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What Is Low Vision?

We know that as we age, things don’t always work the way that they used to. But as caregivers for elderly parents and aging loved ones, it is very important to stay aware of any changes we see happening in the lives of those under our care.

One of the changes that may have a very profound impact in the daily life of your elderly loved on is Age Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). According to the Macular Degeneration Partnership, AMD can be described as:

“A progressive eye condition that affects as many as 15 million Americans and millions more around the world. The disease attacks the macula of the eye, where our sharpest central vision occurs. Although it rarely results in complete blindness, it robs the individual of all but the outermost, peripheral vision, leaving only dim images or black holes at the center of vision.”

Some of the causes of AMD are:

• Macular degeneration
• Diabetes
• Glaucoma
• Retinitis pigmentosa and congenital
• Neurologic

AMD can affect senior members of the family in a variety of ways, turning the most basic tasks of daily living into an exercise. Some of the ways low vision may affect your elderly loved ones include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Impact on Daily Living Activities:
These daily tasks include activities like bathing, moving about within the home, eating, dressing, grooming, etc. The attempt to fulfill these daily activities can put your senior family member in precarious situations that may not have been considered risky prior to the loss of vision.

• Impact on Driving:
Understanding the combination of skills that are needed to drive a vehicle, we can understand how impaired vision can cause many complications. If adequate lighting is not available, this can put your elderly loved one as well as other drivers in danger, especially at night.

• Impact on Social Life:
Low vision affects the social activities of elderly persons in a number of ways. Psychologically, low vision limits senior citizens because they are often afraid to leave their homes. Studies have shown that low vision adults have a much harder time moving about in unfamiliar places than in their more familiar homes.

How Can Low Vision Be Treated?

AMD is a bilateral impairment to vision that significantly impairs the functioning of the patient and cannot be adequately corrected with medical, surgical, therapy, conventional eye-wear or contact lenses. It is often a loss of sharpness or acuity but may present as a loss of field of vision, light sensitivity, distorted vision or loss of contrast.

Low Vision Rehabilitation Services do not cure the cause of the vision problem but rather utilize the remaining vision to its fullest potential. Low Vision rehabilitation programs offer a wide range of services, such as low vision evaluations and special training to use visual and adaptive devices. They also offer guidance for making changes in your home as well as group support from others with low vision.

If your elderly loved one is experiencing vision loss that may be due to Age Related Macular Degeneration contact a Vision Rehabilitation Program to find out how they can help your senior family member utilize their remaining vision in the most optimal way possible. It’s also good to keep in mind that depending on your elder’s situation, Low Vision Therapy may be included in their Medicare Home Health Benefit.

You might be surprised to learn this, but exercise is one of the most inexpensive, accessible, and effective natural treatments for ADHD.

On the surface level, the two seem completely unrelated. Exercise is an activity that keeps people physically fit, whereas ADHD is a disorder caused by a deficiency in dopamine and norepinephrine, the neurotransmitters responsible for controlling movement, impulses, and attention. But did you know that physical activity triggers the brain to release chemicals that diminish the symptoms of ADHD? When we perform aerobic activities like walking, physiological changes in the brain occur, resulting in an increased production of norepinephrine and dopamine. Increased levels of these neurotransmitters regulate the attention system, enabling the child to ignore irrelevant stimuli and increase attention when performing tasks. Exercise also produces endorphins – hormone-like compounds that reduce pain and induce a feeling of euphoria. Studies show that the symptoms of ADHD are aggravated by stress, but high endorphin levels counteract this because they protect the mind from the negative effects of stress hormones.

Aside from boosting neurotransmitter production and releasing endorphins, exercise also stretches the postural muscles. The postural muscles are the group of muscles that maintain our posture and support the spine. Since our postural muscles always interact with gravity, they are an excellent source of stimulation for the brain. This also means that any disorder that affects the function or development of the postural muscles, like musculoskeletal conditions, has a negative impact on brain activity. When this occurs, one of the brain’s hemispheres become weaker than the other – usually the right – and the child’s brain function and development gets affected. This is why a sedentary lifestyle can contribute to the onset of ADHD. The average child spends eight hours a day at school, and their free time playing video games or watching television. The same goes for adults – after 8 hours at work, they are often too tired to do anything but go home and rest.

If your child has ADHD, especially ADHD Hyperactive Type, daily exercise will do him or her a whole world of good. Your child doesn’t have to be in the school’s varsity sports team to benefit from regular exercise; in fact, 30 minutes of daily aerobic activity will bring noticeable improvements in weeks. Research on ADHD and exercise show that children are more likely to benefits more from unstructured activities – e.g. walking, biking, even skateboarding – than structured activities like team sports. Consider taking your child to the park and letting him or her run loose, or try to find more opportunities to walk instead of taking the car.

