During National Heart Month, your elderly loved one can show their heart some extra love! Learning how to keep their heart even more healthy! Also, how to best understand what’s needed in order to recuperate if they have to undergo cardiac surgery! Home care services is a great choice for assistance.
Care For the Heart
Always keep cholesterol and blood pressure levels monitored. Cardiovascular illnesses, heart attacks, and strokes are all contingent on what these levels are. Therefore, keep them monitored at all times! If needed, you can hire home care assistance providers to help your elderly loved one with this.
- Foods full of saturated or trans-fat, salt, and sugar need to be replaced with much healthier alternatives. Good replacements would be vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats, lentils and beans, and low-fat dairy. Remember you are what you eat! Pay attention to eating habits!
- Be sure to talk to your elderly loved one’s doctor first, and start slowly, though reducing your body weight by 5% can make an impact on blood pressure levels. Working out for thirty minutes by doing aerobics, most days of the week is a realistic way to drop some weight. It will also strengthen the heart too!
- Avoid starting the habit of smoking, smoking, and/or secondhand smoke! If your elderly loved one does smoke, it’s important to quit. Even secondhand smoke is harmful to their heart.
- Make time for themselves each day for at least fifteen minutes. It’s important to reduce stress. Try to participate in soothing activities that are enjoyable! Listen to music, read, go on a walk, or chat with friends for instance.
- Don’t skip out on doctor visits! Visit the doctor regularly, at least once a year, and arrange for a checkup. It’s important to ensure your elderly loved one is in top physical and mental shape. Anything that could pose a problem is best caught and addressed early on, and any existing conditions need to always be kept under control.
You’ve Experienced Cardiovascular Problems Yourself…
It’s a complicated process, as you know, recovering. It can take weeks or even months when dealing with cardiovascular problems.
During this time, you can experience:
- Swelling, numbness, tingling, or itchiness at the incision site
- Chest pain
- Weakness and lack of energy
- Trouble with sleeping
- Depression or moodiness
- Changes in appetite
- Difficulty breathing
- Short-term loss of memory or confusion
Working with a home care professional is one way to best get through this healing process, like with our home care agency. Doctors typically recommend that for at least the first few weeks there is someone in the home for recovery.
If your elderly loved one had heart surgery, they need caregivers that are completely trained on top of experience in their ability to care, assist, and be observant to see changes in conditions in order to report them immediately.
Along with additional support and help, such as:
- Companionship to engage in conversations with activities to brighten each day
- Assistance with safe bathing and showering and getting dressed
- Motivation and encouragement to adhere to the doctor’s recommended fitness program
- Meal planning and preparation
- Transportation to follow-up appointments
- Housekeeping and laundry
- Medication reminders
- Picking up prescription medications and running other errands
- Much more
Contact us today if you need to book post-cardiac surgery home care assistance services for your elderly loved one.
