By Jo Ellen Bleavins of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
With temperatures in Illinois already climbing into the 90s well before the official start of Summer next week, I wanted to remind folks that high temperatures, especially when combined with very high humidity levels, should be of concern, particularly to older adults.
According to information posted on the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s website, older adults are more at risk for three key reasons :
Older adults do not adjust as well to sudden changes in temperature.
Older adults are more likely to have a chronic medical condition that changes normal body responses to heat.
Older adults are more likely to be taking prescription medications that impairs the body’s ability to regulate temperature or inhibits perspiration.
The CDC encourages us to visit at risk older adults at least twice a day and watch for signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke.
Other tips include the following:
Drink plenty of water, regardless of activity, even if you are not thirsty. (Check with their doctor if their doctor has limited the amount of fluid they drink or they are taking water pills.)
Avoid heavy meals and alcohol.
Keep the sunscreen handy and use it! As you age, your skin becomes more sensitive to the sun. Choose a sunscreen that offers a sun protection factor (SPF) of 30 or higher. It should also be a broadband UV spectrum – protecting against both UVA and UVB light. Be sure to apply generously.
Shield your skin and eyes from the harmful rays by wearing protective clothing such as light weight/ light color fabric, hats and sunglasses.
Take cool baths or showers. Ice bags and wet towels also can be helpful.
Visit air-conditioned locations such as restaurants and malls.
Air conditioning can do more than help you stay cool; it can be a lifesaver. The Keep Cool Illinois website has a list of cooling centers that are available throughout the state, click here to open the site. During heat emergencies, older adults can contact their local Area Agency on Aging or the Senior HelpLine at 800-252-8966 for assistance in locating buildings that serve as cooling centers.
To cool off during heat emergencies, we also invite you to visit a BMA Senior Living Community near you. We have 35 communities located throughout Illinois. Below is a map of where our communities are located.
One of the included amenities that takes on so much added importance at our communities when heat warnings and advisories are in effect is air conditioning. The cost of utilities such as air conditioning is included in the monthly fee for the senior living and assisted living apartments that we manage.
In addition, in our assisted living and affordable assisted living communities, certified staff members are on-duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Conducting a daily welfare check on each resident is just one of their responsibilities.
An emergency response system comes standard with each assisted living and affordable assisted apartment, and three restaurant-style meals each day are among the included services. Snacks and beverages are available whenever the dining room is not open.
Please remember that temperatures can reach dangerous levels here in Illinois.
From looking at information available from the National Weather Service, the Summer of 1936 certainly claims the top spot in terms of heat.
This was the Summer of “The Dust Bowl,” which especially hit the Plains, Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions.
In Illinois, many locations saw peak temperatures in excess of 110 degrees at the height of the heat wave.
In our State Capital of Springfield, highs reached 100 on at least 29 different days in the summer of 1936.
July was the worst. Here are a few examples…
In Charleston, home of our Heritage Woods of Charleston affordable assisted living community, the temperature hit 110 degrees on July 14 and 15 and topped 100 degrees on 15 days.
In Danville, home of our Bowman Estates affordable assisted living community, the temperature reached 112 degrees on July 14 and topped 100 degree on 15 days.
In Decatur, home of our Eagle Ridge affordable assisted living community, the temperature hit 110 degrees on July 14 and climbed above 100 on 17 days.
In the Quad Cities, home of our Heritage Woods of Moline affordable assisted living community, the temperature reached 111 degrees on July 14 and reached 100 degrees on 11 consecutive days.
Urbana, home of our Prairie Winds affordable assisted living community, faired a little better. The top temperature was only 108 on July 14, and they only recorded 13 days where the temperature topped 100 degrees.
Nationally, 5,000 people died from the heat.
For more information on heat and older adults and tips on what you can do to protect yourself and others, here are a couple of resource websites that you might want to visit:
Jo Ellen Bleavins is the Senior Vice President of Management at BMA Management, Ltd and a Registered Nurse.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment and let us know.
“BMA Management is the leading provider of affordable assisted living in Illinois and one of the 20 largest providers of assisted living in the United States.”
