Arcadia's Blog | Helping people stay at home and healthier longer

June 18, 2013
by Clayton
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Assisted vacations now available online

Arcadia Home Care Assisted vacations with caregivers

Visit our new page for more info!

Arcadia is excited to present Assisted Vacations in partnership with CruiseOne, the nation’s largest cruise travel retailer. Arcadia can now help you design the perfect vacation for you and your loved one in need of supportive care. CruiseOne offers travel packages with major cruise lines tailored with the support of Arcadia’s caregivers throughout your vacation experience.

Please visit our new page which will showcase our latest offers and archive information from our participating cruise lines. But our options aren’t limited there, click through to CruiseOne’s Arcadia portal and learn of all the possibilities.

Arcadia’s Caregivers will accompany your loved one offering companionship as they tour some of the most beautiful and most exclusive cities in the world. Arcadia will tend to your loved one, monitor medication and ensure a healthy diet, as well as assist with personal care. Arcadia can offer any level of care from simple assistance getting ready for the day’s activities, continuous companionship, and preparing to retire for the evening to nursing care and vital sign monitoring. Arcadia and CruiseOne recognize that your loved one deserves the best, most dignified and compassionate service. Our professional caregivers will remain discreet so your loved one’s experience is both comfortable and dignified.

CruiseOne has designed travel programs tailored to accommodate your loved one’s interests and capabilities, including access to special needs equipment, as well as programs that will be enjoyable for the entire family. You can travel with a frail family member and rest assured an Arcadia caregiver is with them, allowing everyone the freedom to experience each location to whatever degree they desire.

Call (855) 272-8222 or click to plan a perfect vacation, customized for your unique situation, today.

June 13, 2013
by Clayton
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New research emphasizes the risk and connection between Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes

Arcadia Home Care Alzheimer's disease care and diabetes management

Diabetes management is crucial for aging seniors.

A new study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine finds strong evidence in the correlation between diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The study, which began in 1997, is the first long term study to focus on elderly diabetes patients who had no signs of cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study.

Over the twelve year observation of 783 diabetes patients, aged 70-79, researchers found that patients who had to be hospitalized for hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood sugar), became twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s later in life. The study also found that patients who had developed some form of dementia became twice as likely to suffer a severe hypoglycemic incident.

Senior author of the study, Kristine Yaffe, MD, of UCSF observes, “Older patients with diabetes may be especially vulnerable to a vicious cycle in which poor diabetes management may lead to cognitive decline and then to even worse diabetes management”. As cognitive decline worsens, the ‘vicious cycle’ goes round leading patients to, as Yaffe describes “be less able to effectively manage complex treatment regimens for diabetes and less able to recognize the symptoms of hypoglycemia and to respond appropriately, increasing their risk of severe hypoglycemia”.

One of the only solutions to this downward spiral is supervising a patient’s day-to-day treatment management and nourishment. At Arcadia Home Care, we have developed several programs to help prevent a hypoglycemic event, with caregivers specially trained to maintain a diabetic dementia sufferer’s health.

If you have an aging loved one at risk for this vicious cycle, call or click Arcadia Home Care today to discuss your options: (877) 484-4183.

June 7, 2013
by Clayton
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Possible connection between sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s disease

Arcadia Home Care for seniors with Alzheimer's

Sleep apnea is much more prevalent among seniors.

A new study from the NYU School of Medicine has uncovered new evidence that sleeping disorders that effect breathing, such as sleep apnea, may have an effect on developing Alzheimer’s. Or it could be the other way around, as research assistant professor Ricardo S. Osorio explains, “It’s really a chicken and egg story”.

This is the latest and most advanced study into linking the two ailments that plague our elderly population. Researchers observed and studied 68 seniors, aging 64-87, who showed little to no cognitive impairments and preformed a two night sleep study, as well as clinical exams that inspected cerebral fluids for plaque signatures, early indicators of Alzheimer’s.

Of the subjects tested, roughly a quarter had normal breathing, half had mild issues breathing while sleeping, and the remaining quarter had moderate to server sleep apnea. But the association with Alzheimer’s didn’t correlate directly to the results of the groups that were found to have issues breathing while sleeping. As Osorio describes, “Our study did not determine the direction of the causality, and, in fact, didn’t uncover a significant association between the two, until we broke out the data on lean and obese patients.”

