Michael Buble’s “Christmas” is Number One on the Billboard charts. All four of his albums have gone multi-platinum. He consistently sells out stadium-sized venues.
And his grandfather is the biggest reason and inspiration for his success.
As he shares on tonight’s 60 Minutes, Michael Buble got his starts thanks to his grandfather’s constant love and unwavering effort to get his grandson in the spotlight.
Buble’s grandfather would promise to fix people’s plumbing or water heaters if they agreed to give Michael a few minutes on stage. A music aficionado, he exposed Michael to big band singers and would spend hours sipping coffee in a shopping mall food court while Michael sang to shoppers and passers-by. When Michael finally got a record deal, it was his grandfather who broke the news to him that Warner Brothers would sign him to their label.
The men are lucky to have a genetic mutually-beneficial, inter-generational relationship. Not all seniors (or grandchildren) are as lucky as Buble and his grandpa. But Engage As You Age carefully pairs older adults and seniors with someone of a different generation, and the result over time is often a bond as tight as any family.
Engage As You Age can also bring introduce to seniors a person with a passion for big band Buble-like music should they not be mobile enough to drive to a music store or check out a concert. Though Buble’s grandfather may have access to live big band music via his grandson, many seniors do not. Thanks to Engage As You Age, those people won’t have to be musically lonley.
California’s elderly population is growing–while funding for essential services continues to shrink.
Advocates, including seniors themselves, are unhappy but resourceful, and are beginning to strategize about reversing the trend (or determining alternative solutions should that prove impossible).
Enter the second Senior Health Policy Forum, scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 30 in San Francisco. The first Bay Area Senior Health Policy Forum was held in Oakland in 2009. More than 200 participants came together for panel discussions and workshops to facilitate collaboration among senior advocates and professionals and identify a common focus to help strengthen the safety net for California’s seniors. On the agenda: how to age in place, caregiving, homecare and medical care/treatment, among other topics.
Among the speakers at Wednesday’s Bay Area Senior Health Policy Forum will be:
State Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley
Diana Dooley, secretary for the California Health and Human Services Agency
Melanie Bella, a director at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
David Ishida, regional administrator at the U.S. Administration on Aging.
California’s over-65 population is going to double in the next 25 years, while studies show the number of elderly struggling to pay for medical bills and other basic needs has reached record levels. According to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, 47 percent of state residents 65 and older are unable to cover grocery, health and housing costs. Even in the affluent Silicon Valley, 48 percent of seniors fell below the researchers’ survival standard, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Want to go? It’s not too late! The event begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 5:30 p.m. Registration is $45. More information: http://www.shpfregistration.org/
Actually NPR’s series is not on its death bed but this will be the last day you can catch the series live on the air. Don’t fret because you can find the pod-casts for this week long series (Oct. 17-Oct. 25) that explores aging and the end of life on NPR’s website. Many of us are afraid of death and the unknown but one way to alleviate fears of the end of life journey is to gain insight from other families that are dealing with financial security, health, caregiving and faith while aging. Health care workers, financial advisers family members and filmmakers are among the guests that will share their experiences and perspectives as part of this series.
Another great topic covered by the series is on the realities of retirement, titled “Advice For the Golden Years: ‘Don’t Ever Retire Mentally’. A memorable quote that stood out to us was from 83 year old, Krishna Roy, who said “Don’t ever retire mentally. Keep your mind alive.” This is sound advice since a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Yale School of Public health shows that 39% of retirees say their health is worse after retirement compared with 13% of non-retirees expectations for life after work. It is clear that this series is not only going to talk about death but also an active and engaged retirement among several related topics.
Here is an interesting website also put together through NPR; End of Life explores death in America and provides several useful links. The site provides transcripts on various topics surrounding death, resources for people with life-threatening diseases and their families and caregivers, as well as links to selected mediums on death and dying, hospice, death and caregiving, retirement, and much more. Enjoy!
Ninety-five years is 34,698 days. Which is another way of saying that 95 years is an achievement. An achievement worthy of a billboard.
On Highway 101 South, a billboard celebrates this very milestone, announcing Lou Poletti’s 95th birthday. Poletti started Poletti Realty, a South San Francisco family business founded in 1956. The full-sized billboard at the Airport Boulevard exit features a photograph of Poletti in a fedora and sunglasses and says in large white letters: “Happy Birthday Lou Poletti: We love you with all our hearts.”
