Month: July 2024

There are many things that can increase a senior’s risk of falling and one of the most common but often overlooked is the role of medications.

Seniors and their caregivers need to be aware of the medications that can put them at risk for falls.

In this article, I will discuss the role of medications in increasing the risk of falling among seniors and provide some tips on how to stay safe while taking medications.

What Factors Can Increase a Senior’s Risk of Falling?

There are many risk factors for falling among seniors, but they can be all classified under two distinct categories:

Extrinsic Factors

Extrinsic or external risk factors are the reasons for falling that are outside of one’s self. Extrinsic risk factors for falling may include:

• Fall or trip hazards in your surroundings.
• Poor lighting conditions.
• Ill-fitting footwear or assistive devices.
• Medications.

In an article I recently wrote, I explained how extrinsic risk factors are easy to modify but if left uncorrected accounts for 30-50% of falls among seniors!

Intrinsic Factors

Intrinsic or internal risk factors are the reasons for falling that can be attributed to your own body.

Intrinsic risk factors for falling may include:

• Poor vision.
• Deteriorating vestibular system (inner ear).
• Reduced physical activity.
• Presence of multiple medical conditions.

Intrinsic factors are relatively harder to modify or correct compared to extrinsic reasons for falling.

What Role Do Medications Play in Increasing the Risk of Falling Among Seniors?

Certain types of medication are more likely to cause problems with balance and coordination, which can lead to falls.

Medications for high blood pressure, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and depression are all examples of drugs that can increase the risk of falling.

In addition, some pain medications and sleeping aids can also cause seniors to feel dizzy or drowsy, making falls more likely.

Seniors who take 4 or more medications (also called polypharmacy) are especially at risk, as the interactions between different drugs can compound the effects.

As a result, it is important for seniors to be aware of the potential risks associated with their medication and to avoid activities that could put them at risk for a fall.

What Steps Can You Take to Decrease Your Risk of Falling?

As we age, our bodies become less able to regulate our blood pressure and heart rate, which can lead to dizziness and an increased risk of falling.

Medications can also have side effects that contribute to falls, such as drowsiness, impaired balance, and blurred vision.

To decrease your risk of falling, I recommend these next steps:

• Review all your medications with your doctor to ensure they are not contributing to dizziness or impaired balance.
• Ask your doctor if he/she can adjust the dosage, change the schedule, or replace your medications that have adverse side effects on your balance and equilibrium.
• Check your blood pressure regularly and maintain healthy blood pressure.
• Exercise regularly to maintain your muscle strength and improve your balance.
• Download a free guide I included in my recent article that listed several medications with known side effects affecting balance and equilibrium.

By taking these steps, you can decrease your risk of falling by as much as 30-50%!

Let’s Have a Discussion:

What about you? Were there medications you previously took that affected your balance? How did you notice this effect on you? What did you do to minimize their impact? How did your healthcare provider assist you?

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It’s summertime in North America, which means it’s getting hotter by the day. As the temperatures outside rise, is your love life sizzling or fizzling?

As much as we all want that special someone to flip the switch on our hot meter, we must first be willing to flip the script on the narrative we were sold on romance.

That’s right, ladies, contrary to what we were led to believe, turning up the heat on your love life starts with you.

More specifically, it begins within you.

This is the first of a new six-part series on “The Art of Self-Love After 60.” In this series, we will focus on ways to stimulate love, bliss, happiness, and pleasure on our own terms.

Lost in a Vast Wilderness

Since childhood, our generation has been fed unrealistic stories about love and what constitutes romance.

These stories began as fairytales where damsels in distress were saved by their knight in shining armor. As we got older, we were exposed to teenage summer love flings with a dance-worthy soundtrack.

By the time we were in our 20s, we were on our own when it came to navigating the rigid, murky world of adult lovemaking.

Despite feeling we were on our own, isn’t it ironic how many women of our generation relied on others to make us feel loved, wanted, and sexually stimulated?

Could it be that on some level we were all lost in the vast wilderness of adulthood because we counted on everyone other than ourselves to define what love and pleasure meant to us?

Rewrite the Book of Love

There is nothing wrong with desiring love and pleasure from another person. But when we are raised to believe this is the only way to pleasure and fulfillment, we unconsciously separate ourselves from our inner power.

