Aging Untold: How to make part-time home care work
(Aging Untold) — Today on Aging Untold, part-time home care can be a lifeline if you plan it right. We’ll share how to build a smart schedule, set clear tasks and avoid surprise costs.
Plus, the pressures of aging aren’t always physical; they’re mental, too. We’ll look at why life can feel heavier with age and simple ways to ease the load.
Then, artificial intelligence is helping doctors estimate your heart’s age using an ultrasound — what it can reveal and what to ask for at your next checkup.
How to make part-time home care actually work
You might think that bringing part-time help into a loved one’s home sounds straightforward, but you could find that the hours you’ve booked don’t match your actual needs.
With a plan, you can get it right.
That starts with your loved one’s needs rather than how many hours of care you need, Sam Cradduck, a gerontologist, said.
The Aging Untold experts are laying out a path on how to prioritize the right tasks, respond to resistance from your loved one, keep routines consistent and ask the right questions before a caregiver ever walks through the door.
Aging can feel more mentally exhausting than ever — what you can do about it
As you get older, people might assume that life slows down.
In reality, the mental load only grows for many older adults who have more appointments, more health decisions, more family worries and the question of what comes next.
Amy O’Rourke, an aging expert, said the comparison trap that comes with weighing your own abilities against what others are doing is one of the biggest energy drains older adults face.
One solution is letting that go and being intentional about where you’re going to put your energy, she said.
AI helps doctors estimate your heart’s age
Your “heart age” might be older or younger than your true age, and doctors are using artificial intelligence to find out. Knowing your number could help you take action to improve your heart health.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic are using AI to analyze heart data to calculate a heart age based on the organ’s health; then they compare that number to the patient’s chronological age.
“When the computer is telling us that this individual is older than what this individual truly is in terms of years of age, we have seen that those individuals die sooner,” Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a preventive cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, said.
The reverse is also true.
Lopez-Jimenez said people whose heart age exceeds their real age can narrow or even eliminate that gap through lifestyle changes — and the process does not have to take long.
Rain Dancers: How one girl’s legacy is helping families through the hard days
A mom in Virginia is carrying on her daughter’s legacy by uplifting children who face serious medical challenges.
The Sweet Julia Grace Foundation honors the spirit of a 12-year-old girl who taught her family to dance in the rain, even when things were tough.
“She taught us to just dance in the rain in the midst of all the storms,” Julia Grace’s mom, Sara Knight, said.
She said her family wanted to help others like them dance in the rain, too.
The children the foundation helps are known as “Rain Dancers.”
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