Moderate Drinking Might Reduce Dementia But I Don't Remember

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The occasional glass of wine might actually reduce the risk of dementia, 

Loyola University's Chicago Stritch School of Medicine analyzed 143 studies conducted since 1977 and found that moderate alcohol consumption is linked to a lower risk of developing dementia, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of cognitive impairment. 

The team analyzed data from previous studies encompassing 365,000 people. They defined moderate drinking as two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women. (Sorry women!)

Investigators say that wine proved more beneficial than beer or spirits.

They noted that heavy drinkers — or those who have more than three to five drinks per day — had a higher risk of dementia and cognitive impairment. 

Study co-author Edward J. Neafsey, Ph.D. said: “moderate drinking — if it is truly moderate — can be beneficial."

Results are reported in the journal Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment.

For Profits and Private Investor Nursing Homes Have More Deficiencies

The Government Accountability Office, examining whether the quality of care in a nursing home suffers after an acquisition, found that nursing homes owned by private investors and other types of for-profit operators had more total deficiencies than homes run by public companies.

The report found that on average, 

• privately owned and for-profit nursing homes had more total deficiencies than nonprofit homes both before and after acquisition.
   
• PI-acquired homes also were more likely to have been cited for a serious deficiency than nonprofit homes before, but not after, an acquisition.

The GAO also found that total nurse staffing ratios were lower in PI homes, but the staffing mix was different. According to the report, “RN ratios increased more from 2003 to 2009 in PI homes than in other homes, while CNA ratios increased more in other homes than in PI homes. 

Of course deficiency impacts quality and that is why I advise people to look into the ownership structure of providers they are considering for care. This is not the first report to paint for-profits in a bad light.

Boomers Lack Care Plan for Parents

As reported in USA Today, Home Instead Senior Care surveyed 600 adults ages 45 to 65, and found:

• 31% don't know how many medications their parents take.

• 34% don't know whether their parents have a safe deposit box or where the key is.

• 36% don't know where their parents' financial information is located.

I am not surprised. Even my sister and I did not pay attention to this until recently with mom.

As Jeff Huber, president of Home Instead Senior Care, told the newspaper, "It is not important until it's urgent."

In the survey, 49% couldn't name a single drug their parents took. Then you add up multiple physicians, who don't talk to each other either, and you could have a toxic brew of medication mismanagement on your hands.

Their recommendation from all of this: "having conversations and putting plans in place."

Boomers More Concerned About Health Than Appearance - We're Not So Vain After All

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According to the recent poll conducted by The Associated Press and LifeGoesStrong.com baby boomers believe that the worst thing about getting older is changes to their physical strength and health, over concerns about beauty.

Boomers say the worst things about aging are:

• changes in one's physical abilities (28%) 
• health issues (26%)

One in three boomers state they are actively fighting the negative effects of aging.

Boomers express mixed emotions about getting older, with slightly more boomers (42 percent) feeling positive emotions like confidence or happiness about getting older than negative ones (38 percent) such as frustration, sadness or fear.

Baby boomers are relatively optimistic they will live longer than their parents' generation, with six in 10 (60%) believing they will live at least a little longer. Only 12 percent expect a shorter life span while 28 percent believe it will be about the same.

The survey also revealed that an alarming 36 percent of boomers are classified as "obese" based on their self-reported height and weight. Another 36 percent of boomers are "overweight," while only 27 percent would fall into the "normal" range.

One ritual "washing that gray away" lives on. Almost one in three boomers (31% -- including 55% of women) admit to regularly dyeing their hair, and most of those who do submit to the hairdressers' magic say they do so specifically to cover their gray locks (73%).

So how about you. Where do you fit in the scheme of things?

Antidepressants Drugs - Some Better Than Others

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Elderly patients being treated for depression may fare better with older antidepressants rather than newer, more popular antidepressants such as Effexor and Prozac.

Researchers say that while newer SSRIs drugs are generally safe and effective, there have been fewer studies testing their safety. 

SSRIs, which include Celexa, Paxil and Zoloft, recently have been linked to an increase in falls in the elderly. 

The University of Nottingham in the UK analyzed prescription data of more than 60,000 patients between the ages 65 and 100 who had recently been diagnosed with depression. Seniors taking SSRIs have:

• a higher risk of dying
• having a stroke
• falling
• breaking a bone
• having seizure

Additionally, within one year, 10.6% of this group of seniors taking SSRIs died.

As researchers told Health Day News, seniors (and their caregivers) need to have an ongoing conversation with their doctors.

Some Boomers Set, Others Not for Retirement

Olivia Mitchell, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Pension Research Council says “boomers are not all created equal.” According to Mitchell, many older boomers still have a defined benefit pension plan, probably some decent retiree medical insurance and Social Security. And that is good. But only for some.

 

In an AP/Life Goes Strong poll, 83 percent of boomers polled said they do not have long-term care insurance and many of the nation’s 77 million baby boomers are worried about being able to pay their medical bills as they get older. Unfortunately the cost of long-term care insurance policies rise as one ages.

“It’s a tough sell,” says Paul Fronstin, director of health research and education at the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute, speaking to the Associated Press. “Even someone in their 60s might look at it and say it’s going to be 20 years before I need long-term care, so why buy it now.”

• Only 40 percent of boomers polled said they had a legal will.
• Thirty-four percent had health care proxies and living wills.

The AP-LifeGoesStrong.com poll was conducted from June 3-12 and involved online interviews with 1,416 adults, including 1,078 baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964.

New CMS Site Aggregates Compare Tools

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Quality Care Finder designed to help beneficiaries and their caregivers find better health care options. 

It is really an aggregation of tools they already had in place now put into one place for easy finding.

You can

• Get contact information for hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, home health agencies, dialysis facilities, and drug and health plans.
  