By Rick Banas of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
I sat in awe last month, listening to William Strickland Jr. kick off the 2012 annual Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA.org) conference with an inspiring message of hope.
Bill grew up in an inner city neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A high school art teacher and a revolving mound of clay on potter’s wheel changed his life. He went on to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in American history and foreign relations. For the past 40+ years, his work as head of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation has helped make the impossible possible in his hometown.
Manchester Bidwell operates two subsidiaries. The Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild (MCG) serves as a national model for providing hope and educating young people. The MCG Youth & Arts program and the MCG Jazz program serve nearly 4,000 young people each year through classes and workshops in ceramics, photography, digital imaging and design art. The Bidwell Training Center offers Associate Degrees and diplomas in the fields of culinary arts, chemical laboratory technologies, health care, horticulture and office technology.
Despite not having a degree in education, Bill is nationally recognized as a visionary in the field. What he has, is much more valuable, he says – a degree in common sense.
In recognition of his contributions to the arts and the community, Bill has been honored with the coveted MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.
Here are a few of his insights that caught my attention:
The way you treat people and the environment drives behavior. Beautiful environments create beautiful behavior. Treating people with dignity also is essential.
A visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, helped inspire Bill. One of the results is that the MCG building is flooded with sunlight.
The MCG building is located in an inner city neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Artwork appraised at $200,000 is on display. The building has no security cameras and no metal detectors. There is no theft or graffiti.
Bill worked as a pilot for Braniff Airlines in the early 1980s, flying 747s. Great job, wrong airline.
We have fresh flowers in the school every day. You don’t need a task force to figure out how to provide fresh flowers. He launched a horticultural program.
We do not serve students “fast food.” Instead, students dine on gourmet foods courtesy of the culinary arts program.
Our country is graduating kids from high school that can’t read the diplomas they receive.
People on welfare are liabilities; we are working to convert them into assets.
Building partnership with businesses is essential. The focus has to be on what you can do for business, not on what you need.
One of the ways we know that our program is starting to take effect is when we see that the students are pulling their pants up. We know they are hooked when they put on a belt.
With Bill’s success in making the impossible possible in Pittsburgh, he is now working to change our planet by developing similar centers in other locations inside and outside the United States.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment and let us know.
“BMA Management is the leading provider of affordable assisted living in Illinois and one of the 20 largest providers of assisted living in the United States.”
By Rick Banas of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
As part of its ongoing effort to fight ageism, the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) sponsored its second annual Short Film Competition on Ageism.
Seventy-six films from 15 countries were submitted for consideration.
I was in the audience at Community 2012, ALFA’s annual conference, for a screening of the film that was awarded First Place honors.
The film emphasizes that aging is something to embrace. Life is a ball; we should get the most out of it no matter our age.
I invite you to take 3 minutes and 51 seconds to see Zach’s creation for yourself.
If you would another reason to feel good about life, I also invite you to take a look at an inspiring video that was shown at ALFA’s Community 2012 conference. The video features residents of Clark Retirement Community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, lip dub (lip singing) to Michael Buble’s “Feeling Good.”
To produce the video, which has been recognized by the Most Watched Today website as the first ever senior citizen lip dub, the retirement community teamed up with students, alumni and faculty of Grand Valley State University.
Let us know what you think.
“BMA Management is the leading provider of affordable assisted living in Illinois and one of the 20 largest providers of assisted living in the United States.”
By Jo Ellen Bleavins of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
On Tuesday, Rick Banas of BMA Management posted a Blog about a keynote address that those of us attending the recent Life Services Network 2012 Annual Meeting & Exho heard on the topic of “Can We Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?”
The speaker was aging and Alzheimer’s expert Dr. Gary Small of UCLA. There are things that you can do to help you potentially delay Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Small said. Eating a healthy diet and maintaining an appropriate weight were among his suggestions.
Your brain, Dr. Small noted, is 70% fat so it makes sense to eat the types of fat that are good for you.
A few weeks before listening to Dr. Small, a colleague alerted me through an e-mail to a video about Coconut Oil and Alzheimer’s disease that was posted by The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).
In the video, Dr. Mary Newport of Tampa, Florida, talks about the positive impact that coconut oil appears to have had on her husband, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, since she started adding it to his diet.
