The battle goes on with aging parents who are living alone or without family nearby and their adult children. From the kids’ point of view, their parent is just not safe in that big house anymore, with the declines that often come with aging. Perhaps the elder has lost a spouse or partner and there is no one left to watch out for them. The family tells them they should move. They explore senior living situations. They urge and argue with the aging parent. They’re worried, and justifiably so. Frail elders are not safe living alone, generally. The Aging Parent’s View If you happen to have an eld ..read more

You’ve heard the adage “use it or lose it”. It’s particularly apt in describing what happens as we age. Typically we move less, lose muscle strength, and suffer the consequences of losing independence, have greater fall risk and other undesirable things. At the beginning of each year, people commonly make New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, or somehow “get in shape”. But, we also know that most people don’t keep those resolutions very long and eventually just give them up. A Key To Independence Here are some thoughts on what any older person can and must do if you don’t want to lose your in ..read more

Have you ever heard the term “undue influence”? Most people don’t really understand what it means.  Is it just some weird legal thing? Or should you understand it? When it comes to seniors and financial abuse, the term becomes very important, because undue influence often leads to financial abuse.  The legal concept of undue influence goes way back in history to the 1600s.  A lot of our law in the US is based on what our British ancestors did.  And sure enough, there is an old case in which a woman pretended to love an older man and pressured or influenced him to give her a ..read more

Few things symbolize our independence like driving a car when and where we want to. For aging parents, there is nearly always an end to that independence at some point. But when do they reach that point? Often, aging parents’ gradual decline in ability can be hard to spot when adult children don’t live with them. In my own family, we were fortunate. My mother-in-law, Alice lived to be 96. When she finally relented at age 93, and moved into a seniors’ community, she voluntarily gave up the car. We breathed a sigh of relief and sold it promptly. For lots of other elders we hear about at AgingPar ..read more

Dr. Peter Attia, MD, has written an excellent book on how to keep ourselves from getting common chronic illnesses with aging. It’s Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity, which offers a clear strategy to avoid these illnesses. He refers to those which kill the majority of Americans as the Four Horsemen. They are heart disease, cancer, neurogenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes (and related metabolic dysfunction). He encourages the use of proactive tactics to keep us living well and longer in good health. It is not new to hear from a qualified medical expert that we need to prevent chron ..read more

For a long time, we were entitled to only an annual credit report from the three reporting agencies: EquifaxEFX, Experian and TransUnion. Now you can get a report weekly and for free. When you get a parent’s credit report, you can find a lot of information. Your aging parents may be spending more than they or you realize. They may have multiple credit cards you don’t know about. Even worse, they may be unable to competently track and pay their bills and have unpaid debts. That can cause some serious problems for you down the road. One important factor to bear in mind is that when an elder begi ..read more

American families are often scattered across the country. Kids grow up, find opportunities they like in other places and move away. The parents may stay put, happy to remain where they’ve lived most of their lives. Then aging happens. And with it, risks no one really thought about. At AgingParents.com, where we advise families about age-related issues, we see this repeatedly. A concerned adult child in one state sees red flags of Mom or Dad being in trouble in their home state and it’s far away. What to do? Here’s a real-life example: Case Study Zita is in her 50’s working full time, and gener ..read more

According to the Federal Trade Commission, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers $60 billion a year. Fraudsters get away with it because most of the time, no one is stopping them. Here’s a real case, in which I personally spotted the suspicious billing that immediately looked to me like fraud. A family member we’ll call Tony had a stroke in 2013 and was significantly disabled by it, mainly losing the ability to read and to speak clearly. He can say things and you can generally get the idea but he can’t say specific nouns or names. He certainly can’t discuss feelings. I am in charge of his medical car ..read more

This is the hottest summer ever, news reports tell us. We stay inside, we use air conditioning, we hydrate well. But some aging parents who live alone or with only part time help at home are at particular risk. It’s not just that older people can’t regulate their body temperature as well as younger people. It’s that they can get confused and not realize danger during bad hot spells. Aging loved ones are more at risk in heat waves Wandering Some families we work with at AgingParents.com tell us that Mom or Dad tends to go outside and get lost once in awhile. We call it wandering in the healthca ..read more

She was a heavy smoking, alcoholic, obese woman who reached her first breaking point 40 years ago. After DeEtte Sauer’s friend drank himself to death, she woke up to her own alcohol dependency. She resolved to stop drinking, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and stuck with that. She went on to quit smoking, which she found extremely difficult, but she persevered. She had never had any discipline around food and her doctors in Texas at the time just seemed to accept that people got fat as the years passed. No one told her to lose weight, other than her husband. After giving up her addictions to smoki ..read more