At-Home Senior Care Providers: Experience The Benefits | Pam ...

It is natural for senior citizens to wish to stay in the comfort of their house for as long as possible. The majority of relatives prefer their elderly loved one be at home. Most seniors would rather stay living at home rather than going to a retirement center. They usually are happier and healthier if they remain at home. But at-home senior care is emotionally and physically difficult for the caregivers. Home care services for the elderly offer a broad range of services and can be extremely beneficial to the seniors and also their family members and/or caregivers.

Services Provided

Homecare services can provide your senior family members with respect, dignity and one-on-one care, which enable them to enjoy their independence. The requirements of each elderly person are different and at-home senior care is designed to satisfy the requirements of each person. Licensed providers can deliver senior assistance for a few hours each week to 24 hour care and they deliver a variety of services including:

Companionship-many elderly people are prone to isolation, which may lead to depression. Home care providers can come to the home simply to spend time with elders. Companionship could possibly include an assortment of activities such as playing board games, reading or taking a walk.

Personal care-home health aides are beneficial for helping the elderly with tasks such as bathing, dressing, grooming and meal preparations as well as an assortment of additional daily activities.

Medical care-medical conditions such as diabetic issues may require home health care providers to aid an individual with their medications, tube feeding and/or wound care.

Alzheimer?s / Dementia care-elderly family members who are suffering with Alzheimer?s or dementia usually call for a higher level of daily care. Home health service providers that specialize in Alzheimer?s / Dementia provide structured environments that consist of services such as activities to help maintain familiarity and personal hygiene services

Transportation and errands-transportation is one of the biggest worries of the elderly. It is typically hard for them to get to a doctor?s appointment, the grocery store or to a family party, but a home care service provider can help them with most their transportation and errand needs.

Home-making services-home care service providers can be hired to come to the home of elderly people and help them with laundry, watering plants, and basic housekeeping duties.

Cost Effective

At-home providers are typically the best answer if the senior does not need a long-term nursing facility. It is usually cheaper for at-home senior care than to relocate elderly family members to a full-time care facility and these services allow elders to remain in their homes where they are comfortable.

Licensed and Bonded

When you start the search for home care providers, request referrals from family and friends or speak with your loved ones medical professional regarding service provider suggestions. Caregivers ought to be trusting as well as bonded and licensed. It is also beneficial to have the senior present during the initial process of choosing caregivers in order for them to feel as though they are a part of this important process.

Richard Lamb loves anything to do with senior care and he has frequently penned blog posts about home care in Montreal for radouestdelile.com.

Source: http://pamponders.com/6189/at-home-senior-care-providers-experience-the-benefits/

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Dr. Dustin Ballard: Causes of breast cancer tricky to pinpoint ? Marin ...

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ESTABLISHING CAUSE and effect is one of the trickiest aspects of medicine. So-called ?causality? can be elusive, especially once you move beyond connect-the-dots type circumstances.

In Marin, we worry and wonder a lot about breast cancer. Why does a particular woman get breast cancer? How does another woman avoid it? These are difficult questions.

There are a litany of possible reasons why one might develop breast cancer. Even if we expand the question to what increases the risk of breast cancer across a broad population, satisfactory answers are slippery. It is with this in mind that we should view the recent evidence regarding breast cancer in Marin County.

It is well documented that Marin has historically had an abnormally high rate of new breast cancer cases. In particular, data from the late 1990s demonstrate breast cancer rates some 15 percent higher than those found across the rest of the state. Multiple culprits ? lifestyle, hormones, toxins and genetics ? have been proposed and studied.

A study recently published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons has proposed yet another possible cause ? genetic differences in vitamin D receptors. The study, conducted by Dr. Kathie Dalessandri and colleagues, examined the DNA of 164 Caucasian women living in Marin and diagnosed with breast cancer between 1997 and 1999.

They compared their genetic profiles with

those of 174 breast-cancer-free matched controls and found that women who developed breast cancer were 1.9 times more likely to have a specific difference (called a variant) in the gene that dictates how the body utilizes vitamin D (the vitamin D receptor).

