Our skin is our largest sensory organ. Touch is the most intimate of the senses. Exposure to tactile variation is excellent stimulation for the skin, the nervous system and the brain. This can be critically important in calming and improving the daily life of anyone with dementia or other cognitive impairment. As reported by psychiatrists specializing in old age; most people with dementia at some point in their illness develop psychiatric symptoms or behavioral disturbances. They are frightening for patients and their caregivers; constitute a management problem for psychiatrists, doctors, and geriatricians; and act as a trigger for admission...

    On March 21, 2017 Senator Elizabeth Warren submitted the Over the Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017. And astonishingly on August 3, 2017 it passed. Once the FDA has had time to set the new regulatory standards; they have three years, the millions of Americans who endure some level of hearing loss will have access to hearing aids at a humane cost. This is especially important because, according to senior study investigator and Johns Hopkins otologist and epidemiologist Frank Lin, M.D., Ph.D. Older adults with hearing loss are more likely to develop problems thinking and remembering than older...

Today is National Farmer’s Day. There is a campaign to encourage us to “Thank a Farmer”  ---    not so easy for most of us. I am fortunate, I live in a city which has both seasonal and year round local farmer’s markets. I can regularly buy my food from the families who grow it. But for most Americans their food comes from miles, countries and continents away. According to the USDA census of agriculture the age of the principal operator of our farms is above 60 years old and lots of farmers are nearing retirement. This has been called...

No one knows what life might throw at them, but we can fortify ourselves both physically and emotionally to be best able to handle adversity and thrive in times of serendipity:  according to research at Harvard by Laura Kubzansky, a pioneer in developing a science of resilience, well-being, and positive health. In her article about Kubzanky’s work, Sara Rimer, wrote: “In a 2007 study that followed more than 6,000 men and women aged 25 to 74 for 20 years, for example, she found that emotional vitality—a sense of enthusiasm, of hopefulness, of engagement in life, and the ability to face life’s...

 Universal design. The term was coined by the late Ronald L. Mace, Originally it was used primarily as relates to architectural design, it’s an approach to design that works to ensure products and buildings can be used by virtually everyone. We have all benefited from this approach to design. Think of your smart phone or tablet which any child can pick up and figure out how to use intuitively. Add to that all the voice activation and you know the access universal design has brought to your daily life. When we first began looking for products we wanted to sell...