1.
To improve the care of our elderly and our dementia patients, a very good place to start is some advice we were given at an International Alzheimer's Conference where international speakers attended to share their latest knowledge on this subject.
Families learned that to write a life story about their loved one, filling both sides of a piece of paper and laminating it before placing it in their room for people to read when they visited, was a game changer.
The changes in attitudes towards their loved ones after this, was remarkable, and proved that this advice alone, greatly improves the care of our elderly and our dementia patients.
Following this advice for our eighty year old Mother who lived with us for her last four years, we saw the amazing results first hand.
She rode by taxi twice weekly to our local day care for the elderly.
We asked the taxi driver, the day care staff and her personal caregiver, to read her life story.
She was immediately treated like royalty after these important people in her daily life realized what a generous, caring and beautiful person she had spent her life being.
She sensed their loving respect and responded far better to them all.
2.
A second great tip to improve the care of our elderly and our dementia patients, is to give them paints, brushes, pens, pencils, crayons, coloring pencils, and a variety of paper mediums.
Encourage them to doodle or paint what ever they choose.
A picture can tell us a thousand words.
Many who cannot communicate, will release a lot of emotion and frustration in this process.
Our Mother, with advancing dementia, started her art work drawing like a child, just outlining a stick figure, a tree, a plant and a square house.
After 4 years of attending an art class once a week at the local Disabilities Resource Center, she was producing art work with a similar style to Picasso's paintings.
The page, covered in tiny dots of paint, had no blank spaces, and everything she wanted to paint looked real.
It was a magical array of color and form.
In her whole life, she had never done any art work like this.
3.
A third great tip for dementia and confusion symptoms in our elderly, is ensuring they have good bladder and kidney health.
Kidney and bladder infections can show up as severe confusion and irritability in a person no longer able to feel the stinging and burning sensations or the incontinence symptoms, and they are often unable to tell you.
Regular urine tests are invaluable, but even better is eating cranberry.
Cranberry capsules from a good health shop, taken as per instructions, seem to flush out those bugs that upset the bladder and kidneys, as also does cranberry juice and the dried cranberries.
The capsules, however, clear infections faster.
You will notice your loved one's frequent and urgent need to go to the toilet drops off and their mood improves.
A good follow up dose of cranberry, is one capsule taken twice a week.
4.
A good way to keep our elderly folk's bowels in good working order, is to give them a ½ - 1 teaspoon of a good organic molasses from a reputable health shop.
This not only ensures softer bowel motions, but also improves digestion of foods.
If you keep the molasses in the fridge and teach patients to think 'liquorice' as they take it, can make the molasses seem more palatable, as some don't like the taste of it straight from the bottle at room temperature.
An easy way to get molasses off the spoon, is to put a small teaspoon of olive oil, (cold pressed, extra virgin, organic olive oil) or flax seed oil, on the spoon then pour the molasses into it.
This way, when the dose is swallowed, it just slides right off the spoon and there are no messy molasses spills.
This combination also delivers the very essential Omega 3 and 6 that our loved ones so desperately need for their brain function.
If this amount makes the bowels too loose, lessen it until a balance is found.
Some recent claims state that giving a pudding spoonful of good organic coconut oil up to four times a day, has even reversed dementia symptoms in their loved ones.
I often mix a pound of butter with the same volume of softened coconut oil to make a beautiful spread on bread, biscuits or to use it in cooking.
This is a wonderful way to introduce coconut oil to our loved ones.
5.
A good tip for bladder health, is to have your loved ones wear firm, snug fitting underwear that does not move when they move.
The elderly sit for long periods at a time, so this eliminates the transfer of body secretions from the bowel to infect the bladder, especially if their toilet hygiene is not adequate.
This is particularly important for women..
Teaching women to have a bottle of water in the toilet area, and using moistened toilet paper for their cleaning from the bladder to bowel, (front to back), reduces the likelihood of infection hugely.
If loved ones are not able to do this for themselves then this is a great kindness a nurse can do for her patients.
6, Another important tip is to make sure you are well supported by people who know what you are going through, as you care for your elderly loved one.
Your own good morale is such a help in minimizing the worries at this time.
My sister gave me a book written by a woman who was losing her father to dementia and reading her page by page account of her feelings, were a wonderful comfort as I went through that emotional journey looking after my Mother.
7.
The last and I feel the most important tip, is the one about dehydration.
We are born into life looking like a ripe plum, all fully hydrated after nine months in amniotic fluid, and we reach the end of life often shriveled and looking more like a prune.
We do this to ourselves, by not drinking enough water, let alone good water.
We drink tea, coffee, milo, but how much water do we actually drink? Experts tell us this calculation; take a half of our body weight in pounds and drink that figure in ounces of water daily.
That is, if a person is 180 pounds, then they need to drink 90 ounces of water daily.
Start the day with at least two large glasses of water, adding a little hot water to warm it up, and this flushes the body through before starting the day.
If you put your daily water volume in a jar on the bench you can keep track of how much water you actually drink.
Tired and grumpy children who get taught about needing a big drink of water regularly, can learn to feel better about themselves when they are not labeled naughty, but rather, dehydrated.
This is the same for your loved ones.
Daily hot soaks in a bath or a foot bath, with a small handful of epsom salts can work wonders to hydrate and relax your loved one.
You will reap the rewards, as you see the wonderful changes.
Purchasing a large, colorful, fine china lightweight cup or mug to drink tea from, rather than those small thick white cups so often used at elder care homes, can give your loved one a far more satisfying drink.
Providing a nice shaped, easy to hold drink bottle, for the water you would like your loved one to drink, is a big help to encouraging hydration..
Now, what if the water you gave your loved one was the very best form of water you could find, energized and free from pollutants and even free from the memory of pollutants, just as nature intended us to have? This water, structured water, is the water we use and is amazing.
It makes a big difference in hydrating not only people, but plants and animals.
Imagine including in your care for your elderly family members, water that will enhance their quality of life in more ways than just quenching their thirst.
You can use it to water the gardens, and give them vibrant fruits and vegetables to eat.
This is truly improving the care for our elderly.
See below if you want to learn how to structure water,and it's many interesting properties, then try it on your loved ones.
You will not be disappointed.
Many thanks for reading this article, and we hope you have enjoyed our top tips to improve the care of our elderly and our dementia patients.