This disconnect opens us up to all sorts of disappointments, especially later in life when our spouses may have passed away and potential suitors are unappealing.

In these new ways of living and being, we are left to ask, now what?

I get it, not everyone 60 and over desires a romantic relationship, let alone thinks about sexual pleasure as you may have once did.

But what if you are like millions of women over 60 who still do?

If you are still operating under the outdated premise of romance and lovemaking from a bygone era, what do you do and where do you turn for answers in today’s world?

The opening lyrics to the 1957 hit song, by the Monotones titled, “The Book of Love” go like this:

“I wonder, wonder who, who-oo-ooh, who
(Who wrote the Book of Love)
Tell me, tell me, tell me
Oh, who wrote the Book of Love
I’ve got to know the answer.”

This song speaks of a mythical book that would provide the long-sought-after answers about love. Is there such a book? If there is, we can all agree the author(s) didn’t consult women. At least not women of our generation.

It’s our turn to rewrite the narrative on love. And who better to do this than you!?

7 Steps to Spice It Up on Your Terms

If you are seeking to turn up the heat on your love life, whether you are in a relationship or not, here are seven steps to spice things up on your own terms:

Self-Reflection and Self-Awareness

What three things make you feel loved, beautiful, and turned on? How can you apply them in your life?

Seek Out New Experiences

Arrange a date to places you haven’t been, with an existing partner (or potential partner) and even by yourself. Also, explore new ways to enjoy an intimate night, especially by yourself.

Rediscover Touch

Reflect on what kind of touch (a massage, holding hands, cuddling, hugs, and self-pleasure) makes you feel most loved, pleased, and connected. Incorporate more of that touch into your life.

Communicate Desires and Needs

What are some things you wish your partner knew about your desires? Journal these desires. If you are in a relationship, have a conversation about it with your partner.

Experiment with Change

What subtle changes you can introduce in the bedroom, either by yourself or with a partner? Examples include new lingerie, romantic music, extended foreplay, or reading romantic literature together.

Attend Workshops or Counseling

What area of your love life do you want guidance or new ideas on? Consider attending a related workshop, online course, or counseling session with a professional.

Engage in Physical Activity You Enjoy

Taking a bath, dancing, walking, Tantra, daily meditation, or even yoga, whatever activity it is be sure it stimulates feelings of bliss, relaxation, confidence, and pleasure.

The keys to unlocking a vibrant love life at any age are communication, mutual respect, and the willingness to experiment and evolve. As you go through these seven steps, I encourage you to add in your own to better suit you and your lifestyle as you turn up the heat on your love life.

Please join me in the video where I will share additional insights along with seven journal prompts to help you integrate what you are learning.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How do you turn up the heat on your love life? Do you communicate well with your partner? What do you feel is lacking in your love life and why is that?ac

Impatience is a classic toxic money mindset that tells us attractive lies. Impatience can lead to impulsive decisions that can have a negative impact on your financial health in the future. This article will discuss how to overcome impatience and make better financial decisions.

Here’s what impatience can sound like:

• “I just need to stick to a budget.
• “I expected myself to be further along by this point in my life.”
• “This debt is killing me; I just need to pay it off.”

Sure, impatience can look like it’s helping you take action, stay productive, take things seriously, or stay focused. And that’s a pretty good sales pitch.

Unfortunately, decisions made from a place of impatience are by definition quick, reactive, and deeply emotional.

It’s important to recognize that impatience indicates an unmet need. And while everyone is different, typically the unmet need that drives impatience is the need for progress. We long for progress because it’s hope that wherever we are in our lives, it is temporary.

Crisis and trauma add fuel to the fire of this unmet need, compelling us to make even faster decisions, not all of which will be good for the future versions of ourselves.

Impatience Tells Us We Don’t Have Any Other Choice

The survival-obsessed part of our brains, the amygdala, does not appreciate it when someone or something removes choices from us. Even if that someone is our own selves!

A removal or reduction of choice feels like we’re cornered. And we will react to that removal or reduction of choice quickly, and without much thought. These reactions are made without the permission of our executive function, and typically (but not always) are not good long-term decisions in our modern world.

The result of these not-so-good long-term decisions? Why it’s a greater expectation of making “good” choices and a lack of patience in ourselves when we don’t.

