Happy Halloween!!

Private Home Health Care would like to wish everyone a very happy Halloween!   

Every year the end of October marks this favorite holiday of children and adults alike.

This holiday filled with pagan, Christian and secular traditions is a favorite of children for whatever tradition allows them to collect candy for free.

Grown ups flock to Salem Massachusetts the entire month of October with huge crowds on Halloween day.

Streets are closed and ghosts, goblins, and many more walk around the city and enjoy the spooky atmosphere.  

Witches are everywhere, real and in costume.  Be sure to order up a spell if you run into one!

Additionally, trick or treating can be a learning moment.

You have to sort and count your haul so there’s some math.  Negotiating skills come in as you bargain and trade candy with siblings.

Learning and yummy food!  How can you lose!

Happy Halloween to everyone!  Whether it’s trick or treating or a halloween party be safe and enjoy the night!

Photo by Charles Parker

Oatmeal

Have you had a bowl of oatmeal lately?  Check out how good oatmeal is for you and add it to your grocery list.

Rolled or Steel Cut oats, quick 3-minute versions or a bit longer for regular.  It’s easy to find at the grocery store and they are versatile.  

Oatmeal is great as breakfast.  Add some milk and fruit and you add additional goodness.  Prepare hot in the morning or a day ahead as overnight oats.

You can use them in a protein bar or bake them in muffins.  They are even good in a dessert.

Talk about versatility.  Tiny grains with so many uses and such goodness.

When you eat oatmeal you get fiber.  Fiber helps your digestion and can make you feel fuller for longer.  Fiber also helps manage your blood sugar levels.

Oatmeal can make your heart happy too.  It can lower your bad cholesterol and lower your blood pressure.

There’s more!  

Because oatmeal is a probiotic it feeds your good bacteria and helps to ward off the bad bacteria in your stomach.

Oatmeal has great fiber but it also has protein, magnesium and potassium in good amounts.  They are great for diabetics because they don’t have any sugar.

Private Home Health Care loves a warm bowl of steel cut oats with strawberries in the morning.  We also don’t mind them in a healthy muffin either.  Enjoy a bowl today!

What Kind of Chocolate Do You Like?

Chocolate is a delicious indulgence that everyone should enjoy from time to time.  When you indulge, which one do you prefer?

To choose, it might be helpful to have some details about the different kinds of chocolate to help you decide.

Dark chocolate

If you like this chocolate you must enjoy a bit of a bitter taste.  Dark chocolate does not have much sugar, a plus for overall health.

Dark chocolate has between 50% and 90% of cocoa solids. It also includes cocoa butter and a sweetener.  

The amount of sweetener determines if it is dark semi-sweet with the sugar at no more than 50%.  For a dark bitter-sweet, the sugar is between 10% and 50%.  This makes it more acidic.

Milk Chocolate

Add less cocoa solid, 50%, more sugar and milk and voila you have milk chocolate.  You most likely love the sweetness and add in creaminess and this is a popular chocolate to use it a lot in cooking.

White Chocolate

To be a white chocolate, it must have 20% cocoa butter, milk and a sweetener.  You may have noticed that it’s missing cocoa solid like the other two chocolates.  Is this really a chocolate then?  It’s very sweet so do you really care??

Private Home Health Care takes time to indulge in chocolate and when we do our mood decides on which one we choose!

Photo by alleksana

National Senior UTI Awareness Day

Many women experience a UTI in their lifetime.  Some men do as well but it’s a larger percentage of women overall.

Once you hit the age of 65% it is reported that 10% of women get a UTI.  After the age of 85 it increases to 30%.

Estrogen found in women is a great fighter of bacteria.  Like other things your estrogen decreases with age allowing more infections to take hold.

Common symptoms are going to the bathroom more frequently, pain when you go, pain or tenderness in your pelvis, lower back or abdomen.  

You might even get a fever, have some nausea and feel super tired.  Some people get confused as well.

When you are older these symptoms don’t always appear clearly.  Cognitively you may have changed so you don’t notice them.  

You may also have incontinence or be confused in many ways normally.  This makes diagnosis tricky.

If you suspect a possible UTI  the next step would be a urinary sample to confirm or rule it out.

The good news is that if you do get a UTI there are good medications that your doctor can prescribe.  

You might also be able to get well from cranberry juice and hydration. 

Private Home Health Care feels that it’s important to raise awareness about UTIs because they are so common.  

If left untreated it can become very serious so it’s important to check with a health care professional with any suspicions.

Children’s Health Month

One of the focuses in the month of October is Children’s Health.  Growing Happy, Growing Healthy is the theme.

Your children face some unique health issues around environmental factors and the goal of this month is to raise awareness to help give children a healthy start in life.

There is a government task force set up to lead the initiative. You can go online and read about the details and get involved if you’d like.

A couple areas of focus that you and I can help with are listed below:

Pesticides

• Children often play on the floor and touch their faces and mouths.
• The use of harsh pesticides at child care centers, schools or at home can affect children whose systems are more vulnerable as they are developing. 
• You have to be careful about what you choose to use and how you store pesticides.
• Have the poison control center hotline available:  1-800-222-1222.

Plastics

• There are some plastics with chemicals that can be unhealthy and even toxic to children.
• The chemical names are phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene.
• Watch for these products in baby bottles, sippy cups, water bottles and toys.

Private Home Health Care believes it’s important for children to get the right start in life.  Check out this website for additional information:  https://www.epa.gov/children/childrens-health-month

Happy wishes for Diwali

Private Home Health Care wishes all of our Hindu, Jain and Sikhs friends a happy and prosperous Diwali filled with love, laughter and light.

