Caregiver is stressful, especially for older spouses. Listen to find out how to lower the incidence of disease with spousal caregivers.
Check out the websites for more research. Contact Kathy at info@kathysconsulting.com
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3839348/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC166443/
https://academic.oup.com/gerontologist/article/56/Suppl_3/69/2576281
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16258
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/the-academy/_docs/Roth_Academy_Feb2020.pdf
Intro: Welcome to knowledge for caregivers. My name is Kathy, the host of this podcast. Since I have been a geriatric nurse for almost 10 years helping seniors age in place, I'm going to give you the knowledge that I use to help my own family, so you can help your family. Welcome to this podcast, the stress of caregiving.
Many times when we have an elderly loved one who begins to have health or dementia problems, we focus our attention on the disabled person, we can easily forget about the needs of the spouse. I remember showing up at Mr. Jones house, he had been taking care of his wife, who had a muscle wasting disease. You could see the stress on his face, as he told me, you're my third agency. When the caregivers come out, I just want to be able to go into my office, put my feet up and drink some coffee. But it seems I have to spend all my relaxing time training the new caregivers, I assured him that our company would make sure the caregivers knew what to do, so that he could relax. I knew as a geriatric nurse that the stress of caregiving can cause many physical and mental problems for the spouse. Unfortunately, that didn't help. Because a couple years later, I get a call from the caregivers at this gentleman. He was driving home from this grocery store, and he had forgotten how to get to his house. They also told me sometimes he had forgotten to throw away the spoiled food and had gotten food poisoning. We had to call the doctor who had to now step up and help out because now he had dementia, and they both needed care. Studies have shown that elderly spouse caregivers experience more stress than spouses who are not caregivers. There's a big reason for this. And it's a protein called interleukin six. This protein regulates our immune system, when something comes into our body to attack us. This interleukin six or i l six is released from ourselves, and it tells our immune system to go after that organism. As we get older, we have more of this aisle six in our body. Guess what happens when our i l six goes up, but it's not related to a virus or a bacteria. It causes chronic inflammation in our bodies, that chronic inflammation can lead to things like dementia, bone loss, or even cancers. Scientists got together to study spouses who are elderly caregivers. They took two sets of spouses. There were the spouses who were caregivers, they drew their blood.
Then they took blood from the older people who were not caregivers, these people were probably able to spend their time traveling, maybe volunteering in the community, or maybe they were just going around playing bridge. It's easy to guess what the results probably were. The spouses that were caregivers had four times more interleukin six in their bloodstream than elderly people who were not caregivers. On top of this stressor reaction. Studies have also shown that caregiving spouses are less likely to visit the doctor have increased mental health problems and don't get enough sleep. Imagine what your health would be like if you were 80 years old, and didn't have time to take care of yourself. In the United States. We have close to 15 million spousal caregivers, many of them are having trouble dealing with this stress. Everything is not all doom and gloom. Studies have also shown that there is a way to bring down this interleukin six. In one study, scientists took spouses who were caregivers and divided them into two groups. One group received phone calls and talk to them about their diet and how to eat healthy. The other group also got phone calls, but they focused on the spouses getting 30 to 40 minutes of aerobic activity every week. After a couple of months, they found that the Ai L six had lowered in the caregivers who exercised but it did not change much on those who only modified their diet. I remember when my mother in law became a caregiver. It happened slowly at first as she took away the car keys from my father in law He didn't seem to mind that. But he would get impatient about things that were important to him. For instance, one day she came home from the grocery store and he said, I want you to take the paper towels right now downstairs and put them away. She said, Honey, I will do that in a minute. As soon as I put away the milk, he was not going to wait. He grabbed those rolls of paper towels, put one under each arm and headed down the steep stairs into their basement. You can probably guess what happened. He got to about the fourth step to the bottom, rolled and tumbled the rest of the way down. He picked himself back up and thankfully, was not seriously injured. But he sure was bruised and look like he had wrestled with a bull. Since he survived the fall, he now bragged about those bruises. But my mother in law was terrified to leave him alone. She was afraid he would fall and hurt himself seriously and end up in the hospital. That's when I realized we needed to get her some help. I knew we had to protect her mental health to preserve her physical health as a caregiver. My experience in the senior industry men, I was able to galvanize resources, I looked for a company to hire. We found a caregiver who could come out to the home twice a week and take care of my father in law. My mother in law used that time to go to the library, hang out with friends and also to exercise. She often told me that that was the best gift we had given her because it allowed her to recharge in order to take care of her husband at home. There are many ways that we can take care of the spouse who has a caregiver. Sometimes family members get together and they set up a schedule of when each person will come to the house and relieve the spouse. Many communities have senior centers where spouses can go, both of them can go and eat a nutritious lunch and maybe participate in exercise program. There are also day centers that the disabled spouse can go to they're a little cheaper than hiring somebody to come into the home. If a person has a lower income, they may qualify for assistance from the state to provide caregivers in the home. As we are focusing on helping our aged loved one have the best quality of life, we must make sure that the caregiving spouse remains physically and mentally healthy. I'm sure you've heard this illustration many times. When we get on an airplane, the stewardess will tell us to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first, and then put them on our children. If we don't get enough oxygen, we can't save our children. Likewise, we must make sure to help minimize
spousal caregiver stress to ensure that they can also go to the doctor and that they have time to recharge. All information is meant for informational purposes only, and is not meant to replace medical advice. Thank you for listening to this podcast knowledge for caregivers. You can check out my website, Kathy's consulting.com or send me any questions at my email info at Cathy's consulting.com Do not forget to leave me a review of this podcast or give suggestions for other ships. Thank you to all the dedicated caregivers out there.