National Health Literacy Month, observed every October, aims to help you understand health information and learn how to advocate for yourself when receiving medical instructions from a health professional. For older adults especially, this can build confidence in navigating their healthcare plans, understanding how to take prescriptions, and communicating with healthcare providers to make informed personal health decisions.

What Is Health Literacy?

Health literacy describes a person's ability to find, understand, and use health information and services to make well-informed decisions for themselves and others.

There are many aspects to health literacy, including the ability to:

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Alice cried, as the iconic character watched her body suddenly grow taller and stretch out in the book Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Alice's quirky adventures in Wonderland might not be what you envision for your retirement years, but there are very good reasons for being, or becoming, “curiouser and curiouser” in older adulthood. To celebrate Healthy Aging Month this September, we're focusing on all the ways curiosity is good for an older adult's wellbeing. After all, curiosity has no age limit!

How Is Being Curious Good for Older Adult Wellbeing?

Curiosity isn't something anyone outgrows. However, our adult lives require us to fall into routines with work and family, and as we do, curiosity tends to slip by the wayside. When retirement rolls around, there's more free time to fill – and that void can be a bit unsettling. Cultivating a curious mindset can allow you to rekindle interests and hobbies or discover new ones. As you allow curiosity to lead you in new directions, you are simultaneously taking care of your emotional, physical, and brain health.

We all know that our health changes as we age, sometimes taking us by surprise. It’s important for older adults to be informed about health conditions that can impair their ability to drive safely. In particular, health conditions that affect attention, cognition, vision, and mobility can have serious and lasting effects on driving ability.

Which Health Conditions Commonly Affect Driving Ability for Older Adults?

• ADHD

• Cognitive changes or impairment

Do you feel like you are having to keep tabs on your aging parent? Are you second guessing if mom or dad should still be living on their own and may need more supervised care? There are several hidden warning signs that can be indicators an aging parent needs assisted living care.

• Forgetfulness 
• House is a Mess
• Changes in Mobility
• Poor Personal Hygiene 
• Not Engaging in Day-to-Day Activities

When observing your older adult parent in their living space, you’ll want to keep tabs on the following warning signs to assess whether or not they can continue to independently care for themselves and their home. You may want to keep a notebook, so you can see patterns of behavior and can share this information with your parent and their physician. This information will be helpful for decision making and for engaging with assisted living counselors when you start evaluating residential options for your parent.

When you are making notes about these changes in your aging parent, you’ll also want to observer how they respond to the changes themselves and how they respond to you when you try to discuss these things with them: 

Wellness for older adults goes beyond physical health and prevention of illness. This month, we focus on the habits that support you in feeling your best. During the Golden Years the key elements of wellness include: 

• Emotional Fulfillment and Social Connection
• Mental Stimulation 
• Physical Movement

Let’s take a closer look at each of these; then, check-out our tips to help you create a wellness routine in older adulthood.

• Emotional Fulfillment and Social Connection

Having opportunities to connect socially is directly related to feeling emotionally fulfilled. These two areas of wellness intersect, and both are vital to older adult well-being. You don’t need to be a socially butterfly, but you do need to have outlets to connect with others as these engagements help combat loneliness, depression, anxiety, and support overall healthy aging. 

No matter your age or activity level, you reap numerous health benefits from spending time in nature. Not only is time spent outdoors good for physical health, it is especially good for brain health. New research from the fields of psychology, health, medicine, and environmental science consistently shows that, for people of all ages, who spend as little as 15 minutes a day interacting with the natural world, experience lower blood pressure, less frequent headaches, and are at lower risk for anxiety and depression. With so much natural beauty surrounding the Everbrook Senior Living Communities, it’s easy to get your daily dose of “nature’s medicine.”

How The Lack of Time Spent in Nature Takes a Toll on Health

Enough research has been done to strongly indicate that people who spend the least amount of time outdoors have greater detriment to their well-being: higher risk of mental health conditions, obesity, high blood pressure, and other chronic illnesses. There’s even a name for the ill-effects of not spending enough time in nature—it’s called “nature-deficit disorder.” Nature deficiency contributes to the following health issues:

• increased stress
• trouble maintaining focus
• diminished emotional resilience
• deficits in self-expression, creative thinking, and reasoning
• difficulty establishing healthy social connections (at work, in the community)
• increased risk for and/or worsening of chronic illness
• loss of connectedness to nature and one's responsibility for protecting it

Even though nature-deficit disorder is not yet regarded as a medical condition, both conventional and holistic health practitioners recognize the significance of the detrimental health effects stemming from lack of contact with nature. In fact, in Canada, doctors can now prescribe national park passes to patients who are at risk for, or who are struggling with depression, anxiety, and certain other mental and physical health conditions. Many more physicians around the world have come to recognize nature-deficit as a nonclinical syndrome that can impair the emotional, cognitive, and physical functioning of adults and children.

