Tag Archives: Elderly

The concept is simple and alluring: There are special regions around the world — called blue zones — where people regularly remain vibrant and active into their 90s and 100s, thanks to a simple set of behaviors that anyone can follow. It’s sensible enough to sound convincing, and ambiguous enough …

By 2021, nearly 2,000 volunteers had answered the call to test an experimental Alzheimer’s drug known as BAN2401. For the drugmaker Eisai, the trial was a shot at a windfall — potentially billions of dollars — for defanging a disease that had confounded researchers for more than a century. To …

In your pocket or purse, you may be toting around small devices that, with the help of new software authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, could soon become inexpensive hearing aids. Millions of people already own them. They’re Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, those white plastic knobs protruding from so …

Vice President Kamala Harris outlined a new proposal for home health care on “The View” on Tuesday, describing a Medicare expansion plan that she said would help what is called the “sandwich generation” to take care of aging parents. That constituency includes many adults who find themselves straddling the responsibility …

In 2016, Tracy Jennings received shocking news: A lifelong friend, a woman who had a farm with animals great and small, had died suddenly in an accident. A circle of grieving friends hastily arranged new homes for the woman’s beloved animals, including three older horses. But just two weeks after …

An older patient with dementia is in the hospital and has trouble swallowing. A speech pathologist recommends thickening the liquids the patient drinks with starch or gum and specifies how viscous her tea, water or juice should be. Should it resemble honey? Or apricot nectar? A doctor writes the order, …

Even before Georgia Outlaw met her new nephrologist, she had made her decision: Although her kidneys were failing, she didn’t want to begin dialysis. Ms. Outlaw, 77, a retired social worker and pastor in Williamston, N.C., knew many relatives and friends with advanced kidney disease. She watched them travel to …

Mary Peart, 67, a retired nurse in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., began taking gabapentin a year and a half ago to reduce the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia. The drug helps her climb stairs, walk her dog and take art lessons, she said. With it, “I have a life,” she said. “If …

The encounter happened years ago, but Beverly K. Brandt remembers it vividly. She was leaving her office at Arizona State University, where she taught design history, to run an errand for her ailing stepfather. He had moved into a retirement community nearby after his wife, Dr. Brandt’s mother, died of …