In turn the study found that the connection between Alzheimer’s and sleep apnea depended on whether the individual had a body mass index (BMI) of <25. Those patients that were obese, with a BMI >25, had shown very little correlation of the two ailments. Whereas leaner patients, with a BMI of <25 showed a strong correlation between sleep apnea and having biomarkers of early Alzheimer’s.

“Sleep apnea skyrockets in the elderly, and this fact hasn’t been given the attention it deserves by the sleep world or the Alzheimer’s world”, says Osorio. Osorio is now pursuing a longer study that would try and expand research on whether lack of air flow while sleeping causes Alzheimer’s in lean adults, or if it is the early Alzheimer’s effects on breathing that cause higher sleep apnea rates in older individuals.

Arcadia Home Care & Staffing will be following this developing research closely, make sure to follow us on Facebook for the latest information.

June 4, 2013
by Clayton
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The driving discussion: why now might be a good time to explore the idea

Asking an aging loved one to give up their car keys may be easier if they’ve considered a plan earlier in life

A common topic of avoidance among families with an aging senior is when is the appropriate time to ask the elderly to hand over their car keys. A new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine has explored this conundrum which is often unpleasant for all involved.

This study comes from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the CU College of Nursing, which set up several focus groups and interviews between 33 local seniors over age 65 that still drive and various health care providers. Among the results, one of the observations made about the healthcare providers suggests that the providers are as reluctant as most families to bring up the conversation of asking a senior to forfeit their driving privileges for their safety and the safety of others. Lead author of the study, Marian Betz, MD, MPH at the CU School of Medicine notes that “these conversations often don’t happen until clinicians see a ‘red flag’ which could mean an accident or some physical problem that makes driving more difficult”. This could be one of the many reasons the fatality rate for drivers over 85 is four times higher than, what convention would identify as the most dangerous drivers, teens.

The study finds that the majority of seniors identified their health providers as “fair-minded” but rebuked the importance of the conversation, often by citing that the providers were unaware of their driver status or how they performed at driving.

But there is hope. While seniors may be reluctant, Betz states, “that most elderly drivers we spoke with said they were open to having earlier discussions.” She later notes, “Both clinicians and drivers supported the idea of regular questioning about driving as a way to make it an easier topic, as patients might be more receptive if they heard it once before.” This tactic has been coined ‘anticipatory guidance’, a way to ease in to the thought of giving up the car keys, planned out well in advance, usually under familial observation and hypothetical conversation.

“It’s not just about taking the keys, it’s about making plans”, Betz says. The sooner that you engage an aging loved one into planning for the day when they become a risk, the less resistance you’d likely encounter, preserving lives and happiness. If you have an aging loved one that has recently lost the ability to drive, or that is in a steady decline, call Arcadia Home Care for support and options. Arcadia can offer caregivers to help escort or chaperone your aging loved one on their daily routine, keeping them happy and independent.

May 15, 2013
by Clayton
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ArcadiaHomeCare.com Goes Mobile

Arcadia is excited to launch the beta version of its mobile optimized corporate website!

Screen-cap of the new mobile site

Now accessing care from anywhere is faster and more efficient than ever with any smartphone. Arcadia’s new platform offers quicker access to contact information, faster page rendering, and condensed content for an easier overview of our services.

Our IT team has put together this new site with ease and convenience in mind. This beta version of the site will make contacting an Arcadia representative for care a touch away. If the moment that a you access the site isn’t ideal for calling, you can easily email the site to yourself or a friend for future reference.

The mobile site houses five essential functions that are straight forward and simplified for on-the-go access. The accessibility includes single touch contacting, a location search tool with an integrated ability to call directly to our offices, a request for services form, general information, and the ability to search and apply for jobs from any smartphone.

We’re intent on increasing access to our services as swiftly and effectively as possible for anyone who stumbles upon our site from a smartphone.

May 10, 2013
by Clayton
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Arcadia Home Care & Staffing is celebrating 35 years of trusted home care

Arcadia Home Care & Staffing, providing trusted quality home care since 1978

This May marks Arcadia’s 35th year in business as a home care provider and health services’ staffing resource. Founded in 1978, Arcadia has transferred ownership and varied monikers over the past few decades but has continually provided our clients with compassionate home care and staffing professionals.

As a Michigan owned and headquartered company, Arcadia is proud of its continued expansion and national presence while maintaining significant focus on excellence. From our initial credentialing process, through ongoing continuing education and training, Arcadia upholds extreme attention to compliance and consistent quality care.

