Archive for 'Caring & Coping'

Every day, Bureau of Labor Statistics interviewers ask Americans to detail how they spent the previous 24 hours, how many minutes and hours they devoted to everything from shopping to child care to phone calls. The results, culled from 12,500 respondents, make up the American Time Use Survey.

It began in 2003, but only last year did the bureau start asking about a key activity for millions of people — elder care. The recently released 2011 results reveal how many millions ...

“I need to have something when she’s gone,” Maggie Steber says as images of her aged mother – looking alternately angry, beatific and simply lost – fill the screen. “Some people write memoirs. We photograph, so we don’t forget.”

You aren’t likely to forget this portrait of her mother, Madje, that Ms. Steber, a photojournalist, has assembled from video and old snapshots and the transfixing pictures she took herself over a long caregiving odyssey.

Phillip Toledano has created a similarly memorable rendering ...

A collection of blood samples used by researchers in Iceland to find a gene mutation that seems to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.Jon GustafssonA collection of blood samples used by researchers in Iceland to find a gene mutation that seems to protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

The Times reports today that researchers in Iceland have discovered a gene mutation that appears to protect those who inherit it from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of cognitive decline. Scientists are hailing the discovery as a ...

Who would have thought that popping a pill could help prevent falls in the elderly? According to a new report on fall prevention, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, vitamin D, of all things, may help adults age 65 and older stay steady and upright.

Falls are the leading cause of injury in adults 65 and older, and preventing them is much more effective than treating them. Thirty percent to 40 percent of the elderly fall at least once a year; ...

Why would anyone in her right mind spend July 4 — and then July 5 and July 6 — trying to make sense out of Medicare Part D, the drug plan added six years ago to an otherwise user-friendly health care system widely beloved by the 65-and-over set?

My 65th birthday is approaching, and with it the deadlines for enrolling in Medicare. As a retiree, I must switch my primary health coverage to its new role as secondary provider to the ...