Wearables are items that are worn or carried, as an accessory. The term is not new. In fact, it dates back to the 13th century when the first wearable was invented – the eyeglasses.

Thanks to technology, today’s wearables are more than just a pair of reading glasses. They are more multi-functional, cool and chic devices that provide assistance in some aspects of daily living.

First used by millennials to track their health and fitness goals, it spilled over to baby boomers who find them useful in offsetting some of the effects of aging.

Wearables can keep track of an elderly’s health and fitness issues and serve as life-lines to doctors, emergency personnel, and family members. They help get some of the user’s basic needs done and get help when necessary.

There are now countless wearables for seniors in the market but the following are observed to be the best.

Best Wearables for Seniors: 

Today’s seniors differ much from their counterparts a decade ago. Today, seniors live longer and prefer to live alone. While this may sound romantic, it raises the twin risks of safety and security. And this is where wearables can be an invaluable possession.

1.  Fitbit Charge 2 Health Rate and Fitness Wristband:
This wearable is perfect for on-the-go seniors who are concerned with their health and fitness.

Fitbit Charge 2 monitors a user’s fitness level, motivating him to do better. It has a built-in heart monitor which shows heart rates during various activities, even while sitting at home.

It also has guided breathing sessions that suggests breathing exercises based on heart rate.

2.  Alert-1’s Mobile + Home Fall Detection System:
Injuries from the falls are the leading cause of deaths among people 65 years old and above.

This wearable can improve your chances of getting help in case of a fall.

Alert-1’s has the latest MPERS (mobile personal response system) that works as a two-in-one mobile and home fall detection system, which means that you can get help in case you experience a fall wherever you are – at home or mobile.

And since it is GPS-enabled, help can get to you no matter where you are.

To make it more user-friendly, Alert-1 allows two-way voice calling in case you fail to press the emergency alarm button.

3.  Great Calls Lively Wearable Senior Activity Tracker:
This app-based stylish band also works as a fall detector and an MPERS to make sure help will be on the way in case you fall while on the move.

To make it lively, it counts steps through bells or whistles, gives health tips and fun health challenges to keep the user motivated.

It has a button for non-emergency situations like locking a car, and one for emergencies like feeling faint or medication reminders.

4.  BeClose Senior Safety System:
This wearable is designed to help live-alone seniors be safe and secure at home.

The BeClose combines an alert button connected to a base station through discreet wireless household sensors.

BeClose captures data of your daily routine and stores them in the base station. If it detects deviations from your daily routine it activates an alarm so emergency personnel can attend to you.

5.  Kanega Watch:
Kanega Watch was designed to improve its user’s independence and, at the same time, stylish and chic.

The Kanega Watch has a speech-based interface instead of a smartphone app. It detects falls and long periods of immobility; it gives reminders for medication and has a voice-activated interface that helps users find their way home.

The market for wearables is growing. Currently, one in six consumers uses the device for health and fitness reasons. But most of them are millennials.

Seniors are lagging behind in using wearables. But they are catching up. They are beginning to realize the need for wearables to offset some of the negative effects of aging.

~oOo~

The post Wearables for Seniors: Cool and Super Useful first appeared on Age With Charm.

Since the invention of the wifi in 1997, and its introduction into our lives, things have changed forever.

Technology has changed everything, i.e, how we live, our views of life and living, our relationships, the things we use and how we use them, etc.

While we easily got by before, now they have become necessities, even for seniors.

In fact, technology has found a very live, engaging and lucrative market – the elderly. There are devices to monitor heart and blood pressure, fall sensors, vision enhancement, voice-activation and recognition, and many others in the market.

And these are just what we call a veritable “tip of the iceberg.”

Consider these:

1.  Wanganui Healthcare System:
Wanganui is a city on the west coast of North Island, New Zealand. It made the news because technology has found its way there.

A local security company, Securely, partnered with Essence to establish a technology-based healthcare management for its senior population.

The system will help elderly people remain in their homes, yet allowing their families to monitor their wellness and safety.

This is done through sensors installed in critical areas of the house that track’s an elderly’s daily activities like opening the ref door, flushing the toilet or switching on the light. Over time, the data gathered is used to predict his regular pattern of activity and sends out an alarm to the family if the pattern is broken.

The system is so user-friendly. It can be voice-activated or through a control attached to a watch’s strap and accessible by a smartphone 24/7.

2.  Smart Rollator:

A rollator is a walker or walking frame used by the disabled or elderly people for support and balance while walking or moving around.

This simple and mundane device was given a technological makeover by the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland and Orton to motivate seniors to increase their physical activity.

VTT added sensors and algorithms along the rollator that measure a range of functions covering a typical day of an elderly. These sensors gather data like distance covered in a day or week and use these as a benchmark to motivate the rollator user to do more in the coming days.

3.  Treating Faecal Incontinence and Constipation:
Faecal incontinence and constipation are two medical conditions that afflict seniors. Nursing home statistics show that roughly 50% of patients suffer from one or the other.

Faecal incontinence is the uncontrolled bowel movement, while constipation is difficulty in disposing of waste – both affect the internal anal sphincter muscle.

The sphincter is a ring of smooth muscle around the anal opening. It contracts and relaxes without conscious effect. But age weakens the muscle and if other factors such as dementia come in, bowel movement becomes uncontrollable.

Technology, however, does not want to either sit frequently or wait too long, on the toilet seat.

