Americans Don’t Eat Enough Fiber


The average American east about 15 grams of fiber, about half of what they need.  To put this in perspective, the following portions contain 15 grams of fiber:

  • One cup of black beans;
  • Two cups of bran flakes;
  • Three oat bran muffins;
  • Five bananas;
  • 10 carrots; or
  • 13 cups of popcorn.

One study looked at the dietary habits of middle aged women; when the researchers followed up 20 months later, they found that every additional gram of fiber the subjects ate correlated with a half-pound less in total body weight and a quarter percent less fat (AARP The Magazine, March/April 2022 Issue, page 36).

Salinas, CA Home Care Aide (HCA) Senior Alzheimer’s & Dementia Caregiver Jobs Available : Set Your Own Hours: $2/Hour Extra On The Weekends CNA Or HHA Designation A Plus

A man in a wheelchair being assisted by two women.


Salinas, CA Home Care Aide (HCA) Senior Alzheimer’s & Dementia Caregiver Jobs Available : Set Your Own Hours: $2/Hour Extra On The Weekends CNA Or HHA Designation A Plus (Service Areas Are Aromas, Big Sur, Carmel, Carmel-by-the-sea, Carmel Valley, Castroville, Corral-de-Tierra, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Prunedale, Salinas, Seaside & Soledad

We have developed a reputation for having the best caregivers (Home Care Aides or Senior Companions) in Monterey County over the past decade and have recently expanded into Santa Cruz County.   We are currently looking for qualified caregivers.

Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey and Santa Cruz is seeking compassionate, mature and dependable caregivers who want to improve the lives of our elderly Clients by providing in-home, non-medical care.  Our services include:

Caring companionship

Meal preparation

Incidental transportation

Running errands

Light housekeeping

Medication reminders

Monitoring of safety while bathing

Information and referral services

Other services that improve the safety, security and quality of life of seniors.

If you believe you would make an exceptional Home Care Aide, we would love to hear from you!  We prefer those with experience helping the elderly, disabled and others with mobility problems.  Having cared for those with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s is a plus.  To work for us, you must have excellent references, a clear criminal record, a good driving record, and an insured reliable vehicle.  To apply, please visit our website www.fhcofm.com, click on home care aides, then careers where you can fill out an application online.  We have immediate openings all over Monterey County.

Monterey, CA Exercise, Good Nutrition And Social Interaction Key For Seniors

A group of people doing different exercises together.


At Family inHome Caregiving, we stress the fact that exercise, social interaction and a good diet are keys to longevity for our senior clients, most of which are in their 90’s or even 100’s.  The most difficult of the three in the current COVID-19 environment is social interaction, but this doesn’t have to be in person.  Keep in touch with your friends and family with a zoom or facetime call.  A good diet isn’t hard to do either.  Do a google search on the Mediterranean diet—it is delicious.  There are a number of quick and healthy ways to cook salmon, which is very good for you.  Paired up with some vegetables and a nice salad and you will enjoy it.  Exercise is not that hard to keep up with either.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise each week which means taking a brisk walk of 20-30 minutes per day.  Some physicians suggest that you mix it up so that you don’t get bored and you use different muscle groups.  That means doing a bit of biking, swimming or yoga.

Colorful Fruits And Vegetables Can Ward Off Obesity And Even Dementia

A person measuring their belly with a tape measure.


Each day should include at least one helping—a small side salad or a half-cup serving of cooked green vegetables–in order to ensure you get enough B vitamin folate.  Folate plays a crucial role in battling hearing loss and depression in mature adults.  In a study of postmenopausal women, those who were overweight averaged 12 percent less folate in their blood than normal-weight women; those who were obese had 22% less (AARP The Magazine, March/April 2022 Issue, page 36).

Monterey, CA Caregiver Costs Rising : It’s Expensive To Stay In Your Own Home And Independent

A jar of coins with the word retirement written on it.


A recent article in AARP Bulletin said that nearly 70% of senior citizens will require help from others to get through their day.  Women will need it for an average of 3.7 years and men 2.2 years.  However, having owned Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey and Santa Cruz for more than 12 years, I think these numbers can be low—some people require help for more than a decade.  Seniors are living longer, and if you live to be over 100 and need care starting at age 80, that can be two decades of monthly caregiving bills if you don’t have a relative willing to step in.  Unfortunately, Long Term Care or LTC Insurance is the only type of insurance which pays for having a caregiver come to your home, and few people have it.  I always urge the children of clients that we care for to get it while they can.  It’s very expensive and the younger you get a policy and the healthier you are the better rate you will get.  Some companies also give discounts if both a husband and wife buy a policy at the same time.

