How to Avoid Crashing and Burning

  Are you thinking of race cars? Think again. Our lives, emotional stabilities, and stress levels are in need of constant stewardship and care, because without maintenance, burn-out looms on the horizon. Caregivers especially fall under a category prone to stress and fatigue. Now, caregiving has numerous rewards (too many to list), but in general, caregivers are vulnerable to burn-out because they don't recognize the initial signs.

While there are not fires, smoke trailing from your engine, or tires popping literally speaking, the Mayo Clinic gives a bulleted list of caregiver stress.

• Feeling tired most of the time
• Feeling overwhelmed and irritable
• Sleeping too much or too little
• Gaining or losing a lot of weight
• Losing interest in activities you used to enjoy

Your family and friends do not want you walking towards a future of depression and anxiety. Once any signs are recognized, it's time for the maintenance aspect: What are you doing to promote stability?

Here are a few creative and non-creative solutions for revival.

1) AutoBODY maintenance

The groundwork for stress relief. Are you taking proper care of your body? Are you drinking enough water every day, devouring fruits and vegetables, and exercising? I don't have time to exercise or join a gym you protest. Get creative. Park far away while getting groceries and walk back. Take the stairs. Get up in the morning and do 30 sit ups. Take deep breaths and do isometric exercises in the care while waiting at stoplights.

2) Roll the Windows Down, Turn the Radio Up

When the breeze blows through your hair and jubilation takes over: what are you doing? Playing an instrument? Taking a walk on a sunny day? Sitting in a nook escaping into your favorite novel? Turn off the TV and Computer, and get creative. It doesn't have to be expensive. Sitting in a coffeeshop with a $1 tea and people-watching can be just as rejuvenating as a $100 massage. (although, massages are GREAT stress relief:)) Also, do a madlib. Laugh. Go see a comedian. Laughter induces stress-relief in the body and the great part? IT'S FREE.

3) A Solid Race-Car Support Team

Race-cars, in addition to needing regular maintenance, have a team on hand, on duty to ascertain it's in tip-top shape. Are you surrounded by a supportive team? Are you encouraged? Who is speaking into your life?

4) Aligning Not just Your Tires, but your Spiritual life

Spirituality, a faith in things unseen, is a keystone of a balanced life. Not only does it echo into your physical well-being, the depth of compassion and strength of spirit it encourages makes all obstacles seem surmountable. Love will overcome all.

These solutions for avoiding care-giver burn-out hinge on the hilarious to the mundane, yet an awareness of the threat of stress will ultimately help AVOID crashing. Care-givers take your mark - the race is on - and crashing and burning is NOT in the future with YOU behind the wheel.

Improve Your Memory Eating Mediterranean Style

Do you want to hear a word that spurs an emotional reaction, ranging from a sinking feeling, dismay, excitement, to disgust? Are you ready? Diet.

That's right.

What's your diet? Are you on a diet? Do you need to lose a few pounds and change your diet? Are you adhering to the latest fad diet?

Adkins. Paleo. Liquid. At any given point you can find an assortment of literature online, in bookstores, or in a recent magazine outlining the newest and best way to lose weight.

Few, however, are upheld by physicians or academic research and study. This week I stumbled upon a diet featured on the Mayo Clinic's homepage called the Mediterranean Diet. Sounds exotic, right? Come to find out, a recent study by the University of Alabama at Birmingham endorsed the diet, in addition to discovering it preserved memory in seniors. Healthy eating can help maintain cognitive function in late life. However, the lead researcher also stated that the diet is not a 'save-all' but rather a combination of diet, exercise, and abstinence from smoking.

All of the academic research bring me to my final, and delicious point: What exactly IS the Mediterranean diet? It's based on the food and lifestyle countries bordering the Mediterranean sea, heavy olive and canola oils containing Omega 3 fatty acids, low red meat, and heavy fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Did I mention wine? Red wine is included.

