Elderly Health Routines
Daily routines support better health for aging adults and caregivers. Whether you are a caregiver, a person who wants to be proactive about health, or a person advocating for your health conditions, this information can help you.
- If you are a caregiver, these tips can help you coordinate your schedule with the needs of elderly parents and maybe get your parents to do a few things to help you out.
- If you want to be proactive about your health, these tips offer suggestions to help you improve your physical and mental health and save time so you can do more of what you love.
- If you need care or are managing health conditions, these routines can help you continue to do more for yourself so you will not have to depend on others or feel like a burden when you ask for help.
Additionally, by looking at changes in daily, weekly, or monthly routines for yourself or an elderly loved one, you may be able to identify a change to investigate. By Identifying changes in elderly health routines can be established to improve healthy aging habits and address health concerns. It’s never too late to consider the
habits of people who age well.
10 Benefits of Healthy Aging Habits
Routines can sometimes be considered boring. However, they offer many benefits for the health of elderly persons and their caregivers.
1 Routines minimize fear and uncertainty
In caregiving, think of routines as positive instead of negative. While spontaneity and the unknown may be exciting in some situations, being a caregiver with responsibilities and time limits benefits from routines and fewer surprises.
- Having elderly health routines for daytime and nighttime activities can help you and an elderly parent sleep better at night.
- As a caregiver, you may be less likely to wake up in the middle of the night wondering if you forgot to do something.
- If a caregiver lives with an aging parent, placing a baby monitor in their bedroom may help the caregiver sleep better at night. The monitor ensures that the parent can ask for help from their bedroom if help is needed.
2 Routines provide stability
What might the benefit of having elderly health routines be? Can having a routine offer peace of mind about caring for an elderly parent who worries constantly?
When you know what will happen, there is less uncertainty about what will happen next. A daily routine that includes a list of things to do at work or home can make it easier to manage expectations.
Routines may be grouped into morning and evening tasks or tasks performed at specific times of the day. For example, wake up at 5:30 a.m. and be in bed by 9:00 p.m. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, go to the gym at 6 p.m.
When routines exist, success is higher in maintaining feel-good habits about what can be accomplished. Items on a to-do list for elderly health and daily care routines can be checked off more quickly.
3 Routines support time management
Healthy routines for elderly people support time management, organization, and efficiency. Let’s look at an example of the benefits of meal planning and meal prep for caregivers and aging parents.
Being constantly busy can mean that caregivers on the run find themselves driving through fast-food restaurants. Older adults living at home may rely on store-bought boxes of frozen dinners.
How many of you have eaten frozen chicken or turkey pot pies? Frozen TV dinners might be good occasionally but should not be a consistent part of a diet.
Good nutrition makes a significant difference for
older adults who tend to be malnutritioned. Good nutrition is especially important for persons with memory loss.
Think of an example of a routine, such as creating a meal plan and shopping for groceries, that you probably already do every week.
- The benefit of a meal planning routine is you know what meals you will make.
- If you plan and prepare meals for yourself, it’s just as easy to double-batch and take meals to your parent’s house so they can eat healthy food throughout the week.
- On the other hand, if you help parents with other things and your mom or dad is a good cook, why not ask them to grocery shop, meal prep, and make meals for you or your family?
Caregiving can have benefits on both sides of the relationship.
4 Routines support consistent action
Consistency is the simple idea that if I say I’m going to do something, I do it. If I say that Tuesday is the day for housecleaning, this project becomes a priority and is completed on Tuesday.
Consistent habits support measuring progress in many areas of life. If a task is not performed consistently, it is difficult to know whether the effect is positive or negative.
Dieting and exercise are perfect examples of goals more likely to show results after consistent long-term effort.
Let’s look at another example of elderly health routines for a parent taking a new medication to reduce arthritis pain in the hands.
- Your parent is to take medicine at 8 am every morning.
- One gauge of consistency is to confirm your parent takes the medication every day at 8 am.
- For all new medications, it’s essential to document all side effects and discuss them with a physician.
- The indicator of success or no success might be hand movement without stiffness or pain so a parent can button buttons on a shirt or make a meal.
Let’s translate consistent behaviors to daily activity that can be measured.
Using devices or apps to track goals and results
If you regularly listen to this podcast or watch my YouTube videos, you know my go-to stress reliever is exercise.