You can view the video below
The coconut has been a staple in the diets of tropical cultures for thousands of years, and coconut oil is made from the meat of the coconut.
Research shows that eating coconut oil will raise your cholesterol level. The beauty is that it does not raise your LDL, or lousy, cholesterol level. Instead, coconut oil is the kind of dietary fat that raises your HDL, or healthy, cholesterol level.
In addition to potentially benefitting those with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers claim that coconut oil also has many other health benefits, as Dr. Beverly Teter of the University of Maryland notes in the video.
With this information, we are going to begin testing adding coconut oil to the diets of residents at the Bridle Brook assisted living, adult daycare and memory care community that we manage in Mahomet, Illinois. We’ll let you know what we learn.
By Rick Banas of assisted living provider BMA Management, Ltd.
Super centenarian Jeanne Louise Calment was in her early thirties when German Psychologist Alois Alzheimer first presented information to the scientific world on the clinical symptoms of what has widely become known as Alzheimer’s disease.
Madame Calment was born the year before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and she lived to be 122 years of age.
What is so remarkable, said Dr. Gary Small in his keynote address at the Life Services Network (LSN) 2012 Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Chicago, is that Calment had the brain of an 80 year-old when she died in 1997. She was alert and showed no signs of dementia.
Dr. Small is a neuroscientist at the UCLA Longevity Center and an expert on Alzheimer’s disease, memory and aging. He is the author of the book “The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life.” He was speaking to those of us attending the LSN Conference on the topic “Can We Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease?”
Reading stories about Calment, I learned that she rode a bicycle until she was 100. She ate two pounds of chocolate a week until a doctor convinced her to give up sweets – when she was 119. She quit smoking at 117, apparently due to vanity rather than the advice of her doctor.
Researchers attribute her longevity and vitality to her immunity to stress. She professed the belief that you should not worry about things you can’t do anything about. Calment, herself, also cites a diet rich in olive oil and an occasional glass of Port wine.
While scientists have not found a way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, “we don’t have to sit back and be passive,” Dr. Small contends. There are things that you can do to potentially delay the onset of symptoms.
Physical exercise was on the top of Dr. Small’s list for protecting your brain. Why? Because anything that gets more blood pumping oxygen into your brain is what is showing the most compelling scientific benefits. Exercise helps brains become larger and more efficient.
Mental stimulation is another way to build brain function, Dr. Small says. Studies, for instance, show that people who speak two languages have a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease than those who only speak one. Studies also show that doing tasks that are unfamiliar such as an Internet search stimulates the brain more than tasks that are highly familiar such as reading a book. Once you get efficient at a task, there is less brain activity.
Other tips cited by Dr. Small include…
Managing Stress – spend time with friends; talk about your feelings; and take regular breaks to relax. Meditation, yoga and tai chi also were suggested.
Nutrition – Eat a healthy diet and manage your weight. Your brain is 70% fat so it makes sense to eat good types of fat. Fish and nuts that are high in omega-3 fatty acids and fish oil were cited.
Brain Protective Drinks – Red wine has antioxidants and anti-aging benefits. Alcohol in moderation. Caffeine, which also can help reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease.
Treat Hypertension and High Cholesterol.
Speaking of the health benefits of wine, I love what 90-year-old Betty White, host of NBC’s Off Their Rockers, has to say in the video below -
Life Services Network (LSN) is a statewide association that has represented the leading providers of older adult services in Illinois, including senior living, assisted living and supportive living communities, for more than 75 years.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment and let us know.
“BMA Management is the leading provider of affordable assisted living in Illinois and one of the 20 largest providers of assisted living in the United States.”
Older adults do not adjust as well to sudden changes in temperature.
I sat in awe last month, listening to 
A visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, helped inspire Bill. One of the results is that the MCG building is flooded with sunlight.
![Madame Jeanne-Louise Calment [1875 - 1997]](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-fVf3y-glrHA/T7F4gBq6oTI/AAAAAAAAgzA/4eNtDQCm6Bs/s346/Madame%2520Jeanne-Louise%2520Calment.jpg)
