Posts tagged with ‘seniors’

Senior Casino Field Trips Fuel Addiction

Senior centers and retirement communities are great places for elderly Americans to live and to socialize. Many provide wonderful opportunities for seniors to engage in activities that include group outings, exercising and engaging the mind. These are the things that keep us healthy and young, but there is a downside to one of the most popular senior center field trips. Most senior groups take trips to casinos for recreational gambling. Playing the slots or the black jack table can be a fun way to pass the time, but they can also lead to a harmful addiction. Senior gambling is on the rise and the mental health and finances of the victims are suffering.

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Senior Women Fastest-Growing Group of Problem Gamblers

Twenty miles from the river on an east/west highway running through central Mississippi, there’s a billboard, one of those really big ones. This billboard is a party, a sparkling carnival, a live action vaudeville show. It’s so thrilling that passersby never fail to notice it, and some have been known to slow down just to stare. It’s not unusual that this billboard features a slim, attractive woman with her head thrown back, a look of wild abandon painted on her face as colored lights spin and blur and loom behind her. What is unusual is that this woman is probably 75 years old.

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Seniors Selling Prescription Drugs for Food

Seniors Selling Prescription Drugs for FoodThe prescription drug epidemic is getting a lot of coverage in the media, but some stories still have the power to take you by surprise. According to a report from Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, senior citizens are increasingly turning to prescription drug dealing to meet their living expenses. The tale is shocking but has a deeper, profound sadness because of what seniors are feeling they have to do in order to have a steady supply of money—not to mention the moral bankruptcy of the dealers who take medicine that elderly people obviously need in order to meet their clients’ drug demands. It isn’t a throwaway headline about “grandma the drug dealer.” It’s a sad indictment of the state of society. Full Story

Elderly at Greater Risk of Alcohol Impairment

As Baby Boomers become senior citizens and health care advances extend the quality and quantity of life, Americans are living longer lives. This generation brings with it those who have healthy lifestyles along with those who suffer from substance abuse. With such a large percentage of Americans losing some regular mobility and possibly memory with age, comes a greater chance that those who already suffer from alcohol abuse will suffer even greater impairment as senior citizens, according to a new study from Baylor UniversityFull Story

Alcohol’s Harmful Effects on Senior Adults

The Alzheimer’s Association reports that 5.4 million Americans suffer from this type of dementia. They believe that by 2050 nearly 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s. Other senior citizens will inevitably battle some memory loss due to aging. Younger adults are already looking ahead to what they can do to prevent some of this cognitive loss. Full Story

A Growing Senior Population Will Require More Vigilance Against Alcohol Misuse

The giant baby boom generation is entering their golden years. As the over 65 demographic grows, health experts predict that alcohol abuse among seniors could prove to be a serious problem in the near future. National health agencies report that while seniors are not the most likely to binge drink, seniors who do over indulge may do so more than once a week. That kind of behavior is dangerous for seniors for a number of reasons. Full Story

Misuse of Pharmaceutical Drugs by Older Adults

The face of drug addiction is changing. While many associate drug addiction with young people tempted into an alternative lifestyle by the experience of getting high, recent rises in pharmaceutical drug misuse have resulted in addiction in unlikely segments of the population. Full Story

Retirement, Addiction, and Alcoholism: The Hidden Connection

When they begin to reach middle age, most people start looking forward to their retirement years as a time when they will finally be able to relax and leave the stresses of their jobs behind them. But unfortunately, when the time actually comes to exit the workforce, many find that things turn out quite a bit differently than they expected.

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Alcohol’s Negative Effect on the Aging Brain

The Alzheimer’s Association International Conference was hosted this month in Vancouver, Canada. A pair of studies investigated how binging on alcohol, or even changes in drinking habits can have serious impact on cognitive brain function in older drinkers were slated for presentation at the meeting. Binging has multiple harmful effects from an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack to making it more likely that the person will suffer bodily injury. These studies were ground-breaking in terms of measuring the cognitive impact of heavy drinking and alterations in drinking patterns.

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Alcohol Abuse and the Elderly

Once you pass the age of 65 you enter the demographic of the elderly. This is a group about whose alcohol use there is scant data. Perhaps this is because alcohol use is routinely screened out of other studies focusing on physiological diseases among the elderly, but whatever the explanation with the tidal wave of baby boomers entering the ranks of the elderly more data on the elderly and drinking will be needed. Full Story