5 Tips for Seniors on Coping with COVID-Related Isolation

COVID-19 has forced many people to self-isolate to avoid infection. Seniors in particular have been advised to stay home because of the dangers they face as a result of the virus. Unfortunately, research shows that all that time home alone can harm physical and mental health, increasing the risk of issues like insomnia and anxiety. As the Unified Caring Association explains, feelings of worry are normal in such difficult times.

It’s important to ward off mental and physical health issues that may arise from isolation. This guide provides actionable and affordable tips for seniors on feeling their best while sheltering in place.

5 tips for seniors coping with isolation

Create a Cozy Space at Home

If you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the house, you might as well be comfortable. Your house is your sanctuary. Insider has tips on creating a cozy space on a budget. Ideas include making a nook for reading or relaxation, embracing the power of aromatherapy with scented candles, and allowing more natural light in. The sun is a natural source of vitamin D, which also brings other benefits. As MSN reports, vitamin D can help boost your mood and combat depression.

Look for Senior-Friendly Workouts to Stay Physically Fit

The CDC recommends that older adults stay physically active to avoid health problems that come with age. There are many senior-friendly workouts you can do at home. Women’s Health has a list of tutorials you can follow for free via YouTube. If you want to get some workout gear to supplement your exercises, such as a yoga mat or exercise bands, you can order it easily online without leaving the home. To save money, the Unified Caring Association recommends looking for discounts online.

Embrace a Healthy Diet With Easy Home-Cooking Recipes

A healthy balanced diet helps older adults get the nutrients they need to maintain optimal physical and mental function. This becomes more challenging with age, as metabolism slows down and people experience decreased appetite. As a result, they have to get sufficient vitamins and minerals while consuming smaller portions. Healthy eating can also be a problem if you find cooking tiring. One solution is batch cooking. Prepare food that you can freeze and reheat. Delish has a list of more than 30 recipes that are ideal for batch cooking.

Use Technology to Maintain Social Connectivity Digitally

If you are able to see family or friends safely in person, make the most of your time together. If you can’t see your loved ones — for example, because they live far away — there are still ways you can connect. You can try eating a meal together via video chat, for example. Alternatively, watch a movie together using apps like Watch2gether and MyCircleTV. Too complicated for you? A simple video chat with your smartphone or tablet will do the trick, too. If you need to upgrade your technology, look online for deals on the latest gadgets.

Pick Up a New Hobby to Stay Busy and Mentally Fit

Technology can also help keep you occupied at home, helping you avoid boredom. Use your tech tools to pick up a new hobby. Develop Good Habits offers a list of options for seniors, like learning an instrument. This is the kind of thing you can do online, thanks to free YouTube tutorials. Plus, learning something new will keep you mentally sharp.

With these 5 tips for coping with COVID-related isolation, you can stay happy at home as you continue to self-isolate because of COVID-19. You will also feel better emotionally as a result.

By Karen Weeks, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Simple Tips for Seniors to Spend Less… And Live More

If you’re a senior who has to get by on a tight budget, you know how stressful it can be to worry about money. The problem is that worrying about money can take over our lives, distracting us from what really matters. And if there’s one universal truth about worry, it’s that it never accomplished anything. So why not trade in your worry for action? Start with some simple tips to spend less.

These tips will help you take steps toward stretching your dollar further. The best part is that you don’t even have to make sacrifices. In fact, these simple changes will help you get more out of life and ditching all that worry about money will be like icing on the cake.

Reduce Your Housing Costs

For many seniors, worrying about money goes beyond day-to-day expenses. There’s also the bigger concern about becoming a burden to loved ones, and most often, it’s the big expenses and debt that create this burden. As worrisome as this is, there are actually some easy ways you can reduce spending on these big expenses.

Fixed expenses, like your housing costs, are ones you can’t avoid entirely, but they may not be quite as fixed as you think. For example, making your home more energy efficient is a simple way to lower utility bills. And if you have a mortgage on your home, you can save even more money by refinancing. Refinancing allows you to replace the mortgage you have with one that gives you better terms. There are some costs involved, and refinancing does reduce the equity in your home, but the benefit is that you can lower your monthly payments or even access the equity you have in the form of cash, which can be used for other major expenses you have.

Always Look for Discounts

Reducing your fixed expenses has a dramatic impact on your financial situation, but it’s just as important to find ways to reduce smaller expenses too. These small savings add up, and as a senior, you have one big advantage going for you: senior discounts! The great thing about this strategy is that it doesn’t involve missing out on anything. Instead, all you really have to do is make the most of the discounts and savings that are available to you.

The Balance has rounded up a list of chain restaurants that offer senior discounts, but if you don’t want to be limited to chains, they also recommend checking with any city’s tourism website for local deals. As long as you’re willing to search, you can truly find discounts for just about anything, including shopping and travel. What this ultimately means is that you can stay budget-conscious without having to give up the activities that help you stay connected, or the self-care essentials that keep you well.

Avoid Scams and Money Traps

Of course, being budget-conscious also means protecting your hard-earned savings from scammers. The fact that scammers target seniors is an unfortunate reality that we all have to be aware of, but it’s easy to protect your money with some smart strategies. For example, Consumer Reports recommends protecting your savings by opting out of mail solicitations and using a call screening service for your phone, along with setting up safeguard measures at your bank.