Patch.com reported that Poletti’s kids arranged for the billboard birthday card, which ironically Poletti already owns (he purchased it 45 years ago). When his children recognized there would be a gap in advertising, they figured it would be the perfect attempt to celebrate their father.
Poletti's 95th birthday
But the billboard wasn’t the only birthday gesture; Poletti also celebrated his 95th birthday with a big party surrounded by friends and family. Quite the king!
Engage As You Age commends Poletti for maintaining an involved, engaged life even as a nonagenarian. Unfortunately, few seniors in the Bay Area get up into their 90s surrounded by friends and relatives. That’s why Engage As You Age exists: To bring the world to those who can no longer get out and explore it on their own. Our social visits infuse energy and vitality into the lives of seniors.
You don’t have to be a teenager to enjoy Facebook! Seniors, even those over 100 (!), are learning how to use Facebook and other social networks to maintain relationships with family and friends. Seniors and Facebook don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly just yet but that is certainly starting to change. Many seniors are reaping the benefits of using Facebook.We’ve profiled Ivy Bean in the past and how she was the oldest user of Facebook and enjoying every minute of using it!
According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, social networking among people 65 and older increased by 100 percent between April 2009 and May 2010. The center found that the internet is a way in which physically isolated seniors can connect with friends and family even if they are aging in place and physically isolated.
Stanford Professor Laura Carstensen, the director of Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, says that “social networking is providing more and more to be an entrance into technology for older adults.” As independence among seniors starts to decline, more are experiencing social isolation, loneliness and depression especially those living away from family and in assisted living homes. Several studies have found that internet use among older adults was associated with a 30% decrease in depressive symptoms among those who use the internet regularly.
While Facebook can help a senior stay socially connected it does not facilitate meaningful face-to-face interactions. It is not a substitute for face-to-face companionship for seniors. That’s why Engage As You Age is here to facilitate meaningful activity-focused companionship for seniors. We’ve found that companions for seniors make a difference that Facebook can’t compete with.
A few other things to consider about Facebook and seniors. Do the grandchildren of seniors want their grandparents to see their pictures and comments online? Perhaps Facebook would connect seniors to aspects of their grandchildren and children’s lives that they wouldn’t want to see. What do you think about Facebook and seniors? Is it the cure for loneliness and seniors?
A third of people over the age of 60 have lost their ability to hear due to a decrease in being able to discriminate acoustic information from the environment! This powerful statistic comes from a study conducted by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. A different 2011 study found that being a lifelong musician and playing instruments later in life may be associated with better hearing. Nina Kraus, a biologist and director of Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory says that “what we do with our time and how we engage our senses and our thinking seems to really shape the people we become in very basic ways- in ways that effect how our senses work.”
Along the same lines as the two aforementioned studies, a 2011 study published in the Journal of Psychology and Agingfound that being a musician may contribute to better hearing in old age by delaying some of the age-related changes in central auditory processing especially if elderly musicians are using their auditory systems on a regular basis. In other words “use it or lose it.”
Engage As You Age often works with older adults and socially isolated seniors by bringing music and music lessons to their homes; allowing them to age in place. While we’re certainly not as helpful as a hearing aid, we’ve found that when paired with one we bring a lot of joy to isolated seniors. So even if you haven’t been a musician your whole life, there are several benefits for older adults who engage in activities that stimulate the senses at any age. According to a study by a USC professor some benefits of seniors engaging include the prevention of health decline that comes with old age such as memory loss, hearing loss, and physical inability.
One of college basketball’s best female coaches announced in August that she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s — but that she would continue coaching in spite of the diagnosis.
“I plan to continue to be your coach,” Pat Summitt said in a two-minute video statement released by the University of Tennessee’s athletic department.
Summitt is just 59 years old. An icon in women’s basketball, she has led UT to eight national championships and 1,071 career victories, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, regardless of gender. This will be her 38th season coaching at the university.
Summitt explained that she will maintain her role by collaborating even more with the team’s other coaches because “I realize I may have some limitations with this condition since there will be some good days and some bad days,” she said in letter posted on the university’s website.
