Music Fosters Brain Health and Creative Expression...

 “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” – Plato Within the realm of music lies a certain kind of magic. It has the ability to transport you into another time, to relive beautiful moments from the past, to lift your spirits, and, most importantly, it allows you to connect to something greater than yourself. In the second half of life, cognitive engagement and brain health become a vital part of your well-being. Music has been proven to strengthen brain activity, and studies are showing that it may help ward off dementia. If you let it, music can bring a positive energy force into your life. There are also many ways that enjoying music can become part of enhancing your social connections. Below are ten ways that music can help improve your way of life. 1. Strengthen Your Memory The medial pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain that sits just behind your forehead, uses music to trigger powerful memories. A recent study using brain scans showed that music linked to a strong memory created an extraordinary amount of activity in the pre-frontal cortex. Since the front part of the brain is the part that endures, this could explain why Alzheimer patients will often remember music from their past, even when all other memories have disappeared. 2. Awaken Your Creative Spirit An upbeat song is great for a motivated work out, but when you feel like you’re in a creative rut, loud music may not be all that helpful. According to a study done by the Journal of Consumer Research, moderate ambient noise is best for creative endeavors. High...

Making New Friends in the Second Half of Life...

When you’re young, it is quite easy to make friends You meet people at school or during recreational activities, forming friendships over shared interests. Once you start a family and have kids, you can bond with other parents over the ups and downs of parenthood. As you enter the second half of your life, however, making new friends can sometimes be a struggle. Friends are so vital for well being emotionally, physically, and mentally. The opportunities to meet people become less and less frequent, and the friends you’ve had for a long time may start to relocate after they retire. When you do get the chance to meet new people, you may find that your social skills aren’t quite what they used to be, leaving you feeling awkward and resistant to trying to make new friends. When you enter the later years of your life, you may feel that you are too old to start making new friends, leaving you feeling lonely and isolated. With loneliness being a key contributor to stress and anxiety in older people, finding companionship can be one of the best things for your health and your mental well-being. So how do you go about making friends at this point in your life? We’ve compiled a list of suggestions below to help you build your social life and find the friendships you want. 1.    Follow Your Interests By involving yourself in the things you love – whether it be arts, physical exercise, volunteering, etc., you open yourself up to people who share a your interests. Having something you can bond over can be the first step to building a meaningful friendship with someone. 2.    Don’t Be Afraid One of the biggest obstacles people face when...

How to Get Training as an Unpaid Dementia Caregiver...

Whether in person or online, you can find helpful instruction The Best Friends Dementia Bill of Rights states that people with Alzheimer’s or other dementia deserve to have care partners well trained in dementia care. Yet the vast majority of these individuals are cared for in a private residence by untrained and unpaid family members. Although these family members have the best intentions, they may not realize they are up against possibly the most complex caregiving situation imaginable. To say the least, it’s emotionally, physically and financially draining. Yet they attempt to juggle this added responsibility while still maintaining a career, family and social life — all of this without adequate training. Self-Education and Community Help The only way to survive is through ongoing self-education to aid in the “on the job training.” But even when we learn on the job, someone is typically there to guide us. Family members must find educational solutions that work for them, so that means trying different approaches to find the one that works for their unique situation. Contact the big dogs — the Alzheimer’s Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Association — and get registered to receive important information about training opportunities they may offer. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses when it comes to training. Contact local memory-care facilities in your area, too. They often have training classes for professionals and unpaid caregivers. Also, inquire about support groups; when you attend a support group, you get some of the best training possible as you learn from others who are ahead of you in this journey. Lack of Time? Go Online For some people, however, attending these classes in person adds yet another level of complexity to an already overwhelming schedule. The classes are...

At 65, I Still Want to Have It All...

Why work/life balance isn’t just for young people Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose July 2012 Atlantic magazine piece, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,  ricocheted around social media, just wrote a buzzy New York Times piece (A Toxic Work World) on how innovation around work and caregiving would be good for women, men and business. Taking a page from her new book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, she wrote: “The problem is with the workplace, or more precisely, with a workplace designed for the Mad Men  era, for Leave It to Beaver families in which one partner does all the work of earning an income and the other partner does all the work of turning that income into care — the care that is indispensable for our children, our sick and disabled, our elderly.” Work/Life Balance for All Ages That divide between working and caring Slaughter highlights is, I believe, plaguing the way employers approach the need for work/life balance for people at all life stages. According to our latest research at Encore.org, people at the tail end of the career path need work/life balance, too. Like younger families, they also need to balance caregiving with work or volunteering outside of the family. But in this case, the caregiving is about elder care and a commitment to grandchildren. When the places they want to work, however, are only keen to hire and keep people who can work full-time, year-round, they turn away an incredibly valuable resource. My Work/Life Needs at 65 What a difference a little more creativity in how we fashion work could make. Case in point: I’m a white 65-year-old man and a living example of the need to balance work and family. A few years ago,...

Four Ways You Can Enrich Your Life with Gratitude...

