affected by the emotional expressions on faces.

The depressed participants showed no differences in response time to rating physical aspects of faces with emotional expressions or neutral faces. This suggests they were less sensitive to the effects of positive or negative emotional expressions.
In the second task, depressed participants had greater than 60% more difficulty with correctly labeling neutral faces, compared to healthy subjects. Depressed participants misread neutral expressions as happy, sad or fearful.
Dr. Mah noted that an impaired ability to read other people’s emotional expressions can have social consequences and affect the quality of social interactions with others.

She also pointed out that these abnormalities in emotional processing seen in older depressed adults are distinct from those already reported in younger depressed adults who tend to perceive and process emotional stimuli more negatively overall when compared to healthy subjects.

The Baycrest study included small sample sizes, so the results should be considered preliminary. Efforts are ongoing to recruit older patients who are currently not on antidepressant medications, and to use functional neuroimaging to pinpoint the brain changes underlying the abnormalities in emotional processing that appear to be associated with late-life depression.

Praise for Home Care Assistance Vegetable Planters

HCASD Admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:09:26 +0000

“Thank you very much for the planter and plants you delivered to our Mother. I know she will really enjoy it. Not only will it be good exercise and mental exercise, but it will be something to talk about.

Mrs. N with vegetable garden

“The planter is such a good idea! Very innovative!

“We appreciate all you do! Thank you again.”

Peggy & Craig N.

(Home Care Assistance of San Diego has delivered and set up patio/deck vegetable gardens for many of it clients. The vegetable planter gardens implement the Home Care Assistance Balanced Care Method to promote the total health and independence of its senior clients.)

Spring Celebration Vegetable Gardens for Home Care Assistance Clients

HCASD Admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:09:35 +0000

This spring, we are delivering and setting up patio/deck vegetable gardens for many of our clients. The planters are small, but will produce pounds of tomatoes, vegetables and herbs during the coming months.

Because the planters are 44″ high, they are easy for our senior clients and their caregivers to maintain and harvest.

Nutritious food, physical exercise and mental stimulation are all part of our Balanced Care Method program to promote total health and independence for our senior clients.