A high-tech procedure was developed by the Department of Medicine at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University to contract and relax the sphincter muscle using Magnetic MicroRNAs.

Before you rush to the bathroom, here’s a little beef about the procedure:

–  MicroRNA is a cellular RNA fragment that prevents the production of a particular protein by binding to and destroying the messenger RNA that would have produced that protein.

Note: RNA stands for ribonucleic acid, which is present in all living cells. Its main function is to carry instructions from the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) for controlling the body’s synthesis of proteins.

Doctors have successfully injected MicroRNA near the anal opening. But by itself, it will dissipate throughout the body. To keep it in place, they put in little metal fragments into it, then injected a small magnet around the solution.

Presto! It stayed in place and was able to regulate the sphincter muscle’s contractions.

The above are just teeny bits of technology applications that have redefined old age. Currently, there are “smart” homes and “smart” devices specifically designed to make the lives of seniors an easy, happy and enjoyable experience.

Image: https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Plus-built-Hub-included/dp/B075RWFCHB

~oOo~

The post How Technology is Redefining the Lives of Seniors first appeared on Age With Charm.

Can you imagine what a senior’s life would be like if not for the latest in technology?

It would certainly be like my father’s when he was in his 50s.

My father was with the mass media and I can still remember his banging away at his Olivetti portable typewriter until late at night for his newspaper column, or a speech for others.somebody else.

Or Orlando Estrada, 70+ from Los Angeles, would still be moving around in his wheelchair.

Orlando was a design engineer of Hewlett-Packard. After retirement, he had to undergo two knee-replacement surgeries which put him in a wheelchair.

For a while, Orlando thought it was the end of his world. Then he joined an online health club in his senior center that uses two Microsoft products intended to help seniors get in shape, increase their social interaction, and manage their health information online.

It helped improve his overall fitness, lowered his blood pressure, and made him get off his wheelchair and walk again.

Of course, technology has always been with us since the dawn of man. But it was primitive, at best, during my father’s time.

Technology grew by leaps and bounds in 1981 when IBM released its first personal computers and, in 1990, the Internet went global.

Then, something happened in 2000 which caught the world totally by surprise – the first batch of baby boomers retired.

They created legions of people in their 60s with different needs. While they all want to enjoy their retirement, a lot of them have to cope with loneliness and medical issues.

Seeing the large business potential of this group, technology cranked its gears up and the rest is history.

Today, there is no aspect of an elderly’s life that is not touched or controlled by technology.

The following are the five major areas where seniors are benefitting tremendously from technology:

1.  Easier social interaction:

Numerous surveys have shown that getting connected is beneficial to the elderly’s health. In fact, it is even more important to a senior’s health and well-being than genetics and maintaining a good weight.

It lowers depression cases by 20% and enhances elderly people’s cognitive function.

Although online communication could never replace person-to-person contact, in situations where it is impossible or impractical, an email, a video, or an audio chat is good enough.

And technology has made all this easier, faster, and cheaper.

2.  Personal and home safety:

Various surveys have consistently shown that 80 to 90 of seniors want to age at home.

While this may seem an excellent idea, it is not without risks. Elderly people, being frail, forgetful, and can hardly see, hear or smell, are prone to home accidents.

In 2009 in Wales, England, 7, 475 people aged 65 above died from home accidents, 49% of them due to falls.

To minimize these risks, technology has come up with several products, i.e., fall and smoke detectors, home invasion systems, blood pressure, and heartbeat monitors, that send an alarm at the press of a button in case of emergencies.

3.  Physical and Mental Fitness:

Like wheelchair-bound Estrada, you can check into your local seniors center to see if they have activities to help keep you in shape physically and mentally.

The NCOA (National Council on Aging) has several downloadable online programs intended to promote senior fitness. The value of making use of these programs is immeasurable.

If this doesn’t appeal to you, you can play computer games. They keep the loneliness away and keep you mentally sharp.

4.  Medication Management:

I am taking a prescription drug a day for my hypertension – my only one – yet there are days when I forget to take it.

How much more if you take almost half-a-dozen a day?

In a 2009 survey done by Medco Health Solutions among seniors, more than half of the respondents are taking more than five prescription drugs a day while 20% were between 10 to 19. How could you manage that?

You can use the good old-fashioned way – the pillbox. It can help to a certain extent. But pillboxes tell you what medication to take, not when.

To remove this burden, technology has come up with smartphone apps that beep you when and what meds to take.

5. Health Tracking:

Last year I bought a wearable pedometer that tracks distance and calories consumed given a particular activity. I bought them so I can track my daily morning exercise.

It was a simple thing, very basic and it did not last long, by the way. But the point is to show how far technology has covered the bases where health and wellness are concerned.

There are more sophisticated products, apps, and cloud-based computing, that monitor your overall health and well-being.

The benefits of these products are invaluable. They provide the basis for your health management. Without them, you may be flying towards a storm without you knowing it.

These days there is no shortage of technology products to help seniors live a comfortable, trouble-free life.

The downside is that most of these require a learning curve to use and be of help – something a lot of seniors do not want to go through.

A reader of one of my articles wrote that her 90+ Mom is skeptical about the latest technologies for seniors. But she added that her Mom’s life has been saved several times by the personal emergency warning device she wears around her neck.

At the end of the day, technology is useless unless you embrace it. The stakes, however, are great if you don’t.

Please share with other seniors to help them decide.

~oOo~

The post Technology Benefits Among Seniors first appeared on Age With Charm.