Children with ADHD can benefit from structured activities as well. The main advantage of letting your child join organized sports is the structure and discipline that will be instilled into his or her life. Studies show that gymnastics, swimming, martial arts, and other sports that focus on coordination and movement are best for ADHD children because these teach them how to control their attention span. Because they are not required to work together in a group, children with ADHD are able to socialize more effectively and naturally.

Remember, it only takes a few lifestyle changes for inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity to go away for good. Ask a holistic health care practitioner about other natural treatments that will help your child overcome ADHD.

Because of wrongly learned thinking, you sometimes behave as if you’re helpless in a certain situation, when in fact you’re not. Because of this, you often feel trapped and unable to work things out for yourself. You may then seek out a therapist, but only because of this erroneous pattern of thought.

Learned Helplessness in Everyday Life.

So let’s look at some practical examples from everyday life. Some people have the misfortune, often through no fault of their own, of entering into one bad relationship after another. One person leaves them. They meet another who is unfaithful to them. Yet another who swears undying love, but refuses to commit to marriage.

Not surprisingly, it reaches the stage where the poor individual thinks;

‘What’s the point? I’ll always lose someone to whom I become attached.’

Then again, there’s the person who’s parents undergo a bitter divorce. The person thinks;

‘There’s no way I’m committing myself to any sort of relationship. I’m certainly not risking the hurt that my parents went through.’

Perhaps a lady meets someone who seems fine on the surface. They marry, but within a few months, he’s beating her to a pulp. Once she finally rids herself of him, she swears she’ll never become involved again.

Now if you’re not a depressive type, you look on these episodes as applied to you as purely personal decisions.

There are even ladies I’ve heard about who’ve been married three times and every time their husband has died.

‘Good grief,’ they think. ‘I’m a black widow. Every man I touch, drops dead. No more marrying for me.’

Again, if they’re not depressed, then life can still be fun and enjoyable, but the people in all the examples I’ve mentioned will be very careful about future relationships. All these people have had bad experiences, from which they’ve developed ‘learned responses.’ Their lives are probably happy enough. They’re simply going to be very circumspect regarding relationships in future.

But then we come to the poor individual suffering from Depression. This condition does not simply appear. Somewhere way back, probably buried so deep in their minds that they have no idea it’s even there, is a reason for their condition. Furthermore, a reason so positive and telling that it’s become a ‘learned response.’

It’s here that we do find ‘learned helplessness,’ because the person with Depression is imprisoned by something they don’t understand, something that causes them physical pain and something that robs them of living an enjoyable, productive life.

But here’s something to be thinking about. Just as a behaviour was learned and caused distress, it can also be un-learned so that the person may be freed from their prison

A natural method of relieving migraines that is non-invasive and without the use of medication is the use of chiropractic care. This method is of particular benefit for patients who for some reason or another are not able to take prescribed medication.

Despite the advances in medical science over the last hundred years migraine headaches remain idiopathic, their cause remains unknown. There are several theories that attempt to explain migraines and their causes but the net result is no definitive cause has yet been found. Serotonin deficiency, genetic malformation and arterial swelling in the brain are some of them.

On the other hand a fairly common chiropractic theory is subluxations at the base of the head and neck are responsible in some way for the production of migraines. Subluxations are tense or knotted areas in the muscles attached to the small bones of the upper spinal column. When x-rayed doctors often miss the tension of the muscles as the bones appear to be in their correct places. A chiropractor can relax these subluxations by gently manipulating the spine.

There are two varieties of chiropractic care for those who suffer from migraines. Straight and mixed chiropractic. Straight chiropractic is only about manipulating the spine to relieve the subluxations. Mixed chiropractic on the other hand uses traditional manipulation with other complimentary techniques. Reducing neck strain and tension is the goal of mixed chiropractic care.

Chiropractic care has been compared with the use of medications in treatments of migraines and chronic tension-type headaches. Researchers at the Northwestern College of Chiropractic in Minnesota gave 218 headache patients either drug therapy or regular chiropractic care. 40 to 50% reduction in headache pain was reported by both groups but four weeks after all care was discontinued the group that received chiropractic care were the only ones still enjoying the reduction in pain the treatment originally initiated. Only a quarter of the drug therapy group were found to be still benefiting from their treatment at the follow up.

It is normal for people to think that stress is purely mental. But most of the times, this notion is wrong because physical symptoms of anxiety exist. Because of this, it is imperative for people to know the signs and symptoms to watch out for them to battle against the trouble the soonest possible time.

During stress, our body is allowed to go into the ‘fight or flight’ response. This response takes place in order to be of help during hazardous situations in life – it will allow us to either stay or fight. No matter what our choice will be, it should be something for the best.

Below are some of the physical symptoms of anxiety:

1. Palpitation- this is the regular or the irregular beating of the heart which is a very bothersome awareness of one’s heartbeat. Palpitations are felt in the throat, chest, or neck. Palpitations may further come with various emotions like the feelings of excitement or fright. It is normal for people to experience palpitations at one point in life especially when they are tired after a strenuous activity, but in case it is something caused by stress then be wary about your case.

