Besides the high-quality wireless camera, TenderTidingsSeniors.com offers a collaborative, on-line calendar so family members can keep up with important appointments and events. They also have access to convenient notepads and reminder tools for communicating with in-home caregivers.

“With the cost of one year in a nursing home being over $50,000 and assisted living costs approximately $3,000 per month,” says Elaine Osteen a founder of TenderTidingsSeniors.com, “we feel that TenderTidingsSeniors.com is an inexpensive way to balance the desire of seniors to stay at home and the concern of children and grandchildren to check in on their elderly loved ones.”

For more information, visit tendertidingsseniors.com

In Episode 5, LivHOME Care Manager Sharon Rosenfield discusses the challenges of providing care to senior family members who live apart from their grown children. Long-distance caregiving has become a necessity for many seniors as families find themselves living at greater distances.

During the interview, Rosenfield emphasizes the importance of noticing the little things, such as whether a senior is taking his or her medicine and paying attention to personal hygiene, as a clue to understanding whether it is time to begin providing long-distance care. She discusses ways to make the experience less lonely for seniors and explores the roles a long-distance caregiver must play in emergencies.

For more information, visit livehome.com

The service uses a plan of your choice to make calls to the individual of concern and check on their safety and well being. They notify you or another designated person if they encounter a problem. The Director of Caring Calls said, “People have been very receptive of our service and have quickly welcomed and become very comfortable with us.”

They are developing another area in the business called, “Memories through Time,” which is a collection of memories and stories of an elderly or aging person in your family. The business gathers the information through interviews and puts them together in a Memories through Time album that can be passed down from generation to generation.

For more information, visit familycaringcalls.com

How and when these changes occur is unique to each person. A healthy aging feature on MayoClinic.com outlines the typical changes individuals can expect as they age. Here are a few changes highlighted in the feature:

Cardiovascular system

As people age, the heart muscle becomes a less efficient pump, working harder to pump the same amount of blood through the body. Also, blood vessels become less elastic.

Bones, muscles and joints

Bones reach their maximum mass between ages 25 and 35. As people age, their bones’ size and density shrink. Some people might become shorter. Gradual loss of density weakens bones and makes people more susceptible to fracture.

Digestive system

Swallowing and the motions that automatically move digested food through the intestines slow down as people get older. The amount of surface area within the intestines diminishes slightly.

Weight

As men and women age, maintaining a healthy weight may be more difficult. Metabolism generally slows, meaning that the body burns fewer calories.

For more information, visit mayoclinic.org

- Provides caregivers and family members with information and guidance while reducing the confusion and stress associated with elder-care responsibilities

- Maintains and enhances health of elderly loved ones through comprehensive health assessments, improved coordination of care, and ongoing review of the appropriateness and affordability of prescribed medications

- Facilitates aging in place

According to AARP, the typical caregiver, a 46-year-old woman who works out of the home while taking care of a loved one, is generally required to reduce the hours she works by 41% in order to attend to eldercare responsibilities. And the cost also shows up in the health of caregivers, who report higher rates of conditions such as high blood pressure and depression.

For more information, visit eldertouchhealth.com

Even with these resources and a carefully considered plan, this was not enough. Her mother experienced three broken hips (including two in one week), staffing issues that added to medical problems, continual shifts in housing to address changing care needs, medication complications, and sudden memory problems. The greatest frustrations and struggles though, have resulted from the bureaucracy of the elder care system, which culminated in a letter sent from the government telling the family members their mother was dead (she wasn’t).

Julie Groshens wondered how families get through the maze of elder care options without a social-worker sibling to guide them. Nearly every day, she heard similar stories from colleagues, friends and family. So Groshens decided to form Elder Care Expos, LLC, a Minnesota-based company that produces elder-care resource events for the public.

On May 9 and 10, Groshens and her two partners will launch the Elder Care Expo 2008 in St. Paul, Minn. The expo will be held in the Education Building at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day.

For more information, visit choosingeldercare.com

Whether at work, at home, or traveling, caregivers now have the ability to check on their senior loved ones through a convenient, affordable, easy to install wireless camera that can be placed in any room of the senior’s home.