While the diet may not be for everyone, ACC Family wants to remind the cyber-world of the importance of being pro-active about your personal health. All I'm saying is that if it holds bread and oil, with a glass of red wine on the side, it sounds like a winner to me. And the best part? I'll be able to remember things better with improved cognitive function.

This Was a Fox Trot Possessed by Disco Fever

Carrie Ann Inaba made this entertaining remark in the wildly popular "Dancing with the Stars" reality television show. The show pairs professional dancers with stars of varying degrees of dancing ability to compete in various genres of ballroom. Shows of a dancing nature, from Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Smash have exploded in the recent years, ultimately resulting in increased local participation in dance, especially in the elder age demographic. With the push towards nutrition and low-impact exercise, many don't think about dancing as a 'whole-body' workout - mainly because it's FUN. The fact of the matter is, dancing utilizes the entire body: engaging muscles and increasing strength, improving flexibility, and joyfully uplifting the spirit. It's physical AND mental.

Not only that, but Canada's esteemed Mcgill University compared two groups of seniors; one group of walkers and one group who attended bi-weekly tango lessons. After 10 weeks, both groups scored better on cognitive tests, but it was the tango dancers that performed better on multi-tasking tests, in addition to improving their balance and coordination.

Flubbing dance steps? Turning the Fox-trot into Disco? None of that matters. ACC Family has the synopsis of this article: It's time to cha-cha.

Don't Misunderstand Home-Health Care!

Someone recently made a remark about the 'baby-sitting nature' of home-health care. The person was speaking degradingly about the amount of money spent on a person who did little other than sit silently at a bedside. I was dumfounded.

In a country where the median age is rapidly accelerating, along with a push for alternative scenarios to nursing homes and hospitals, home-care health can offer many advantages. Yet despite the lifeline it represents, in general it remains little-recognized, unappreciated, and hugely misunderstood. Just as my 'friend' considered it over-paid baby-sitting, many people have strange ideas about the helpfulness and overall advantages of home-care and caregivers.

Realizing the multidimensional and multidisciplinary nature of superior home-care is key. Beyond the health training that preserves dignity in the home, the intimate attention benefits the patient AND surrounding family. These services ultimately allow HOME to be the setting, which better assists in the overall pain management, daily diets, and movements. Climbing the stairs (under a watchful eye) may not get a gold medal, but the jubilation at seeing a family antique or picture on the second floor gives the day a golden glow.

Should home health care be a microcosm of what our health care system SHOULD be doing? I believe so. And ACCFamily does just that: we are a look at the future: compassionate assistance from the familiarity of home.

The Invisible Scars of Grief

“Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I'm heavy, like there's too much gravity on my heart.” (Sarah Ockler, Author) On a specific date every year, one that is scarred onto my calendar with an invisible fire, yet a normal day to everyone else, I awaken with a lead weight on my chest. My usual morning routine carries on unchanged; the neighborhood sounds echo regularly; my car starts with its usual resilience. However, the particular day stands out with a marked fact that the world is not how it should be, because a particular loving presence is missing. My grief has abated from the numb, then fiery, then resigned pain of the first several years, but grief leaves everlasting scars on our lives.

In the aftermath of the Boston bombings when suffering and grief is thrown like water in our faces, it's easy to talk about pain and walking together and keeping up strength.

It's when the media attention stops and the nation forgets and the neighbors ask about the dog rather than a loved one that the true feelings set in and the battle begins.

C.S. Lewis writes in the book "A Grief Observed," :

"I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

Working in elder home-care, the subject of grief is embedded into ACCFAmily's conversations and ethos. We understand the sentiments and feelings of loss and realize that providing a listening ear is our first priority. Grief is a process. Grief-care needs appropriate resources. Grief is not sobbing for a week and then living normally. Grief care is a necessary component of our services, as support is an integral part of continuing life.

Our deepest sympathies and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims in Boston as they begin their own personal journeys of working through grief. We realize the weight. We've walked with the heaviness. And we walk forward knowing grief and love are conjoined.