408-854-1883 starts at $30 per hr home care

My 80 yr old mother could not get up one early morn and massaged her legs with fresh crushed ginger mixed with coconut oil and she was able to get up and get to work. Joint pain is the number one complaint of many seniors in the bay area who are living alone, in assisted living facilities, care homes, nursing homes and senior apartments. Even when they have lots of walk in the sun, old age can make for rusty bones and joints. Turmeric, ginger and whole foods can ease the pain and can be detoxing to our joints.

Nursing homes, assisted living, senior facilities in the bay area need caregivers 408-854-1883 motherhealth@gmail.com http://www.clubalthea.com

What Is Ginger Oil?

Warm, spicy, and energizing, ginger oil comes from ginger root (Zingiber officinale), a pungent, peculiar-looking underground rhizome. A member of the Zingiberaceae plant family, this perennial herb grows up to three to four feet high, with narrow spear-shaped leaves, white or yellow flowers,3 and small tuberous rhizomes with a thick or thin brown skin. Its flesh can be yellow, white, or red, depending on the variety.4

Ginger has been valued for thousands of years for its medicinal and culinary properties, particularly in ancient Chinese, Indian, and Greek civilizations. The Mahabharata, a 4th century BC Indian Sanskrit epic, even describes a stewed meat dish that uses ginger as an ingredient. In Ayurvedic medicine, ginger is considered a key plant.

Eventually, ginger was exported to the Roman Empire and became widely traded in Europe by Arab traders. It was also used as an ingredient in sweets. By the 13th to 14th century, ginger – along with black pepper – became a commonly traded spice. It was said that a pound of ginger could be traded for a sheep.5

Ginger is one of the most flexible food ingredients today. It can be eaten fresh or dried, steeped as a tea, or grated into your vegetable juice (one of my personal favorites). The dried root is the source for tinctures and supplements, and is also transformed into ginger oil, an energizing and uplifting oil with a wide range of uses.

Ginger oil has a thin consistency and is light yellow in color, with a pleasantly pungent aroma. The scent varies according to the distillation and quality of the ginger used. However, the most aromatically superior ginger oil is said to come from distilling fresh ginger root.

Uses of Ginger Oil

The benefits of ginger for relieving pain are widely known today, and while I prefer using fresh ginger (eaten raw, grated into your vegetable juice, or steeped into tea), using ginger oil can provide these wholesome benefits as well.

When used topically, ginger oil can help relieve aches and pain, as well as promote normal blood circulation.6

Aromatherapists also value ginger oil’s soothing and warming qualities to help address digestive problems. In fact, this is one of ginger oil’s most popular uses: relieving any kind of digestive upset, such as nausea, indigestion, diarrhea, gas, and even morning sickness.

Here are some ways to use ginger oil for various health problems

Apply two to three drops in a diffuser, or place on a cotton ball or your handkerchief, and then inhale. This will help reenergize and revitalize your body, mind, and soul.
Mix two to three drops in an ounce of carrier oil, and use as a massage oil. This helps relieve backache, arthritis, muscle pain, rheumatism, and fractures, as well as stimulate your circulatory system and revitalize your libido. You can also add it to your hot bath or put a few drops on a hot or cold compress, and then apply it to the affected areas.
Inhale via a diffuser or vaporizer to relieve sinusitis, sore throat, and runny nose. It can also work as a decongestant.
Massage a drop into your abdomen to relieve gas and diarrhea.

Composition of Ginger Oil

Ginger oil benefits mostly come from its powerful mono- and sesqui-terpenoids, such as neral, geranial, 1,8-cineole, zingiberene, B-bisabolene, and B-sesquiphellandrene. It also contains a-pinene, B-pinene, camphene, linalool, borneol, y-terpineol, nerol, geraniol, and geranyl acetate.8, 9

Benefits of Ginger Oil

Ginger oil’s many benefits are attributed to its anti-inflammatory, digestive, expectorant, antiseptic, carminative, analgesic, and stimulating properties. It’s helpful in alleviating various health problems, such as:10

Stomach and bowel related problems

Ginger oil helps promote proper digestion, and can be a great remedy for spasms, dyspepsia, indigestion, and flatulence. It can also increase your appetite, which is great for people who are trying to gain weight.
Food poisoning – Ginger oil’s antiseptic and carminative properties can help treat food poisoning, as well as intestinal infections and bacterial dysentery.
Malaria and yellow fever – A study found that ginger oil can help repel Anopheles culicifacies mosquitoes, which is the primary carrier of malaria in India.11

Respiratory problems

Ginger oil can help relieve and treat coughs, flu, asthma, breathlessness, and bronchitis. Fresh ginger can actually remove mucus from throat and lungs, and is commonly added to tea for its soothing effects.

Pain

Ginger and ginger oil can help reduce prostaglandins, which are the compounds associated with pain. For more information about how ginger relieves pain (particularly after-exercise pain), check out my article here.
Heart ailments – Using ginger oil regularly can help reduce your risk of blood clots and arteriosclerosis, as well as help decrease the bad cholesterol levels in your blood

Source: A gift for our home alone seniors

Source: Anxiety Disorder among seniors

Senior Care

There are many reasons why a senior needs a caregiver in their homes, in a care home, nursing home, or assisted living facilities: fall prevention, living alone and was hospitalized, prone to degenerative health issues, need assistance in daily living, absence of family members or living far from them and anxiety disorders.