Arcadia’s expansion began in 1986, when it introduced an affiliate model of business that allowed for close community-based operations and interaction. Through an affiliate model, Arcadia has been able to maintain a higher level of integrity and quality control as opposed to that of an average franchise model. Arcadia’s affiliate model has allowed for quicker growth in new markets aiding the efforts of our existing company managed locations.

Near the end of the ‘90s Arcadia underwent several changes in executive ownership until a team lead by John Elliott purchased the company in 2004, going public shortly after. During its period as a public company, Elliott stepped down to pursue other ambitions and Arcadia broadened its focus to multiple business lines.

With no investment in growing the home care and staffing segment, the subsidiaries outside of home care began to outspend the company’s original core business, leading to the breakdown and fracturing of parent company, Arcadia Resources.

In May 2012, John Elliott, having thorough knowledge and experience with Arcadia’s home care and staffing potential for success, set about purchasing the home care and staffing subsidiary back from the distressed parent public company that had largely neglected it. Together with Aaron Goldstein, also a Metro Detroit native and current CFO, Elliott repurchased the subsidiary, creating Arcadia Home Care and Staffing. Once again, Arcadia became a private Michigan based company, saving and creating jobs in Metro Detroit as well as in all other states of operation.

Elliott and Goldstein have reinvested in a new Metro Detroit headquarters and have pushed several new initiatives into play within the past year, including a paperless policy, stronger marketing presence through radio and print, as well as introducing and developing new more efficient communications technologies. Under their leadership, Arcadia has introduced additional services to our clients and recruited a new sales and marketing force across the country to increase the company’s presence and customer service.

While the name and ownership of the company have changed over the years, Arcadia’s senior management has always been predominantly comprised of nurses and healthcare professionals who have had years of experience at all levels of providing customer service in the home care and staffing industry. One such tenured member of management is COO, Cathy Sparling, a RN who has experience in clinical management for over 25 years and has been in management with Arcadia for 22 years. Sparling has extensive knowledge and involvement in all of our operations and has been pivotal in business development, having comprehensive insight of the home health industry, including her continued involvement as an active member of NAHC’s Private Duty Advisory Board.

The compassion and thorough understanding of caregiving that our management has for this industry, has always been in the forefront of the direction that Arcadia has pursued as a private company. Now in 18 states, and providing care throughout all 50, Arcadia Home Care & Staffing is flourishing again. And now, this May, Arcadia has the pleasure of celebrating its 35 year of helping loved ones stay at home, healthier, longer.

April 25, 2013
by Clayton
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Social media may keep older adults healthier

Senior happy from Arcadia Home Care's Facebook

Social media can provide seniors answers instantly

New research out of the University of Luxembourg has begun to identify the positive effects of using social media as a resource for investigating ailments and promoting overall health in seniors. This new study has identified new user-friendly technology, such as tablets and touchscreens, coupled with increased availability to the Internet as a catalyst for new opportunities for seniors to obtain information quicker.

As we have mentioned before, seniors who actively engage in social media, such as Facebook, have exhibited higher cognitive ability then seniors that haven’t been exposed to the social media site. Study researcher, Dr. Anja Leist explains that “older adults can use social media to access health-related information and engage in patient-to-patient or patient-doctor conversations.” With the advent of social media and the myriad of healthy living websites available, anyone can pose a health related question and have it reach thousands of people in seconds. In some cases, seniors could even reach out directly to a doctor’s Facebook page and have their question answered directly from a reliable source.

Outside of obtaining direct information on a physical ailment, seniors have begun to find emotional support. As Dr. Leist points out, “there are many online forums where people in difficult life situations, such as informal caregivers of a spouse with dementia or individuals with depression, can exchange thoughts as well as receive and provide social support.”

The benefits of social media, to an aging loved one, has potential that is only now beginning to be understood. The dynamics of the Internet are in constant change and there is a lot of potential danger for the spread of misinformation and identity security for seniors, so caution needs to be stressed. But the future of seniors’ interactions online seems overwhelmingly promising. Follow Arcadia Home Care on our social media sites today, for more information.

March 28, 2013
by Clayton
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Aging mind able to make better decisions on common Parkinson’s drug

Decision making naturally becomes more difficult as we age.

A new study from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging has explored the effects of dopamine manipulation on seniors’ decision making. The researchers set out to develop a way to strengthen dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain that processes and weighs the risk-reward in making decision making.