Those short-term focused decisions can eventually feed a sense of failure, which will likely only increase a sense of urgency and impatience.

Impatience Feeds Failure into Our Decision Making

We have long memories for our own failures. This isn’t a bug in our brains; it’s a feature. Being able to gather data and look for patterns from the past does help us make better decisions in the future, but not if that data is mixed with shame, judgment, and failure.

Failure blinds us.

Rather than being able to gather information, assess possible choices and use patterns and data from our past to make decisions, we judge ourselves.

So What Can You Do to Counteract Impatience and Its Impact on Your Decision Making?

You can practice grace for yourself.

Asking my financial coaching clients to practice grace for themselves is the hardest thing I can possibly ask of them.

The purpose of practicing grace for yourself is to learn how to trust yourself. Only by learning to trust yourself can you get long-term positive behavior change without force or restriction.

Self-acceptance and grace also help further lift the fog that comes along with the urgency and panic that drives impatience.

Grace doesn’t mean an abdication of all responsibilities, of course; it just means acceptance of past decisions. Giving ourselves grace means we can begin to trust ourselves, be resilient, and make better long-term choices.

Grace Is Also a Practice in Slowness

With slowness comes intentional decision making and typically better (read future-focused) decision making. Rather than making choices from that quick, reactionary, gut-clenching place that impatience drives us to, we get the chance to make choices with our heads on a swivel.

Giving ourselves grace is not always easy, especially if there is a history of self-criticism, but is a critical way to begin healing your own financial trauma.

Here’s how I teach my clients the first few steps of practicing grace for themselves.

Story Time!

I’d like you to imagine a scientist out in the wild, they’ve got their pith helmet and their khaki clothes and their little notebook and all that. Let’s assume this is a good and ethical scientist.

Our scientist is observing a wild animal. Would they be trying to change the wild animal’s behavior?

Not if they’re a good scientist.

The scientist would just be observing and taking notes, right?

So let’s say the scientist has observed long enough and thinks they understand the wild animal’s “normal” behavior. And then the scientist watches the wild animal deviate away from that normal. Would the scientist try to correct the animal’s behavior?

Probably not. But why wouldn’t the scientist try to correct the animal’s behavior?

Well, maybe the scientist was wrong about what is normal for the animal. Maybe this behavior is not something the scientist has had the opportunity to observe yet.

Maybe the scientist might get curious and ask more questions, but they are probably not going to correct the animal’s behavior.

Now, the scientist sees the animal eat something gross. Is the scientist going to write in their notes, “Oh my god, this animal is so disgusting, I can’t believe it just ate all of that rotten, moldy elephant poop!!!”?

Again, not likely. The scientist would just observe and take notes. Date, time, how much elephant poop, etc.

The scientist has three jobs. The first is just to observe, just gather information, right? The second job is to look for patterns. Humans are almost too good at pattern recognition. And the third job the scientist has is to come up with a hypothesis and then a test or experiment to check that hypothesis.

So how does telling the story of the wild animal and the scientist help people give themselves grace?

You Are Both the Wild Animal AND the Scientist

Any time you’re observing your own behavior, I’d like you to try not to change your behavior. Intentionally changing (correcting) our behavior while we’re observing means we get back messy data.

After you practice observing your own behavior without judging, you’ll just naturally begin to notice patterns… this part I don’t have to teach.

Some of those patterns you’ll want to reinforce, and some you’ll want to interrupt, and to do that, you’ll need an experiment.

Experimenting on yourself means you need to evaluate the interruption, trial, or experiment, NOT yourself. By evaluating the systems you use, not yourself, you can adapt and evolve your systems much faster and more efficiently.

As long as the interruption is small and neutral, it will help. The interruption cannot in any way be a punishment. You do not need punishment to gain awareness.

Punishment Kills Grace

In the case study above, I’m asking my client to practice self-awareness without judgment. By doing so, she is also practicing grace for herself.

Awareness without judgment (grace) means we get a little break from the pressure and urgency that stokes impatience.

Let’s Think About It:

Do you often feel impatience when making financial decisions? What presses you to move fast? How would your financial decision-making change if you practiced just 20% more grace for yourself than you do now?

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Originally posted at: Alexia Echevarria’s White Lace Midi Dress