Senior In Home Care in Bay Area

Have a caregiver at home even for 4-8 hrs or during the late evening and early morning hours as emergencies happen early morning and in the evening. Call 408-8541883 or motherhealth@gmail.com for 24-hr response in the bayarea for in home care with caring caregivers to stay with a hospice senior, a senior home alone or just as a companion.

Make your home senior safe, with guard rails and other safety precaution to prevent falls.

Monitor medications that can aggravate the deteriorating health condition. Most pain meds and neuro meds can cause dizziness, migraine, headache, nausea, pain and even Parkinson’s/Alzheimers.

About Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders in Older Adults

If you have an anxiety disorder, worry or fear becomes long-term and may get worse instead of better as time goes on. Doctors and older adults tend to view anxiety and fear as normal given the circumstances of aging. But developing an anxiety disorder late in life is not a normal part of aging.

What Are Anxiety Disorders?
Video length: 3 min 23 sec
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Studies estimate that anxiety disorders affect between 3 and 14 percent of older adults in a given year. More women than men experience anxiety disorders. They tend to be less common among older adults than younger adults.

Anxiety caused by stressful events like moving or losing a job is a normal part of life. But anxiety disorders are different. An anxiety disorder lasts a long time and can get worse if it is not treated.

Anxiety disorders commonly occur at the same time as other illnesses. In older adults, anxiety disorders often occur at the same time as depression, heart disease, diabetes, and other medical problems. In some cases, these other illnesses need to be treated before a person will respond to treatment for the anxiety disorder.

Types of Anxiety Disorders

There are several basic types of anxiety disorders. Although they share some characteristics, each is slightly different and may respond to different treatments.

Here we discuss six different anxiety disorders:

• generalized anxiety disorder
• social phobia
• panic disorder
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• obsessive-compulsive disorder
• specific phobias.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

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In generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a person becomes very worried about things like health, money, and family problems, even if everything is OK. A person may be very anxious about just getting through the day.

Social Phobia

In social phobia, a person fears being judged by others or of being embarrassed. This fear can get in the way of doing everyday things such as going to work, running errands, or meeting with friends. People who have social phobia often know that they shouldn’t be so afraid, but they can’t control their fear.

Panic Disorder

In panic disorder, a person has sudden, unexplained attacks of terror, and often feels his or her heart pounding. During a panic attack, a person feels a sense of unreality, a fear of impending doom, or a fear of losing control. Panic attacks can occur at any time.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops after undergoing a terrifying ordeal like an accident or an act of violence. A person who develops PTSD may have been the one who was harmed, or have a loved one who was harmed, or have witnessed a harmful event.

PTSD – One Vietnam Veteran’s Story
Video length: 5 min 23 sec
Click to watch this video

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) feel the uncontrollable need to check things over and over, or they may have certain thoughts or perform certain routines over and over. The thoughts and rituals of OCD cause distress and get in the way of daily life.

The repeated, upsetting thoughts of OCD are called obsessions. To try to control them, people with OCD repeat rituals or behaviors, which are called compulsions. People with OCD can’t control these thoughts and rituals.

Specific Phobia

A specific phobia is an intense, extreme fear of something that poses little or no actual danger. Some of the more common specific phobias involve closed-in places, heights, escalators, tunnels, highway driving, water, flying, dogs, and the sight of blood.

Source: Unsung caregiving heroes

Life prolonging care for seniors

Source: 2016 US job market and socioeconomic environment

Source: The US job market and socioeconomic environment

In 2011, Dr. Stephanie Seneff published research looking at the effects of a low-fat diet and statin drugs in relation to Alzheimer’s Disease. This research noticed a strong correlation between insulin resistance in the brain and early Alzheimer’s Disease.

The study’s main conclusions regarding the early causes of Alzheimer’s Disease centered around the transport of cholesterol from the blood stream to the brain. The research stated that there is mounting evidence which suggests that a defect in cholesterol metabolism in the brain may play an important role in Alzheimer’s Disease. A nice summary of the brain’s dependency on cholesterol is given:

The brain represents only 2% of the body’s total mass, but contains 25% of the total cholesterol. Cholesterol is required everywhere in the brain as an antioxidant, an electrical insulator (in order to prevent ion leakage), as a structural scaffold for the neural network, and a functional component of all membranes. Cholesterol is also utilized in the wrapping and synaptic delivery of the neurotransmitters. It also plays an important role in the formation and functioning of synapses in the brain. (Source.)

Brains of Alzheimer’s patients

Several studies show that there is a lack of cholesterol — which is so vital for several functions — in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and note that other studies show this cholesterol deficiency in dementia and Parkinson’s disease as well. In contrast, high cholesterol levels are positively correlated with longevity in people over 85 years old, and in some cases have been shown to be associated with better memory function and reduced dementia. (Source.)

Statin and over medication in the elderly

In 2012, another study looked at the effects of statin cholesterol-lowering drugs on Alzheimer’s patients. The patients in the study had their statin medication stopped for six weeks, and then restarted. The results showed that during the six weeks when their statins were stopped, the basic brain function of the individuals improved. When the drugs were restarted, brain function got worse again. (Source.)

– See more at: http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/over-medication-of-elderly-becoming-epidemic-new-study-links-prescription-drugs-to-alzheimers/#sthash.8J53h92I.dpuf

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All statin users must take CQ10.

Email motherhealth@gmail.com for senior advocacy one on one training and for bay area caregivers and care homes at 408-8541883

Source: Nursing homes guide