Senior Living Blog & Events

The holiday season is supposed to be full of joy, celebration and time spent with loved ones. But with all the hustle and bustle of the season, things are bound to occasionally go awry.

You accidentally staple your finger with the staple gun when hanging Christmas decorations. A heavy box of ornaments falls off a shelf and lands on your head. Or — heaven forbid — you fall from a ladder while hanging holiday lights along your roofline.

All of those are real, holiday-related injuries from 2021 documented by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which collects annual data on emergency room visits.

Many holiday-related injuries happen when someone is putting up or taking down holiday decorations, the database shows. In addition to falling off ladders (a lot!), people tend to cut themselves when they handle or step on broken ornaments (another big one) and get poked in the eye by errant pine needles.

One poor fellow in 2021 accidentally ingested a piece of a broken ornament that had fallen into his soup.

Strains and sprains from carrying heavy objects are common, as are complaints of chest pain and other possible symptoms of a heart attack.

“Certainly, we see accidents and illnesses at all times of year, but there are some holiday-specific types of injuries that happen every year in December,” says Thomas Waters, an emergency medicine physician at the Cleveland Clinic.

About a third (30 percent) of Americans who celebrate winter holidays say they have been injured while participating in holiday-related activities, according to a 2022 ValuePenguin survey.

Another problem during the holidays is that people tend to put off getting medical attention, because they don’t want to disrupt the festivities or miss out on visiting with family, says Michael D. Levine, associate professor of emergency medicine at UCLA. Unfortunately, delays often lead to worse outcomes, Levine says.

To learn about eight common holiday-related injuries and accidents, along with real-life examples from the CPSC database and smart advice on how to stay safe, from AARP, CLICK HERE.

’Tis the season to shop for holiday gifts and donate to worthy causes for a potential tax deduction — and to help those in need — before year’s end.

But when doling out dollars to charity, be careful. Crooks will take advantage of your generosity and steal your cash.

“People are in a generous spirit,” says Amy Nofziger, who oversees the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline (877-908-3360). “Most of us are out hustling and bustling and planning parties and buying gifts, and the criminals make you feel guilty for your ability to celebrate [when many others can’t]. They’ll prey on that feeling” to get you to donate to their sham charities.

Nofziger and others familiar with holiday charity scams have tips to help ensure that your gift will benefit a good cause — not a con artist. To learn about the tips, from AARP, CLICK HERE.

Back pain can come on slowly or suddenly, but pinpointing the exact cause can be challenging. Here are some surprising culprits that may play a role in your lumbar pain.

If an aching back is starting to feel more like a regular thing — and less like something you randomly pulled at the gym — well, you’re not alone. About 6 million older adults in the U.S. live with chronic lower back pain. In a 2019 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics, almost 46 percent of adults 65 and older said they experienced back pain in the past three months. 

“As we get older, we start to lose fluid in our discs,” explains Gbolahan Okubadejo, M.D., an orthopedic spine surgeon with the Institute for Comprehensive Spine Care. As we lose fluid, the discs tend to collapse, “we get stiffer, and the risk of injury becomes greater,” he says. From there, plenty of lifestyle habits raise your risk. Some of these — hoisting your grandkid or overdoing the gardening — are obvious, but some aren’t.

To learn about 10 surprising culprits that may play a role in the pain in your back, from AARP, CLICK HERE.

Your skin changes with age. It becomes thinner, loses fat, and no longer looks as plump and smooth as it once did. Your veins and bones can be seen more easily. Scratches, cuts, or bumps can take longer to heal. Years of suntanning or being out in the sunlight for a long time may lead to wrinkles, dryness, age spots, and even cancer. But there are things you can do to protect your skin and to make it feel and look better.

Dry skin and itching

Many older people suffer from dry spots on their skin, often on their lower legs, elbows, and lower arms. Dry skin patches feel rough and scaly. There are many possible reasons for dry skin, such as:

• Not drinking enough liquids

• Spending too much time in the sun or suntanning

• Being in very dry air

• Smoking

• Feeling stress

• Losing sweat and oil glands, which is common with age

Dry skin also can be caused by health problems, such as diabetes or kidney disease. Using too much soap, antiperspirant, or perfume and taking hot baths can make dry skin worse.

Some medicines can make skin itchy. Because older people have thinner skin, scratching can cause bleeding that may lead to infection. Talk to your doctor if your skin is very dry and itchy.

To learn how to treat dry, itchy skin, and to learn about other skin conditions including bruises, wrinkles, age spots and skin tags, CLICK HERE.

Fever. Fatigue. Muscle aches. A cough. In the age of COVID-19, it can be hard to know what exactly these symptoms point to.

One major clue that they point directly to the flu: They came on abruptly (while those associated with COVID-19 tend to start out mild and gradually worsen). 

But that’s not to say the flu always announces itself in the regular way — particularly among people over 65. In a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, older patients were less likely than younger ones to report fever, cough and sore throat — arguably the most common flu symptoms — and as a result, weren’t diagnosed as quickly, if at all. That can be problematic if you’re 65 and older, since age alone ups your chances of getting hit much harder by a bout with the flu.

Blame your immune system, which weakens with age, “so all infections are more severe, as are complications from infections,” says infectious disease specialist Purvi Parikh, M.D., a clinical assistant professor in the department of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “Those over 65 may also have other chronic medical problems like heart disease and diabetes that make it even harder to fight off infections.”

To learn more from AARP about flu symptoms that may require a visit to your doctor, especially if you have a medical condition such as heart disease or diabetes, CLICK HERE.

Diabetes is a serious disease, and it affects many older adults. People get diabetes when their blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. The good news is that you can take steps to delay or prevent type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disease to develop in older adults. If you already have diabetes, there are steps you can take to manage the condition and prevent diabetes-related health problems.

What is diabetes?

Our bodies turn a lot of the food we eat into sugar, called glucose, which gives us energy. To use glucose as energy, our body needs insulin, a hormone that helps glucose get into our cells. If you have diabetes, your body may not make enough insulin, may not use insulin in the right way, or both. That can cause too much glucose to stay in the blood, which can cause health problems over time. Your family doctor may refer you to a doctor who specializes in taking care of people with diabetes, called an endocrinologist. Often, your family doctor will work directly with you to manage your diabetes.

To learn more about the different types of diabetes, the symptoms and how to manage diabetes, from the National Institute on Aging, CLICK HERE.