Helping your parents with their healthcare during their “golden years”
As more and more of our parents enter their golden years, they are finding themselves in need of a little extra help when it comes to their healthcare. Luckily, there is a growing trend of adult caregivers taking on the responsibility of helping out their aging parents, and this can include everything from handling their finances to making medical decisions. If you’re one of these helpful adults, here are some tips that can make the process a little bit easier.
The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College conducted research that found that 10% of adults from 60 to 69 years old whose parents are alive serve as caregivers, and 12% of adults care for a parent that is 70 or older. Are you one of them?
Are you an adult who feels responsible to help your parents with their healthcare and are feeling overwhelmed? We all should want to help our parents through this time in their lives and if you do, you’re definitely not alone. Who doesn’t want to see the people that nurtured and loved us until adulthood live in their golden years with dignity and great health? You are probably reading this because you are on the prowl for solutions to help some of the people you love the most, your parents!
A growing number of senior parents are turning to help with healthcare outside their professional medical providers. Instead, they are turning to their children for guidance in navigating the “system.” This can include everything from finding and choosing the right doctor, understanding insurance plans or “pay for service doctors” outside of an insurance network, evaluating suggested treatments from medical providers, paying bills, or just understanding their options so they may make an informed decision.
When the topic arises with parents and they start talking with their children about medications, for example, their children discover their parents are taking many medications (sometimes more than 10 different medications!) While we all know that many prescription medications are absolutely necessary in some cases, there may be natural alternatives for many illnesses that may be treated with natural plant medicines that offer fewer negative side effects and may actually work better.
Have you ever talked with a medical cannabis doctor to see if an Illinois medical cannabis card may be an option for your parents? If you are concerned with the stigma then you are not focused on a positive health outcome but rather on what misinformed people might think of medical cannabis as a result of the rhetoric fed to them by those with differing agendas. Cannabis is one of the longest-standing and safest medicines documented to be used throughout history.
A preliminary study at the American Academy of Neurology 2019 Annual Meeting disclosed by investigators at the Dent Neurologic Institute in Buffalo, New York, revealed that cannabis assisted in relieving chronic pain for the elderly. They concluded that cannabis was well tolerated by people 75 and older improving symptoms resulting from anxiety and chronic pain. Similarly, cannabis offered relief to patients with sleep disorders and the anxiety produced by medical conditions such as:
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- Parkinson’s disease
- Neuropathy
- Spinal cord damage
- Multiple sclerosis (MS)
If you are a resident of Illinois, consider talking to a reputable cannabis doctor at a clinic in Illinois that can help your parents with natural treatment modalities that may enable them to reduce other medications with potential side effects that they might want to avoid. These days you don’t even have to leave the house and can see one of the qualified doctors through our HIPAA-compliant telemedicine platform on the same day as your card is issued.
If you are pondering if cannabis is right for your parents, do your research and talk with a marijuana doctor to see if your parent qualifies and how cannabis may help them.