• Compare information about the quality of care and services these providers and plans offer.
  
• Get helpful tips on what to look for when comparing and choosing a provider or plan.

You also can call 1-800-MEDICARE  (1-800-633-4227) or TTY call 1-877-486-2048 for information.

I usually recommend this as a first stop in accessing your health care provider but not the last one.

Elderly Women With Sleep Apnea at Higher Risk for Dementia

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Elderly women with sleep apnea had an 85% higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia than elderly women without sleep apnea according to researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

They studied 298 women, roughly a third were diagnosed with sleep-disordered breathing. The average age of the women was 82. 

Five years after the study, investigators conducted cognitive function tests designed to detect brain health and cognitive impairment. They found that:

• 45% of study participants with sleep apnea developed cognitive impairments, compared with 31% of women without sleep apnea.

Sixty percent of elderly people suffer from sleep-disordered breathing, which means addressing apnea may boost cognitive health.

You can do some things to prevent sleep apnea and some are rooted in the myriad of chronic conditions we suffer from already. Check with your doctor to see if the following would benefit you.

• Watch your weight. Too much weight can restrict airflow.
  
  
• Watch the medications you take before going to bed. Muscle relaxers and sedatives will relax throat muscles and cause an obstruction of airflow. Drinking alcohol before bed is not good either. Cigarettes weaken and relax the muscles of your throat and should be avoided.
  
• Elevate the head of your bed, or buy a pillow that will keep your head in an elevated position.
  
  
• Sleep on your side. Sleeping on your side puts less strain on your windpipe. It also helps to fight snoring, which accompanies sleep apnea.

Sociable, Collaborative Encouraging Couple Do Better On Memory Tasks

New research indicates that couples who are sociable, collaborative and encouraging did better on the memory tasks. This collaborative approach in social interactions could be a key to memory retention and independent living later in life.

Researchers hypothesized that social partners can serve as useful external memory aids, particularly in middle and late life when these abilities may wane. They studied middle-aged and elderly husband-and-wife pairs to find out if there was a collaborative component in extending individuals' memory. The middle-aged couples had an average age of 35; the elderly couples 75.

In memory-specific tasks, they noticed that the younger pairs were better able to fill in memory gaps than their older counterparts. 

"This study had to do with couples, but you interact with coworkers, adult children and others throughout middle and late life. If someone is living in a long-term care facility, they're interacting with caregivers," said lead researcher Jennifer Margrett, Ph.D. "And so the idea is to extrapolate our findings to see how we can support people within the context of both normal cognitive aging, as well as non-normative cognitive aging -- which includes some memory impairment, and potentially dementia."

The study was published online in the Journal of Psychology.

Scratching my head here as to what we can do with this now. I do believe that being with someone is far better than being alone but that someone for my money has to be the very things they state - sociable, collaborative and encouraging. So I guess to the extent you find the right someone, your strength as a team can benefit your quality of life.

It's In The Genes

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Genes may be more likely to increase longevity than diet, exercise, smoking and drinking.

Researchers asked 466 people over age 95 about their lifestyles, body mass index, and other habits around smoking, drinking, physical activity and food. 

The group was compared against 3,164 people who had been born around the same time and examined in the 1970s through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The study group did not have healthier habits than the comparison group. 

• Among long-living men, 24% consumed alcohol daily, versus 22% of the general population. 
• Only 27% of the females attempted to eat a low-calorie diet, similar to the general population group.

According to researchers, this study suggests that centenarians may possess additional longevity genes that help to buffer them against the harmful effects of an unhealthy lifestyle. But those who want to live a long life should not throw caution to the wind.


Unhealthy lifestyle habits are not good choices for most of us who do not have a family history of longevity. There are still benefits to living a healthy lifestyle.

Nursing Home Compare Overall Complete

The redesign of the federal Nursing Home Compare website, which lets consumers file complaints more easily and compare facilities based on quality measures, is complete.

The overhaul — which was conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and mandated by the Affordable Care Act — gives consumers more tools to directly file complaints with state survey agencies, providing links to phone and fax numbers and standardized complaint forms. In addition, the site will make public the complaints states receive about specific facilities. 

The new Nursing Home Compare site also includes more quality of care information. Regulators will assess resident experiences at long- and short-term care facilities and publish the results on the site. 

Quality of care indicators reported on the site include: 

• pain levels as reported by residents
• the use of physical restraints
• self-reported falls
• pressure ulcer rates 
• measures of general well-being.

The site will also publish data about the number of civil money penalties and similar enforcement actions against a nursing home over the last three years. The site will “freeze” quality measure data and the Five Star quality measure ratings currently on the website for a period of six months. Regulators will be collecting quality measure data from the new MDS 3.0 resident assessment tool during this time.

Consumer Survey - We Need Your Help

The Consumer Consortium for Advancing Person-Centered Living is launching the Person-to-Person Network (P2P), a resource for caregivers, families and elders.

We need your help. As you seek information or resources to assist you or a loved one with a particular issue or decision you are facing, it is important that we understand what matters most to you.

We'd like you to review our website, www.ccal.org and give us your feedback.

We want to know what is most relevant and valuable to you.

In reviewing the website your feedback on content, navigation and understanding is important.

When finished reviewing the web site, go here to take a brief survey.

Your responses will remain anonymous.

Please complete by Wednesday, September 21.

As people grow older or have disabilities they should not experience a loss of humanity. Person Centered Living (PCL) means living as one chooses to. If support is needed, supports are centered on personal preferences and values that stress dignity, choice, self-determination, respect, privacy, and individuality. PCL means being kind, respectful, and sensitive to those being served and honoring their right to make their own choices, regardless of the setting.

We thank you for your time and your responses.