As adults age the levels of dopamine release in the brain associated with decision making diminishes and often it is more difficult for seniors to interpret the repercussions of a situation. Dr. Rumana Chowdhury, lead researcher, claims that “(w)e know that dopamine decline is part of the normal aging process so we wanted to see whether it had any effect on reward-based decision making.” He and his team studied a group of 32 volunteers, all in their seventies, and a group of 22 volunteers, in their twenties. The two groups were compared as they underwent behavioral studies and engaged in cognitive games. The older group was then administrated Levodopa, a common Parkinson’s drug, and observed with Functional MRI.

“We found that when we treated older people who were particularly bad at making decisions with a drug that increases dopamine in the brain, their ability to learn from rewards improved to a level comparable to somebody in their twenties and enabled them to make better decisions”, Dr. Chowdhury says. The drugs ability to effectively deliver dopamine to the brain may have some powerful implications, as Dr. John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at Wellcome Trust notes, “the hope of therapeutic approaches that could allow older people to function more effectively in the wider community.”

At Arcadia Home Care & Staffing, we want to help you make the best decisions for your aging loved ones. If you believe that your aging loved one is experiencing less cognitive strength, call Arcadia and see how we can help.

March 26, 2013
by Clayton
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Not taking high blood pressure seriously could increase your risk for Alzheimer’s disease

High blood pressure and Alzheimer's Arcadia Home Care

Maintaining healthy blood pressure could stave off Alzheimer’s

A new study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, has been examining the correlation between untreated hypertension and an earlier onset of Alzheimer’s. Researchers have been testing and observing 147 adult participants, with an age range of 30-89.

The participants have been split into several groups based on diagnosed hypertension, genetic inclination to Alzheimer’s, a combination of the two, and a healthy control group. With new brain-imaging technologies, scientists have been able to determine which participants have a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s by identifying harmful amyloid plaques that deteriorate the brains function, years before the symptoms take hold.

The most pertinent information to come from this new data seems to point to a correlation of untreated high blood pressure and increased levels of harmful plaque in participants who had genetic risk to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Karen Rodrigue, assistant professor at the UT Dallas Center for Vital Longevity and lead author of this study, asserts, “Identifying the most significant risk factors for amyloid deposition in seemingly healthy adults will be critical in advancing medical efforts aimed at prevention and early detection.”

Participants who had been taking medication to manage their hypertension showed no difference in amyloid plaque levels compared to the healthy control group, even if they had genetic risk. While this study is ongoing, it’s findings are clearly illustrating the negative effects of not treating high blood pressure, with a possibility that the higher blood pressure may cause the plaque to be deposited more easily through the blood-brain barrier.

At Arcadia Home Care & Staffing, we can help your loved ones avoid issues like this by monitoring medication and managing a healthy diet. If you have loved one that could benefit from our services, please reach out, we want to help you and your loved ones stay at home and healthier, longer.

March 19, 2013
by Clayton
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Having a caregiver to help dementia patients eat well may not only improve their physical state, but overall well-being

Arcadia can help your loved struggling with dementia to eat and live healthier, longer

A new analysis, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, found that helping patients with dementia to remember to eat can improve their overall well-being. Dementia patients often struggle with keeping up healthy nutrition, and it is commonly reflected in negative moods or depression.

Li-Chan Lin, RN, PhD, of the National Yang-Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan, observed three groups of dementia patients that had poor nutrition and administrated a combination of methods for encouraging healthy eating routines in two groups while having the third group remain under care without any change in routine.

The two variable groups underwent two memory exercises, spaced retrieval and Montessori-Based Dementia Programming (MBDP), to various degrees. The spaced retrieval exercise had patients remember some information and then have the patient recall the information at increasing time intervals. Coupled with spaced retrieval, MBDP, had patients perform repetitious tasks that get increasingly complex.

One of the variable groups, consisting of 25 participants, had 24 fixed group sessions where they performed the mental exercises. The other variable group, consisting of 38 participants, had the same amount of sessions but they were tailored to the response of each participant.

Throughout the study, all the dementia patients involved were tested for their physical and mental well-being. After 6 months, the dementia patients that had gone through some intervention of mental exercise had an improved in body mass index and nutrition. In addition to this, the group with sessions tailored to their learning levels also achieved a significantly lower depression score. Dr. Lin concludes, “In our research, besides improving eating ability, improved nutrition, increased body mass index, and a moderating effect on depressive symptoms are produced”.

If you have an aging loved one who is showing early signs of malnutrition or dementia, don’t hesitate to contact Arcadia Home Care & Staffing for a free consultation. Arcadia has a number of programs specialized to help your aging loved one eat well and stay at home, healthier longer.