Yet she didn’t consider retirement. She told The Knoxville News Sentinel that she was encouraged after speaking with Dr. Ronald Petersen, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. “He’s the one who told me you can coach as long as you want to coach and no one else had said anything like that to me,” Summitt told the newspaper.
Engage As You Age applauds Pat Summitt for not allowing a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to get in the way of living her life. She’s pragmatic about needing help but also recognizes that staying involved with her career and her team will ultimately help her more than if she were to head into early retirement.
“Social isolation is equivalent to the health effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day or consuming more than six alcoholic drinks daily,” says Univeristy of Adelaide Professor Andrew Beer. Because of this, Beer has begun a research study to find out how to end social isolation of seniors.
Beer is determined to combat the pernicious effects of social isolation and has $348,000 (courtesy of the Australian Research Council) to investigate what programs work, don’t work and why. He plans on studying 900 Australian seniors evaluate social programs for seniors and figure out what models should be embraced and what should be eliminated.
“Up to 20 percent of the Australian aged population is socially isolated and we have a rapidly aging population. If you are socially isolated, it will have a huge impact on your health and place a huge burden on society as a whole and the individual” said Beer.
Beer’s assertion that 20% of seniors in Australia are socially isolated rings true to our ears at Engage As You Age. Our rough estimate is that 20-25% of seniors in the San Francisco Bay Area are socially isolated. Whether they live in a San Francisco assisted living facility or nursing home or choose to age in place, many seniors in San Francisco (and throughout the Bay Area) are isolated because of physical, cognitive and/or emotional reasons. It’s the seniors who are stuck in their rooms (in assisted living facilities or their own homes) or who have dementia or parkinson’s and have a hard time connecting with other seniors. That’s why we’re here–to provide companionship for seniors that are socially isolated.
Arthritis, vision failure and dementia can be challenging for anyone–but the ailments are especially difficult for those people who built their lives around seeing the country from the window of an RV. Once driving becomes impossible, so too does the RV lifestyle, and the community that goes with it.
With this in mind, a retired nurse and RV regular founded Escapees Care Center in 1997 in Livingston, Texas. It is the country’s only assisted living facility for full-time RVers.
For a monthly fee ranging from $800 for singles and $1200 for a couple, residents at Escapees Care have access to the Care Center, where registered nurses are on call 40 hours a week. They take regular blood pressure readings, clean and dress wounds, help residents with their medication and schedule doctors’ appointments. The monthly payment also covers laundry, transportation and three meals a day in the Care Center’s dining room.
There is adult day care for those with dementia and a weekly support group for those with low vision. More important to most of the 50 or so residents, the community provides a social network, with daily activities, bluegrass concerts and Wii bowling.
The centrality of socializing at Escapees promotes exactly the kind of active and engaging relationships Engage As You Age seeks to bring to its Bay Area seniors. Bravo Escapees.
Caregivers and their relatives who suffer from mild to moderate dementia often have different perceptions about the amount and quality of care given and received, so says a study by researchers at Penn State and the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. A major source of those differences? Caregivers do not understand the things that are important to their relatives with dementia, according to the study.
For the study, researchers looked at 266 pairs of people, each composed of an individual with mild to moderate dementia and his or her family caregiver. Researchers then interviewed members of the pairs separately. Caregivers were required to be the primary family caregiver of the dementia patient and the patient had to be living in his or her own home to participate in the study.
The results showed a difference in perception about the amount and the level of quality of care provided by caregivers and their patients. The study pinpointed the major source of difference to be a lack of understanding by caregivers of the needs of the patients.
Engage As You Age understands that people living with dementia and their family caregivers frequently want the same thing–a high quality of life for the aging–but they often have different ideas of how to achieve this. Which can cause tension or friction between family. The great thing about our team is that we’re not related to you or your parents, allowing us mediate a difficult situation with an unbiased eye toward what’s best for the individual with dementia or Alzheimer’s.
We begin all of our professional relationships with a free home visit, during which we together and separately interview the person with dementia and their family caregivers. Because both parties have valuable insight to share. This is how we get a 360-degree view, and how we successfully match up our elderly clients with our trained staff of artists, scientists, sports enthusiasts and conversationalists.
Michael Buble’s “Christmas” is Number One on the Billboard charts. All four of his albums have gone multi-platinum. He consistently sells out stadium-sized venues.