This is such powerful practice to increase your happiness, be healthier, and have peace of mind. As we move into this time of year, it is one that is enriched by a life lived with a sense of gratitude. It can seem so simple, yet it is very powerful in keeping us healthy and happy. It is only been in this century that scientists have started to delve into what impact being thankful has on us. This practice has been a common sense spiritual teaching over the millenniums. Now it has been taken into social science laboratories, and we can see that it works in wondrous ways. Often we are faced with difficult circumstances in the second half of life, such as caregiving of loved ones and declining health. It is especially important to develop a habit of gratitude to help with the stresses and potential discouragement. There are two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E McCullough of the University of Miami who have done research on gratitude, which was published in 2003. In their research, they assigned people to three groups. The first wrote about five things they were grateful for that happened during the week. The second group wrote about five things that irritated them during the week. The third group wrote about events that happened during the week, with no instructions to write about any specific type of events. They did this for ten weeks, and then the groups were compared. Those who wrote about the things they were grateful for were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. They even exercised more and had fewer visits to the doctor than the group who wrote about things...

What Japan Can Teach Us About Long-Term Care...

Here’s a sobering calculation: The odds that Americans turning 65 today will eventually need assistance with bathing, dressing and other personal activities are about 50/50. And those who’ll need long-term care can expect to incur costs of $138,000, on average, estimate Melissa Favreault of the Urban Institute and Judith Dey of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Yet people age 55 to 64 with retirement savings accounts have a median balance of $104,000 in them, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. See the problem? America’s Broken Long-Term Care System Sad to say, America’s system for financing long-term care is badly broken. If we take a few ideas from Japan, though, we could help avoid a long-term care catastrophe. Japan has the highest proportion of people 65+ in the world. And 20 years ago, its long-term care approach looked much like the current failed U.S. system. But Japan took a few key initiatives in 2000 that are widely admired among long-term care policy experts. Before I explain what they did, first let me offer a brief look at the U.S. situation. Long-Term Care Financing in the U.S. America’s private long-term care insurance market is contracting and its policies are expensive. Only about a dozen companies now sell coverage, compared with about 100 more than a decade ago, according to Marc Cohen, chief research and development officer at LifePlans, a firm that helps health- and long-term care insurers manage risk. Tom McInerney, chief executive officer at Genworth, the nation’s largest long-term care insurer, estimates that between half and two-thirds of Americans can’t afford to buy in the traditional long-term care insurance market. A 60-year-old married couple would pay $3,930 per year, on...

Your Doctor Will Skype You Now...

Your employer may soon let you have virtual medical visits, but should you? If you work for a big company, odds are you’ll soon be offered a new health benefit (if you haven’t been already): Telemedicine, sometimes called telehealth. It’s the ability to see a doctor on a video call or confer through text, email or by phone, rather than an in-person visit. The question is: Should you? I was floored to see in the National Business Group on Health’s Large Employers’ 2016 Health Plan Design Survey how much this benefit has grown lately and is expected to balloon. Soaring Growth for Telehealth In last year’s survey, 48 percent of employers made telehealth options available to employees in states where it was legal (more on that last part shortly), up from 28 percent the year before. But a stunning 74 percent of employers will offer telehealth in 2016, according to the new survey of 140 employers — mostly with 10,000 employees or more. Often, the firms contract out with telemedicine firms such as Teladoc, Doctor on Demand, MDLive, NowClinic and American Well. “Small and medium-sized employers are offering telemedicine, too,” said Brian Marcotte, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health. “What you’re seeing is employers continuing to look for ways to engage employees and move to a consumer-centric model.” If employers expect employees to ask questions as medical consumers, Marcotte added, they need to offer more consumer services. “Telehealth neatly fits into that,” he said. And these days, “consumers are starting to ask for it,” said Jon Linkous, president of the American Telemedicine Association. “Health care is a late adopter of technology, but once it’s proven, it’s a permanent change.” Right now, there’s growing buzz over...

Why I Became a Care Coordinator for My Mom...

This woman’s experience led her to help others in a similar predicament I didn’t have a care coordination provider in 2009 when my daughter and I started caring for my mom, Margaret. It was difficult. I was working; my daughter was in college. There may have been something called “care coordination,” but at that time, many of the care coordination services were in early stages of development or new. I did have lists of caregiving services and phone numbers for my mom, as well as financial statements and housing options. My challenge was taking a fragmented health care system and organizing it into something cohesive to serve her. Known as care coordination, this process is usually tackled by a team of health care professionals working together and sharing information to provide the best care possible at the appropriate time to, in this case, an older adult. The team then monitors and reports to the family on all aspects of the loved one’s care, including medical and physical condition and outside activities. Advantages of Care Coordination Care coordination frequently reduces cost through better, more efficient use of health care services. It also improves quality of life for families and older adults. Care coordination is a good choice for older adults who want to age in place, because services are brought in to the patient. In addition, receiving these services at home is less expensive than living in a nursing home, costing approximately $1,000, compared with more than $5,000 a month at a nursing home. In my mother’s case, I was her care coordinator. I learned as I went. I made mistakes. I got better. I was like most caregivers in the United States: a full 72 percent of us provide...