 

Prunedale, CA Home Care Aide (HCA) Senior Alzheimer’s & Dementia Caregiver Jobs Available : Set Your Own Hours: $2/Hour Extra On The Weekends CNA Or HHA Designation A Plus

A man and woman sitting in a wheelchair.


Prunedale, CA Home Care Aide (HCA) Senior Alzheimer’s & Dementia Caregiver Jobs Available : Set Your Own Hours: $2/Hour Extra On The Weekends CNA Or HHA Designation A Plus (Service Areas Are Aromas, Big Sur, Carmel, Carmel-by-the-sea, Carmel Valley, Castroville, Corral-de-Tierra, Gonzalez, Greenfield, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Prunedale, Salinas, Seaside & Soledad

We have developed a reputation for having the best caregivers (Home Care Aides or Senior Companions) in Monterey County over the past decade and have recently expanded into Santa Cruz County.   We are currently looking for qualified caregivers.

Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey and Santa Cruz is seeking compassionate, mature and dependable caregivers who want to improve the lives of our elderly Clients by providing in-home, non-medical care.  Our services include:

Caring companionship

Meal preparation

Incidental transportation

Running errands

Light housekeeping

Medication reminders

Monitoring of safety while bathing

Information and referral services

Other services that improve the safety, security and quality of life of seniors.

If you believe you would make an exceptional Home Care Aide, we would love to hear from you!  We prefer those with experience helping the elderly, disabled and others with mobility problems.  Having cared for those with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s is a plus.  To work for us, you must have excellent references, a clear criminal record, a good driving record, and an insured reliable vehicle.  To apply, please visit our website www.fhcofm.com, click on home care aides, then careers where you can fill out an application online.  We have immediate openings all over Monterey County.

Soquel, CA Elder Abuse Alert : Arts & Crafts

A pile of money sitting next to stacks of cash.


With Beverly Fabrics closing in Seaside and the closest store way up in Soquel, many seniors are looking for supplies online.  Beware of one of the many current scams that are taking place, this one revolving around sewing machines, of all things.  Crooks are advertising online and in social media brand-name models of sewing machines for under $100.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is.  This so-called e-commerce close out sales are typically fake and you will send in your money and never get the product.  There is yet another arts and craft scam going on right now where scammers are putting on virtual arts and crafts fairs.  When you order something from a booth at one of these online fairs, they will take your money but won’t send you anything.

Devices To Monitor Your Vitals Are Getting Better, And Cheaper Over Time

A man and woman are doing exercises together.


Electronic devices like a FITBIT or Apple Watch have been on the market for a long time but they continue to get more inexpensive and add features.  This has attracted a number of new entrants into the market such as new designs of a blood pressure monitor which can range in cost from $15-$100.  Before buying one, measure your upper arm and choose a model with an arm cuff that fits.  Avoid wrist and finger monitors which are less accurate.  For more information, go to the American Medical Association’s website at www.validatebp.org.  There are also low-cost oxygen monitors which tend to range from $20-$300.  A pulse oximeter uses light beams to pass through tissue and measure your oxygen saturation level.  In addition, check out Heart Rate Monitors which go from $200-$300.  There are two types—those that strap onto your chest and those you wear on your wrist.  The chest models are typically more precise but the wrist monitor is better suited for everyday use (AARP The Magazine, February/March 2022, page 24).

MRI Studies Looking For Clues To Alzheimer’s And Dementia May Have Been Unreliable

A doctor and patient in a room with a laptop.


A study which was published in the journal Nature found that by studying M.R.I. data from about 50,000 people searching for clues between brain structure and complex psychological traits in groups with different numbers of subjects, thousands of patients must be included for the study to be reliably replicated.  This threw cold water on a number of recent studies done looking for clues in M.R.I.s to solve how diseases develop, looking at anything from autism to Alzheimer’s disease, because they typically only focused on a handful of M.R.I.s.  Researchers from The School of Medicine at Washington University, St. Louis and colleagues located elsewhere noted that researchers across the globe are increasingly using magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I., to try and find links between what is seen on an M.R.I. like cortical thickness or patterns of connection, and complicated psychological traits such as cognitive ability or mental-health conditions.  These brain-association studies are looking to unlock clues to what causes mental health and dementia.  The researchers concluded that studies done to date have been too small (many just had a few dozen participants) and suggested that there needed to be at least 1,000 participants for the studies to be considered valid.  This is problematic because M.R.I. machines typically cost about $1,000 per hour to operate.  Journals historically have preferred surprising correlations to findings of no correlation, a phenomenon known as publication bias.  “The paradoxical effect is that the answer that’s the most wrong gets published if you use a small sample,†said Nico Dosenback, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University, as well as an author of the Nature study.