Elderly health care

The core of health care for the elderly has never been to follow the trend and buy sky-high-priced health care products, pursue extreme health regimens, and insist on "perfect longevity indicators", but to focus on the three core points of "individual adaptation, stable control of chronic diseases, and maintaining quality of life." For the vast majority of ordinary elderly people, reducing illness and living comfortably is more practical than blindly pursuing a long life.

I have been doing health follow-up for the elderly at a community health service center for almost 8 years, and I have seen too many elderly people who have taken detours. Last month I just met Aunt Zhang, who lives in Building 3. She saved up half a year's pension to buy a $12,000 magnetic therapy bed sold in health care groups, claiming it could cure high blood pressure and diabetes. However, just a week after the bed arrived home, she stopped her antihypertensive medicine in order to "make up for the effect."

When it comes to elderly health care, there are two completely different voices among the people and even in many professional fields. One group is the "active interventionist" group, which believes that the elderly should supplement their nutrition as much as possible, exercise as much as possible, undergo the most comprehensive physical examination, and keep all indicators to the standards of young people to be healthy. ； The other school is the "let nature take its course", which believes that no one will get sick when they get old, and there is no need to deliberately take care of it. When you feel uncomfortable, you can just go to the hospital. If you keep taking care of it, it will be easy to worry about problems.

In fact, both statements have their own applicable scenarios, and both have encountered many pitfalls. For example, Uncle Li, who we followed up two years ago, is 72 years old and has a history of type 2 diabetes for 14 years. He was a staunch "active interventionist" before. He ate multi-grain meals until his gastric mucosa was eroded, and he forced himself to walk 10,000 steps a day until he had fluid in his knees. His glycosylated hemoglobin was controlled to 6.1%, but he lost more than 20 kilograms. He complained of stomach discomfort and knee pain every day, and was too lazy to go to the park downstairs. Later, we adjusted the plan for him, allowing him to eat half a piece of white steamed bread for each meal, walking slowly for 15 minutes after meals every day, and relaxing the glycation level to 7.0%. When we saw him last month, he was a little fatter. We also went to the surrounding area with an old friend for two days, and his blood sugar has been very stable.

There is also the question of "should the elderly take supplements" that everyone is arguing about the most. Some experts say that as long as they eat well, there is no need to take supplements, while others say that the elderly must take supplements due to poor absorption. In fact, there is no standard answer? If the elderly can drink enough 300ml of pure milk every day, go out to bask in the sun for half an hour every day, and include eggs, meat, and green leafy vegetables in their diet, then there is really no need to buy extra vitamin D and calcium tablets. Food supplements are enough. ； But if you are lactose intolerant and can't drink milk, your legs tend to cramp easily, and you don't like to go out in winter, then you can follow the doctor's advice and take some ordinary calcium tablets and vitamin D that are approved by the state. A bottle only costs a few yuan, which is totally fine. You don't have to listen to people who say "it's a medicine that's 30% toxic", and there's no need to spend thousands on imported so-called "naturally extracted" supplements. The active ingredients are actually not much different.

To put it bluntly, what many people haven’t noticed is that after following me over the past few years, I really feel that emotions have a greater impact on the health of the elderly than many indicators. Not long ago, there was an 80-year-old grandma Chen. She lived alone with her children in other places. Her high blood pressure kept rising and falling, and she tried several antihypertensive drugs to no avail. Later, when we visited her home, we found out that she didn’t even have anyone to talk to. She sat at home watching TV every day, and the more she sat there, the more bored she became. Later, I helped her sign up for a paper-cutting class in the community. She went to learn paper-cutting from a group of old sisters every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Her blood pressure was measured last month and it was within the normal range for three consecutive weeks. Even the amount of antihypertensive medication was reduced by half a tablet.

I have been working in this industry for almost ten years and have seen hundreds of elderly people’s pension conditions. My deepest feeling is that there is really no unified standard answer to health care for the elderly. Don’t compare with others who eats more expensive health supplements, don’t compare with others who takes more steps every day, don’t torture your appetite and torture your joints just to get the perfect number on the physical examination report. You can eat your favorite meals, sleep peacefully, go out for a walk to buy groceries, and chat with old friends. Even if you have high blood pressure and diabetes, as long as they are controlled steadily and do not affect your life, you are already in a good state.