Ah… the big 5-0! Whether you’re just celebrating the “half century” milestone, or you’ve been in your 50s for a while, you’ve probably noticed the subtle signs of aging in the way you move, how you handle stress, and your energy level. Fear Not!

You can continue to age wise and well by following our tips for aging into your fifties—giving additional longevity to your mind-body vitality. 

How Your Body Changes During Your 50s

The aging process actually begins in earnest shortly after age 30. At this point, age-related changes tend to be slow and subtle, but become definitively noticeable by the time you enter your forties. 

From youth through older adulthood, we’ve all experienced the power of music in our lives. Whether it’s a moving instrumental piece or a swift beat with diverse vocal range, music has the power to shift your mood, inspire creativity, enhance concentration, evoke memories, and make mundane tasks more enjoyable.

The influence of music on health and behavior, particularly among older adults, is a topic of growing research interest. A specific set of 10th Century musical frequencies, known as the Solfeggio Frequencies, lay the foundation for modern interest in music and health.

In this article you’ll learn more about:

So, what does it mean to have quality of life in your Golden Years? The topic is so important that the month of January is recognized as International Quality of Life Month.

Whether you’re approaching retirement age or helping a parent plan for their Golden Years, an important consideration is how to create and maintain quality of life. Older adult quality of life goes well beyond the size of one’s retirement income. There are plenty of people with substantial retirement accounts who don’t have quality of life. 

Beyond the basics of physical health, comfort, and safety, older adult quality of life encompasses the individual’s needs, interests, and goals so they can experience wellness and happiness, day-to-day. At the core of quality of life for older adults are social-emotional factors that empower them to maintain their dignity, independence, and social connection and which create opportunities for a fulfilling life.

Since older adults tend to need fewer hours of sleep – around 7 hours a night – than younger people, it might surprise you to learn that sleep deprivation can be quite common in older adults. Not only that, symptoms of sleep deprivation can also be confused for dementia in older adults.

Many people are aware that there is a connection between sleep and brain health. The changes in brain chemistry that occur when we don’t sleep leads to impairment of physical performance, decision making skills, and how well we manage our emotions. Poor quality sleep as well as insufficient hours of sleep makes us sluggish, causes muscle tension and physical fatigue, and can lead to changes in appetite and mood. The longer we go without good quality and sufficient hours of sleep, the more imbalanced brain chemistry and hormones become – and that is not good for the brain.

For older adults, who are less physically resilient to the stresses of poor sleep, the effects on their cognitive abilities can be significant. So much so, family members may wonder if their loved on is showing signs of dementia. 

This Valentine’s Day we want to remind you of a special relationship between physical health and level of risk for cognitive decline. You may already be aware that, when you engage in physical activity you are building both physical and mental fitness. What you may not know is there is a “brain-heart-health connection” that influences your risk of cognitive decline: The healthier your heart, the lower your level of risk is for dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). 

What Does a Healthy Brain Require?

The brain-heart-health connection isn’t particularly complex. In a nutshell, a healthy brain requires 3 things:  

1. glucose (the chemical name for sugar) for energy
2. a strong blood supply to carry glucose and oxygen into the brain
3. a healthy diet to provide essential nutrients (vitamins, minerals, healthy fats) that serve as building blocks for brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. 

Look over those items once more time. Numbers 1 and 3 on the list are directly related to your diet---what, how often, and how much you eat. Number 2 – a strong blood supply--is related to heart health. So how does heart health relate to brain health?

Feeling a sense of purpose or meaning in life is associated with a 19% reduced rate of clinically significant cognitive impairment later, according to findings from a review of evidence led by researchers at University College London (UCL).

The UCL researchers examined several positive psychological constructs (e.g., maintaining a positive mood, being optimistic, having a sense of life purpose) to determine if these constructs have a significant association with reduced risk for dementia and other cognitive impairment in later life. 

The results showed that having purpose and meaning in life were key factors consistently associated with reduced risk of dementia years later: