In your role as a family caregiver for your aging parent, awareness is one of the most important tools that you will have. This awareness allows you to evaluate your parent, their condition, their daily routine, and the care that you give them to ensure that you are doing everything you can to help them live the highest quality of life possible while addressing at their needs in the way that is right for them. One issue that you should be aware of is the risk for inadequate nutrition.
Many elderly adults are at risk of not getting the nutrition that they need to maintain proper functioning and support their physical health and well-being, which can put them at risk of a variety of consequences including vulnerability to injury, illness, and infection, tiredness and fatigue, and even mental-emotional health consequences. Understanding what may contribute to your parent’s risk for inadequate nutrition can help you to address these risks and better help your parent to get the nutrition that they need on a regular basis.
Some reasons that your senior may be dealing with inadequate nutrition include:
- Lack of transportation that makes it difficult for your parent to get to the grocery store and stock their kitchen with healthy foods.
- Mobility issues that make it challenging for your parent to get to the kitchen when they need to eat or to stand and prepare healthy meals.
- Dental pain or dental health issues that make it difficult for your senior to chew and swallow healthy foods.
- Health problems that can diminish appetite or change the way that foods taste and smell, making them less appealing.
- Taking certain medications that can diminish appetite or change the way that foods taste and smell.
- Depression that makes your parent less motivated to eat a healthy diet, or sometimes eat at all.
- Isolation and loneliness that make your parent less motivated to prepare whole meals.
- The cognitive functioning decline that can reduce your parent’s ability to understand the need to eat, the need to eat healthy foods, the frequency with which they should be eating, or even the act of eating.
- The need for restricted diet due to health problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, heart failure, or high blood pressure that reduce the variety of foods that your parent can eat, and potentially eliminate foods that they prefer.
How Can Elder Care Help?
Starting elderly care for your aging parent can be an exceptional way for you to help your parent live their highest quality of life possible as they age in place. An elderly home care services provider can be with your parent when it is best for them to offer a highly personalized set of services designed to address their needs, challenges, and limitations in the ways that are right for them.
Through these services, the care provider can help your parent stay happy, healthy, comfortable, and safe, while also pursuing a lifestyle that is as active, engaged, and independent as possible throughout their later years. These services will be designed with your parent as an individual in mind, shaping the services around their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and personal goals for the most fulfilling quality of life.
For more information about hiring Elder Care in Pacific Beach, CA, call the friendly caregivers at La Jolla Nurses Homecare who can help your aging parents remain in their own homes, at 858-454-9339. We are a home care agency providing quality and affordable senior care in La Jolla, CA, and the surrounding communities.
Today we are the oldest and most experienced private duty agency in San Diego County.She saw a need for quality private duty home health care and she worked diligently to build an agency that filled that need.I am proud to say, her vision is carried on today with our dedicated staff.
I believe our tenure in the community speaks well for us.We have had the opportunity to be of service to countless interesting individuals, including local and worldwide celebrities.It is the people we care for that makes this a fascinating industry.Whether high profile or a more ordinary citizen, we are proud that thousands have entrusted us with their care or the care of their loved ones.Our Mission is to provide high quality, very secure and the most compassionate home health care.We believe that patients heal faster and are happiest when they can stay in their homes.”
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