Besides the high-quality wireless camera, TenderTidingsSeniors.com offers a collaborative, on-line calendar so family members can keep up with important appointments and events. They also have access to convenient notepads and reminder tools for communicating with in-home caregivers.

TenderTidingsSeniors.com was created by a mother/daughter team: Elaine Osteen, whose mother-in-law with the early stages of dementia lives right around the corner, and Amy Howell, who lives two hours away from her grandmother.

Because so many caregivers share that responsibility with siblings or other family members, the whole family can share one subscription. The main caregiver, or the Guardian, can issue passwords to other trusted friends or family members and each can access the video of their elderly loved whenever it’s convenient for them.

TenderTidingsSeniors.com gives peace of mind to the elderly as well as their caregivers. They know they are not alone. One woman in her 80’s remarked that she loved Tender Tidings because now her children call her more often just to talk about what they saw her doing that day! That’s what it’s all about - keeping families better connected.

For more information, visit tendertidingsseniors.com

The LifeBio Certified Community Program provides easy-to-use tools for people to record their autobiographies in various ways.

Participants can choose to type their memoirs online or handwrite them in a specially-designed fill-in-the-blank guide called the Memory Journal which provides carefully-crafted life questions. Other shorter templates are available as well as specific materials for journaling and conversation starters for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. LifeBio.com’s online autobiographies can be printed in a hardbound Legacy Book or outputted as an Adobe PDF file.

LifeBio provides intensive training for the staff of communities on reminiscence and also curriculum so residents can take a LifeBio 101 class together and prompt each other to remember more.

The program is also a healthy brain exercise for the residents.

For more information, visit lifebio.com

Successful aging entails a moving away from a traditional reactive approach to aging and helping people take more personal control over how one lives to the very end of life. It centers on physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and vocational wellness and engagement.

The Vitalize! Wellness Centre at the Ecumen continuing care retirement community (CCRC) of Parmly LifePointes, in Chisago City, MN, is part of an approach to senior housing development by Ecumen that builds vital connections to the larger community, empowers people and promotes physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and vocational growth.

Many of the Vitalize! members come from the larger community, especially people who do not want to go to fitness centers that are more focused on spandex and techno-thumping music than successful aging. Most Vitalize! members range from their 50s to their 90s, and it’s used by Ecumen employees.

The Vitalize! aquatic center includes a water exercise and lap pool, plus a professional sports grade therapy pool. On the second floor is a customized exercise center with Technogym equipment that a person can personalize to the program they develop with their personal trainer. Vitalize! hosts classes and workshops on a variety of subjects, including cooking, yoga, tai chi, politics and centering prayer. Class subjects change approximately every 8 weeks.

Vitalize! also includes community gathering places, such as the outdoor Serenity Garden and Ruben’s Café, which was named after Ecumen Senior Olympian swimmer Ruben Berg. And, of course, no visit is complete without a trip to the Vitalize! massage spa.

For more information, visit ecumen.org

Author Mardo Williams began writing “One Last Dance: It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love” (ISBN 9780964924147, Calliope Press, 2005) at the age of 92, after discovering first-hand the difficulties of beginning a new life with someone else as an older adult. He asked his daughters Kay Williams and Jerri Williams Lawrence to finish the book if he could not, and they honored his wishes after his death at age 95.

“One Last Dance” is an inspirational and uplifting read that candidly deals with the issues of aging, and advocates Mardo Williams’ dynamic philosophy: “Life is for living, no matter what our age or condition.” Leading lovers Morgan and Dixie are both fiercely independent and set in their ways, but are also in need of both emotional and physical care. When they decide to move in together, humor and tension arise from the various problems associated with two people used to living alone suddenly cohabitating.

“One Last Dance” portrays the joys and discomforts of older life and mature love with refreshing honesty, understanding and laugh-out-loud humor. This inspirational novel reaches out to all generations, encouraging both young and old to continually seek out all the new and exciting experiences life has to offer.

For more information, visit readerviews.com