Today begins the five days of the festival of lights.  This holiday honors the triumph of good over evil and represents new beginnings and the start of a new year.

You will see celebrations with lights including sparklers and even fireworks.  It is a happy time for families to get together.

To prepare for the holiday there are a few things that you might do to prepare.

Decorate Your Home

• Clean, organize clutter and get your laundry done. It’s a fresh start.
• Place cut out footprints around your house.  This is for Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.
• Shop for some new clothes and household items.  Nothing major but another chance to celebrate the start of a new year.
• Decorate your home and doorways with traditional artwork called Rangoli.
• Light candles and small oil lamps called diyas around your door and in your house.

Prepare Food and Treats

• Prepare snacks and appetizers
• Make traditional Indian dishes to share
• Have bread like Naan available

Celebrate with Family and Friends

• Invite family and friends to your house
• Light sparklers together
• Exchange gifts

We hope that there are many happy celebrations over the next five days.  It’s always interesting to learn about different traditions and discover things we have in common. 

Photo by Yan Krukov

National Chocolate Cupcake Day

Calling all sweet tooths!  Tomorrow is a delicious national day set aside for the chocolate cupcake.  Yum!

Private Home Health Care usually talks about healthy foods and what works best to keep strong and healthy bodies but not today.

We also believe that every once in a while you need a special treat.  No guilty feelings allowed.

Looking into a bit of cupcake history, see which version of cupcakes you would prefer.

In 1796, there was a cookbook called American Cookery.  In that book it mentioned “a light cake to bake in small cups.”  

Frosting was not a part of these small cakes in cups.

The ingredients in American Cookery’s version included sugar, butter, flour, a glass of wine, rose water, nutmeg, cinnamon and currents.

An interesting combination of ingredients but we think how the cupcake evolved with frosting, is much better.

Tomorrow (or today if you just can’t wait) try to find a shop that sells cupcakes and order a chocolate one with vanilla or chocolate frosting!  

It’s a great way to celebrate the day (and you won’t have a dozen of them leftover if you bake them yourselves.)

Bon Appetit!

Decisions

There are hundreds of decisions that each of us make every day.  Can you believe it?

In the morning, you have to decide what to have for breakfast.  Next you think about lunch.  Don’t forget about deciding on what to have for dinner too.

Getting dressed is another area fraught with decision-making.  What to wear to work, school or to visit a friend. 

What clothes go together?  What tie should you wear?  What about shoes!

And that’s just the beginning of your day!

You might consider those little decisions, not even worth mentioning but they are decisions.  

If you are working, that’s a whole other story.

Depending on your job you could have anywhere between 50 to 100 decisions to make in a given day.  The bigger the job responsibility the bigger the decision. 

Have you ever actually thought about the number of decisions you make on any given day?

Now we come to the later part of the day.

Who decides on the cook and the cleaner upper?  Maybe you have preassigned chores.  That would lessen the number of decisions needed.

Do you play games or watch tv?  How do you decide on the game or tv show?

What about if you live in an assisted living facility?  You might not have to decide on your meals but activities can cause decision-making skills to come into play.

Private Home Health Care knows that for each of us decisions are a natural part of life.  Some decisions we have to ponder and others we just make each and every day without thinking too much about them.

A Historic Day

Today is a day that we usually celebrate as either Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day.

Something even more historic has happened that the whole world is celebrating. 

A peace deal has been signed in Egypt which has ended the two year war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

Twenty Israeli hostages were returned to their families and four deceased members are on their way home.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt leaders around the world attended a Peace Summit and President Trump, flanked by dozens of world leaders, signed a peace agreement for the Middle East.

No matter your feelings for our current President this is an amazing day and accomplishment.

The first part of the 20-point deal is done with the release of hostages and Israel moving its forces back from Gaza and ceasing fighting.

The hope is that more Arab and muslim–majority nations will join in the Abraham Accords which was achieved in 2020.

There is still much work to be done to bring Gaza back to rebuild Gaza and make it better for the peaceful Palestinian people.

Private Home Health Care applauds all of the work by the Trump Administration along with Arab partners to broker this middle east peace.  May we all pray for continued success in this region.

Photo by Eberhard Grossgasteiger

Updates to Treatments for Arthritis 

Suffering from arthritis can be inconvenient or hard to manage on a day-to-day basis.  With over 100 different types of arthritis that’s not surprising.

No matter what kind you have, the effects of inflammation leading to pain, swelling and stiffness in your joints, is not easy.

Research on arthritis is constant and there have been some positive strides to improve lives. 

Currently there are four areas of treatment:

• Pharmacological Treatments – medications to help with inflammation
• Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation – exercises to help with mobility
• Surgical – replacing or using arthroscopy on damaged joints
• Lifestyle Modifications – focusing on foods that decrease inflammation

Additionally, there are many clinical trials happening that are key to efficacy and making sure treatments are safe.

One of the new treatments gaining traction is the use of biologics. 

What this means is that your treatment would come from living cells to modify your body’s inflammation directly.  

This is a new treatment and is currently expensive but it is showing great promise, especially for those with rheumatoid arthritis.

Synthetic therapies are also taking center stage in treatments. These treatments work to identify and treat the pathways to arthritis so catching it at earlier stages.

One of these is called Janus kinase inhibitors (JAK inhibitors). 

They block enzymes that lead to inflammation as well as relieving symptoms and slowing deterioration of joints.

With any new treatments there are pros and cons to them.  You need to meet with your rheumatologist to go over what potential new treatments would be best for you.

Private Home Health Care knows from firsthand experiences how arthritis can affect a person’s daily life.  We are hopeful that as clinical trials continue new treatments will be uncovered.