2. Sweating- another on the list of the physical symptoms of anxiety is sweating. Of course, it is customary for people to experience sweating specially during hot days but sweating becomes abnormal when it is caused by factors that are not natural. Like for example, you might start to sweat when you realized that you are going to speak in front of thousands of people because for an environmental concern rally.

3. Shortness of breath- this is a difficulty in breathing, or the feeling of as if you are not getting enough air. Once the brain or the body did not get the necessary supply of oxygen, breathlessness takes place. There are times when emotional distress like anxiety can lead to a trouble in breathing.

4. Abdominal pain- this is a nonspecific physical symptom of anxiety which is associated with various conditions. There are times when this does not happen within the abdomen but still offer abdominal discomfort.

5. Dizziness- this is a feeling of faintness which allows someone to find it hard to maintain balance when standing or during sitting. When there is a constant feeling of light-headed without other kinds of symptoms, this means anxiety, instead of brain tumor or other diseases.

Headache pain can be a deep burden. For good reason, the majority of us have pain relievers in our homes, desk drawers, office cabinets, handbags, briefcases, travel bags, nightstands, and medicine cabinets. Without relief, we can’t function well, think straight, or sleep at night. The easiest solution in our fast-paced lifestyle is to take pills to alleviate the suffering.

These pills, however, are not without cost. If you experience headaches, your body is already telling you it is burdened in some way. To add synthetic substances to an already burdened body only adds to the problem, but needing quick relief, we often do it anyway.

From a holistic perspective, any type of pain is a message directly from our wisest self. Head pain tells a story of a life out of balance. It says a great deal about our society as a whole when almost everyone owns pain pills. Knowing various solutions to our ailments empowers us to step away from the madness and back toward the balance point.

The first thing to consider when you have headaches is whether you are constipated. Taboo subject, I realize, but relevant because your bowels must keep moving. Next, is your blood sugar balanced, are you hydrated properly, and is your liver functioning well? Take care of these and you’ll see your head pain decrease dramatically. Keep in mind, you have control over all of these. They are directly related to your own actions: what you eat and drink.

Other contributing factors include eye strain, chemical exposure, allergies, hormone fluctuations, structural misalignment, worry, muscle tension, and general stress. Your headaches are most likely a combination of several interrelated things. So what more can you do if you want to help your body come back into balance and live a more holistic lifestyle?

Begin by listening to your headaches as your wise messenger. What are they telling you? Are you eating too much sugar, drinking too much alcohol, having allergies to certain foods, or simply not nourishing yourself? Are you allowing yourself enough time in the day to sit back, rest your eyes, and relax? Is your liver overburdened so it cannot process toxins through you? Is your mind carried away with worries and frightening thoughts? Has your upper body become tight and tense due to the workaday world?

I am fairly certain you might say, “All of the above.” This is why we have painkillers within an arm’s reach. But there are many things you can do so your headaches become a condition of the past. Some of them work slowly which is a drawback for the fast-paced among us. For example, burdock is not a quick fix, but it will powerfully heal you from the inside out over time.

There are numerous effective remedies. I offer ten here to get your started. The tinctures, teas, and essential oils can be found at natural food markets or purchased online. For essential oils, be strict about only using the highest quality, pure oils.

Ten simple, inexpensive remedies to ease headache pain.

1. Nettles tea helps stabilize your blood sugar and relieve chronic headaches. It can also be used in tincture form.
2. Dandelion root and leaves nourish and strengthen your liver so it can better process toxins in your body. Eat the leaves in salads, use a tincture, or drink as a tea.
3. Burdock root works well with dandelion on headache pain by cleansing the blood and nourishing your liver. Add fresh burdock to soups or use as a tincture.
4. Violet leaf tea sipped throughout the day calms the mind and soothes headaches and frazzled nerves.
5. Oats strengthen the nervous system, bring clarity to thinking, and can reduce pain. Add oatmeal to your diet.
6. The essential oil of peppermint deadens pain with an anti-inflammatory effect. You can apply it to the bottom of your feet, temples, or directly on the painful site. Avoid contact with your eyes.
7. The essential oil of lavender is calming, relaxing, and balancing. Apply on temples or behind your neck.
8. Listen to Baroque music. It brings your brainwaves into alpha, where you can relax and ease your mind.
9. Put your feet into a tub of water to which you have added a cup of Epsom salts and a few drops of lavender or rosemary essential oil. This will help detoxify you and balance your energy.
10. Breathe slowly with awareness. Stretch or practice yoga to calm your nerves and bring oxygen into your body.

If any of the herbs appeal to you, inquire with your naturopath, herbalist, acupuncturist, or holistic doctor as to which would be best for you, especially if you have a medical condition or take medication.

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