Guides for family caregivers on home safety, dementia care, and supporting an aging parent at home.
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 Why this list exists Every article on this site is supposed to trace its numbers to a real source. Doing that consistently means running into the same problem over and over: a statistic gets repeated across dozens of caregiving websites, sounds authoritative because…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 Is sudden incontinence in an older adult normal? No, and more importantly it is often reversible. Clinicians call new or suddenly worsened leakage transient incontinence, and it affects up to a third of older adults living at home. The usual causes are a…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 How much weight loss is a problem? Losing 5 percent or more of body weight over six to twelve months without trying is the threshold clinicians use, and it warrants an evaluation rather than a trip to the pharmacy. For a 160 pound…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 My parent suddenly seems confused. What should I do? Call their doctor today, or go to urgent care or an emergency room. Confusion that comes on over hours or days is not normal aging and is not how dementia begins. Doctors call it…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 The short answer There are four systems that might drive your parent, and each is organized around a different thing: age, disability, health insurance, or community goodwill. Older Americans Act rides go to anyone 60 or over with no income test. ADA paratransit…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public Health Last reviewed: August 2026 The short answer Older drivers do have higher death rates per mile driven. But the main reason is not that they crash more. It is that they are more likely to die in the crashes they do have, because bodies get more fragile…
It is most likely delirium, not dementia arriving overnight. Delirium is a sudden change in attention and thinking triggered by illness, surgery, medication, pain, or simply being in an unfamiliar place, and it affects roughly one in four older hospital patients. It usually improves as the underlying cause is treated. Tell the nurses today, because…
You have probably read that caregiving will shorten your life. That claim comes from one study in 1999, it applied only to caregivers who reported feeling strained, and at least seven larger studies since have found the opposite. What is true is that caregivers report more depression and more stress. What helps most is not…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public HealthLast reviewed: July 2026 Most people have surgery within a day or two, start moving the next day, and spend weeks to months in rehabilitation. Between 40% and 60% get back to the mobility they had before. The single most useful thing a family can do is unglamorous:…
By Simon Peter Lokomo, MPH — Public HealthLast reviewed: July 2026 Look at the complicated things first, not the obvious ones. The tasks that fail earliest are managing money, medications, cooking, shopping and transport, while bathing and dressing usually hold on far longer. That means the unopened post on the hall table tells you more…