In terms of senior care there are 3 “legs” that you should take into consideration: proper hydration, proper nutrition, and proper medication. If any of those things are missing, a seniors health tends to go downhill rapidly. Learn more in this video.
The Analogy of the Three Legs of Senior Care
A three-legged stool is not inherently the most stable platform to begin with. And this is an analogy that I heard a couple years ago, I don’t really know where so I can’t give credit. But it made sense to me.
Watch the video now! Prefer to read? Here’s the gist of what else senior placement experts, Todd and Kelley, spoke about in this video clip.
Why All Good Senior Care Must Cover 3 Critical Components
Inherently a 3-legged stool is pretty unstable to begin with, so each leg is super important to the overall structure and integrity of it.
So in terms of senior care, the three legs are going to be:
- Proper hydration
- Proper nutrition
- Proper medication.
So that’s what I’m thinking about when I talk about the three legs. If you take one of those things away, everything becomes super unstable, really fast, and bad things will happen, right? If you’re sitting on the stool, you’re going down without one of those legs.
The Importance of Proper Hydration for Seniors
Proper hydration is really important. I read as we age, water is a smaller percentage of your body composition. So it’s easier to get dehydrated for an elderly just because of the natural aging process and less water in the body. As you become dehydrated, all kinds of things can happen, right?
- You have dizziness
- You can have some confusion
- Your mental clarity goes away.
That’s just with early dehydration! Later on, more serious things can occur.
Avoiding Malnutrition in Seniors
Proper nutrition is leg two. Everybody knows you have to eat right to stay healthy… three square meals a day, ideally. But elderly people are less hungry and their metabolism is slower.
Usually you’re looking at less calories and less nutrients. And that’s if everything is going right.
A tremendous amount of energy goes into eating every day, right? You’ve got the planning, you’ve got the procurement, yo’ve got the prep, you need to eat it, and then you clean up. There’s a lot of energy involved in that.
With somebody that’s slowing down, that doesn’t have as much stamina, that can be a real issue. That can lead to malnutrition, and obviously everybody knows that’s not good for anybody.
The Need for Proper Medication Supervision
Leg three is proper medication. A lot of seniors and a lot of Americans have chronic illness and get prescribed a lot of prescription drugs in Western medicine. But the more you take, the harder it is to keep that regime and that schedule.
When there are multiple meds per day, at different times of the day, there’s so many changes and it’s so hard for many elderly people to keep on that regular and consistent schedule.
What should be mixed with one thing and not the other thing, what time of day… all of that, right?
Keeping All Three Legs in Balance
Proper nutrition, proper hydration, proper medication, not under medicating, not over medicating. All of those things are so important. If one of those things starts to wobble, the other ones go away really fast and bad things happen. So keep these three pillars of senior care in mind when searching for care for your loved one.
