There are times during a hospital stay when the care team may ask a patient (or family member on behalf of the patient) to consider having a special feeding tube, or PEG, placed to prevent medical complications, such as dehydration, malnutrition or aspiration pneumonia. (more…)
Some forgetfulness, or a little memory loss, in people middle-aged and older, is actually normal and not a cause for concern. There are natural aging processes that explain minor lapses in memory, more popularly called “senior moments.”
As we age, our ability to divide our attention among two or more activities starts to diminish slightly—it may be harder to do “two things at once”! The holiday season is an especially busy and hectic time, full of many tasks that we feel we have to accomplish before the festivities begin. We may find it more efficient to do one thing at a time, from start to finish, as typical interruptions may lead us to forget momentarily what we were doing or saying.
After about 55 years of age, both our physical and mental responses naturally start to slow down. Humans have millions of impressions, recollections, words, dates and other items stored in our memory bank. Withdrawing information—such as remembering appointments, errands to run, people’s names and phone numbers—might take a little longer as we get older, so it’s always a good idea to mark a calendar and write things down. The more we have on our mind, the more we should use simple reminders such as “to-do” lists, wrist-watch or cell-phone alarms, and pill boxes sorted by day of week.
So, while the occasional forgetting where we placed our car keys or the pen we were just writing with is typical of normal aging, there are other memory changes that are not normal. Benign senescent forgetfulness is a disorder characterized by continual repetition of accounts of events, questions and requests; generally, the person’s short-term memory loss does not worsen or interfere with everyday life. Dementia is a far more serious and progressive decline in mental functions, including not remembering your name and address, how to dress yourself or balance your checkbook, and clearly requires an evaluation by a physician.
For more information on normal and abnormal behavior as we age, please visit http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/geriatrics.html or the Beth Israel Senior Health web site at http://www.wehealny.org/services/bi_seniorhealth/index.html.
Wonder what it’s like to have swallowing problems? If you have ever received a local anesthetic for dental work, you know that the numbness in your mouth made it hard to eat or drink until the sensation subsided.
For someone with certain kinds of neurological or muscular problems, chronic numbness in the lips, tongue and throat cause swallowing problems. Swallowing problems result in the inability to control liquid or food in the mouth. People with swallowing problems have to struggle with drooling, coughing or even choking.
Any development of swallowing problems, such as spitting out chewed food, gagging on water, painful swallowing or feeling food getting stuck, should be discussed with your doctor. Your physician can help determine the reason and provide some solutions.
You may be referred to a speech pathologist, a rehabilitation specialist who can correct some swallowing problems by helping you strengthen the chewing and swallowing muscles and by gradually introducing different foods—pureed, soft and chopped—into your diet.
Go to the doctor if you are experiencing swallowing problems. There are solutions so that you can regain and retain your quality of life.
Felicia Gironda, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a certified Speech Language Pathologist at Beth Israel Brooklyn.