I wear a watch that tracks my daily activities, including sleep, calories burned, and time spent in activities like walking, strength training, cross-training, etc. My goal is to see 100% or more on the watch every day before I go to bed. If there is a time when I’m not quite there, I add an evening walk to hit my activity goal.
Using an activity watch or an app to track daily activity lets you see real-time results and measure this against your daily goal.
How many of you have heard of the goal of 10,000 steps per day as a goal for daily activity? Specific to any activity, whether it might be improving your nutrition or something else, what devices or apps might be motivational?
Why Are Routines Good for Older Adult Health?
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Pamela’s YouTube Channel5 Routines build positive habits
Being consistent in actions helps others, including eldelry parents, our children, and spouses, know what to expect. Consistent action establishes a model of behavior for others to follow and act similarly. Sometimes, having a buddy with a similar goal can motivate and provide ongoing support.
Some older adults say, “I have nowhere to go today, so I will stay in my pajamas. Why shower or get dressed if no one will see me?”
Lounging around all day is okay once in a while. Every day is probably not okay, especially if this becomes a habit. Not caring how one looks or not taking pride in one’s appearance can be a sign of depression and a
warning for monitoring elderly parent health routines.
For retired older adults, getting out of bed, getting dressed, showering or bathing, eating breakfast, taking medications, taking the dog for a walk, calling a friend, and engaging in other activities can be positive daily routines.
6 Routines conserve brain power
Constantly thinking, planning, and doing can be exhausting. It’s easy to get tired of constantly thinking and planning? A daily routine reduces the brainpower necessary to take familiar actions.
Routines are activities that are planned and completed to increase time efficiency. For example:
- Lay out the clothes you plan to wear to work tomorrow so you won’t have to worry about what to wear in the morning.
- Bathe, eat, and exercise every day at a specific time.
- Help elderly parents create reminder alarms on a smartphone for daily routines.
- Help parents create time-saving routines, such as placing medications in med boxes or having a checklist to inventory food before going to the grocery store.
7 Routines help avoid procrastination
It can be easy to put off projects to encourage parents to embrace elderly health routines. Help loved ones schedule projects on specific days of the week or a particular day of the month, such as paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, or doctor appointments.
Including tasks as part of a daily or weekly routine increases the likelihood that the projects will be accomplished. For example, Saturday is laundry day, Tuesday is errand day, Wednesday is grocery shopping, and Friday is doctor’s appointments.
8 Routines build self confidence
Any task not linked to motivation can be a reason for procrastination. Fast-forward. The project is complete. How do you feel?
Was it as difficult or unpleasant as you thought it would be?
Uncertainty, hesitation, and procrastination can create mental mountains or mental blocks about the difficulty level of completing a project, only to find that it’s easier to complete when a schedule and a commitment exist.
Completing routine tasks makes it easier to do similar tasks and can build self-confidence in working through elderly health routines.
9 Routines equal progress
Another benefit of a routine is that it helps achieve goals and clear lengthy to-do lists. For elderly parents, these routine changes can be increased activity or healthier eating that results in feeling better. The routine can also include consistently taking medications. Many activities can positively impact elderly health routines to help parents stay at home.
10 Consistent habits can translate to more time for you
Scheduling routines increase focus on what is important or the tasks to be done. For many older adults, the ability to remain at home is what matters to them.
With this in mind, to identify what matters, help aging parents consider routines to make staying home a reality. As a caregiver do the same for yourself. Identify what matters and develop routines to help you manage.
If you are a primary caregiver for an elderly family member, your caregiving responsibilities can affect your life, job, personal relationships, and family.
You may choose to create routines with your family,
with your spouse for couple time, and with your children for school or sports time. Caregiving can become a family project.
Routines Can Help Predict Future Care Needs for Elderly Parent’s Health Routines
As the care needs of elderly parents progress, having a routine allows the caregiver to look ahead and make a plan for elderly parents regarding what’s next.
Additionally, by closely examining an elderly parent’s routine and changes in routine over time, caregivers or aging persons can identify
concerns that may benefit from a medical visit to ensure the issue does not significantly impact daily quality of life.
Looking For Help Caring for Elderly Parents? Find the Information, Including Step-by-Step Processes, in Pamela’s Online Program.
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