American families are often scattered across the country. Kids grow up, find opportunities they like in other places and move away. The parents may stay put, happy to remain where they’ve lived most of their lives. Then aging happens. And with it, risks no one really thought about. At AgingParents.com, where we advise families about […]
This is the third article in a series on senior moments abstracted from my book, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Sharp Into Your Nineties and Beyond. Memory is a phenomenon as mysterious as the universe. Some believe even more so. Everything we do, every thought we ever had, is produced by the human brain, […]
According to the Federal Trade Commission, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers $60 billion a year. Fraudsters get away with it because most of the time, no one is stopping them. Here’s a real case, in which I personally spotted the suspicious billing that immediately looked to me like fraud. A family member we’ll call Tony had […]
This is the hottest summer ever, news reports tell us. We stay inside, we use air conditioning, we hydrate well. But some aging parents who live alone or with only part time help at home are at particular risk. It’s not just that older people can’t regulate their body temperature as well as younger people. […]
She was a heavy smoking, alcoholic, obese woman who reached her first breaking point 40 years ago. After DeEtte Sauer’s friend drank himself to death, she woke up to her own alcohol dependency. She resolved to stop drinking, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and stuck with that. She went on to quit smoking, which she found extremely […]
This is the second article in a series on senior moments abstracted from my book, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Sharp Into Your 90s and Beyond. There are nine types of senior moments that, while distinct, are tied together by information processing errors. The complexity of the relationship is similar to a lesson taught […]
This is the first of an article series on senior moments abstracted from my book, Preventing Senior Moments: How to Stay Sharp Into Your Nineties and Beyond. Everyone has said or done something they immediately regretted, like forgetting the name of a granddaughter, misusing a common word, making a bizarre connection between events, or forgetting […]
A bill banning the sale of cosmetic products that contain 26 toxic chemicals known to affect human health passed the California State Legislature Wednesday. Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign it. The law would ban hazardous substances such as some borate compounds, lily aldehyde, cyclotetrasiloxane, trichloroacetic acid, styrene, and certain colors. “Personal care products […]
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on organizing my historical family photos. About 10 years ago, I had around 200 photos scanned. I named and dated about a third of them. The rest are numbered. I paused the project until I could buy a good scanner so I could scan the rest of […]
Photo: White House The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law a year ago, has many benefits for American consumers. It began making big corporations pay their fair share in taxes while investing more in items that help the middle class such as creating good-paying jobs, combating corporate price gouging, slashing the deficit, lowering prescription drug […]