Vitamin D has received attention for its possible benefit in deterring certain types of cancers, and animal models have demonstrated that it has a beneficial effect on breast cancer tumor growth. So, differences in how vitamin D is processed by its receptors is a logical explanation for why certain women (in Marin and elsewhere) would be at higher risk for developing cancer.

But before you march out to determine your vitamin D receptor profile, let?s put these findings in prospective.

First, this was a small ?pilot? study and should be considered preliminary evidence. Medical practice and investigation is ripe with prominent associations that have not borne out in larger studies, such as oat bran and heart disease, and ? who can forget? ? vaccines and autism. In fact, there are more disproven associations in medicine than proven ones.

A much larger study of Marin Women (the ?Marin Women?s Study? www.marinwomensstudy.org) with 14,000 participants is ongoing, and analysis of their DNA samples (there are some 8,500 available) should provide more robust data on vitamin D receptor variants and genetic risk. Furthermore, the genetic data from Dalessandri?s study is from 15 years ago, during a time when breast cancer rates were peaking ? especially in Marin. While multifactorial, we know that this peak was, in part, because of combined postmenopausal hormone (estrogen and progesterone) therapy ? a known risk factor for developing breast cancer ? and a treatment more common then in Marin than elsewhere in California. So, we must be careful to extrapolate the findings regarding breast cancer risk from a prior generation to today?s milieu.

Finally, one must always be particularly fastidious when reviewing the results of studies that focus on a specific proprietary drug or test. While this study was funded by state, county and charitable sources, the results quite prominently affect the fortunes of genetic testing company InterGenetics Inc., which is marketing OncoVue, a ?genetic-based, breast cancer risk test.? So, while interactions between genes and the environment is certainly a promising field, the jury on vitamin D receptors and breast cancer is most definitely still out.

Where, then, does this leave us with breast cancer causality? There are some risk factors that we can confidently delineate. Some genetic risk is clearly proven ? and a family history of breast cancer is a known red flag. In terms of risky environmental exposures, an Institute of Medicine committee report released last year summarizes these nicely as ?hormone therapy that combines estrogen and progestin, exposure to ionizing radiation ? excess weight among post-menopausal women and alcohol consumption.?

Other environmental agents ? chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) ? have been implicated and are biologically plausible, but at this time they are unproven. Mary Mockus, a surgeon at Kaiser-Permanente San Rafael and a member of the collaborative Marin Women?s Study team, thinks the ?toxic soup? present in higher socioeconomic areas like Marin is likely to play some role in the higher breast cancer rates, but that we are unlikely to ever identify one clear-cut perpetrator. And, this then, fits quite well with what we know about causality in medicine.

So for Marin women, the best advice for preventing breast cancer is probably the best advice for preventing many diseases ? sleep well; get regular exercise; know your family?s medical history and discuss individualized screening plans with your doctor; don?t smoke; avoid excesses of alcohol, drugs and ionizing radiation; and eat plenty of green leafy vegetables. And a healthy vitamin D level ? ask your doctor ? won?t hurt either.

Dr. Dustin W. Ballard is an emergency physician at Kaiser Permanente San Rafael and the author of ?The Bullet?s Yaw: Reflections on Violence, Healing and an Unforgettable Stranger.? His Medically Clear column appears every third Monday; follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dballard30.

Article source: http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_21440076/dr-dustin-ballard-causes-breast-cancer-tricky-pinpoint

Source: http://cancerkick.com/2012/09/03/dr-dustin-ballard-causes-of-breast-cancer-tricky-to-pinpoint-marin-independent/

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Carney says White House 'studying our options' on oil prices

Article posted: 8/30/2012 2:05 PM

An unusually large one-day jump in gas prices, mainly caused by tropical storm Isaac disrupting gas and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, has the Obama administration again considering releasing some of the government?s oil reserves. ? ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration is continuing to look at all its options to make sure oil prices don?t crimp the global economy, Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said.

Carney, responding to a question at a briefing, said he had ?no announcements to make? about possible use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to put a brake on energy prices.

Oil for October delivery dropped 93 cents, or 1 percent, to $94.56 a barrel at 1:14 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange on speculation oil producers would restore output from the Gulf of Mexico now that Hurricane Isaac has passed.

Source: http://dailyherald.com/article/20120830/business/708309798/

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