Along with preventing outright scams, it’s also good to be aware of ways that legitimate businesses get consumers to overspend. One example from AARP is how big box stores will use marketing strategies and even configure their store layout as a way to get you to buy more. While this isn’t the same as being scammed, it’s just as important to be aware of these tactics so you can avoid falling prey to them.

3 simple tips for seniors to spend less

Money isn’t everything, but just like the air we breathe, we need it to live. That’s probably why so many people worry about money. The good news is that financial worries can become a thing of the past. With these money-saving tips, you’ll be spending less and living more, which is a goal we can all get behind!

By Karen Weeks, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

Happiness = Health

Happiness = Health

Unified Caring Association (UCA) spreads caring in many ways, one of which is through sharing caring research. Often we see notes about how feeling happy more often helps us feel healthier. Recently we came across an article by HarvardHealth Publishing that suggests that there is scientific evidence that positive emotions can result in a longer healthier life. We are all for that! Want to know more? Here are the short notes on how happiness can equal health.

Start on Happy Things

Begin with what makes you happy. Playing with your pets, helping the elderly at a senior center, or painting are just some of the things that people like to do that brings them happiness. Doing things that make you happy also help lower stress levels. Continually and consistently doing things that make us happy lowers our stress levels and could reduce risks of health problems like a heart attack.

3 Pathways to Happiness

During their research on positive psychology, Research Psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson examined three pathways to happiness: feeling good, engaging fully and doing good. As seen through the testing of hundreds of volunteers and focus groups, it was found that these pathways contribute to happiness and life satisfaction. 

Feeling good relates to our ability to seek pleasurable emotions. These emotions focus on reaching happiness in an effort to maximize our pleasure and minimize our pain. 

Engaging fully in the pursuit activities that “…engage us fully, from the influential research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. For decades, Csikszentmihalyi explored people’s satisfaction in their everyday activities, finding that people report the greatest satisfaction when they are totally immersed in and concentrating on what they are doing.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-happiness-health-connection

When we are doing good and doing caring acts that helps others we generate more happiness. More poetically put, doing is “searching for meaning outside yourself, tracing back to Aristotle’s notion of eudemonia, which emphasized knowing your true self and acting in accordance with your virtues.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-happiness-health-connection) This is a feeling that can happen when you are “getting in the flow.”

How can you know you are in the flow?

What does it mean to be in the flow of things? Is it a fast paced atmosphere where everything seems to be going your way? Or is it when we spend time laughing with those we love? Check out some suggestions below on ways to get in the flow.

-Time just flies by and you realize that you have been working long and hard without feeling tired. The “loss” of time is no big deal, and you would probably do the activity again.

-Your mind is not occupied with your activities of your internal thoughts. “You aren’t focused on your comfort, and you aren’t wondering how you look or how your actions will be perceived by others. Your awareness of yourself is only in relation to the activity itself, such as your fingers on a piano keyboard, or the way you position a knife to cut vegetables, or the balance of your body parts as you ski or surf.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-happiness-health-connection)

-You are present in the moment. This means not thinking about the daily “to-do” list that is sitting on your desk, refrigerator, etc.  An example is that you aren’t thinking about such mundane matters as your shopping list or what to wear tomorrow.

-Keeping an active mind and an active body. This can be done through learning music, reading books, playing sports, or going for a hike.

-You work effortlessly. “Flow activities require effort (usually more effort than involved in typical daily experience). Although you may be working harder than usual, at flow moments everything is “clicking” and feels almost effortless.” (https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-happiness-health-connection)

It is clear that whatever we choose to do, if it makes us happy, it is good for our health. When we do good we can get a bonus boost when we are helping others feel good too!

Unified Caring Association is constantly striving to help create a more caring world. We love sharing more caring information on our website and through blogs that share caring in our community, activities, and reviews. We also send out caring posts on our social media accounts (Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter) to give inspiration throughout the week.

It’s Going to be a Sunny Day… UCA & Love for the Elderly Work Together to Spread Cheer.

sunshine

Twitter-It’s-going-to-be-a-sunny-day…UCA-Sunshine-Box-work-together-to-spread-some-cheer.

Unified Caring Association (UCA) helps spread caring, kindness and cheer in our communities. What can brighten the day more than a special surprise delivered to you or a loved one?! UCA recently teamed up with Love for the Elderly to deliver Sunshine Boxes to help brighten the day for the elderly with the delivery of gifts to them.

Sunshine Boxes is the creation of a 501c3 non-profit organization called Love for the Elderly that began in 2016. They have been sending treasured gifts ever since. In the latest box delivery, these care packages were delivered by youth ambassadors to seniors in nursing homes in Arizona. Oftentimes, the seniors who live in the homes feel isolated and lonely. These cheerful boxes contain fun, cute, and silly items to bring about smiles and joy. Some examples of items that might be included in these boxes are neon smiley face stress balls, yellow bandanas emoji pens (of course smiley face ones!), and various other yellow and positive themed items.

Sunshine-Box

We are in love with these, and recently sponsored the delivery of the Sunshine Boxes! Included in this delivery was a Moonbeam Feeling Pack (includes cards and book) for each senior! We heard back and were moved by the stories. The big smiles and long conversations that are held with the elderly who receive the Sunshine Boxes warm our hearts. This is what we see as love and caring for the elderly. 

Moonbeam-deck-of-cards

There are so many more UCA activities, caring communities, and ways of sharing caring. Read more on our blogs, or follow us on social media (Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter) to catch up on a daily dose of care!

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