How Can You Help with Your Elderly Loved One’s Desire to Stay Independent?

Senior citizens need to stay independent for as long as they can. The sooner they stop doing tasks that keep their body and mind active, the more health issues they are likely to experience. If you are caring for your elderly loved one, hopefully, the tips you read about here today can help them to keep their independence for longer.

Keeping Up with Nutrition

As your elderly loved one gets older, one of the things that can help them to stay independent is keeping up with their nutrition. Most elderly people want to stay healthy. They just may not know how to do that, especially in regard to eating right. There are many ways that you and elder care providers can help with this including:

• Making healthy grocery shopping lists with your elderly loved one
• Talking to your loved one about which health foods they prefer to eat
• Speaking with your elderly loved one’s doctor or nutritionist to see what types of vitamins or nutrients they need the most
• Making sure your elderly loved one doesn’t have any vitamin deficiencies through blood tests ordered by their doctors

If your elderly loved one can keep up with proper nutrition, it can help to prevent many different health issues. If needed, home care providers can help them to do these things, as well.

Keeping Up with Exercising

Your elderly loved one should also keep up with exercising regularly. In order to keep their body strong and fit, they should be exercising a minimum of 3 times every week for 30 minutes at a time. However, it would be best if they exercise at least 5 days each week. If your elderly loved one doesn’t exercise this much right now, that is okay. You and elder care providers can ease them into it by encouraging:

• Daily walks
• Small exercise workouts to videos
• Doing planks, sit-ups, or pushups
• Moving around more while cleaning

If your elderly loved one can keep up with exercising, it can help to prevent bone loss and other deterioration of the body and mind.

Keeping Up with Medications

Is your elderly loved one taking any medications? If so, it is crucial they keep up with taking those. They need to take their medications on time and in the proper dosage. By doing so, they can maintain or improve whatever health condition it is that they take medication for. If needed, you or senior care providers can remind them to take their medications.

Conclusion

These are just some of the ways that you can help your elderly loved one with maintaining their independence. You see, if your elderly loved one can do things that keep their body and mind intact for longer, they can also stay independent for longer.

Source
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6737a4.htm