We all face stress in different stages of life, which is pretty normal. But at times it can create negative health impacts too, especially in the elderly people. Chronic and excessive stress is harmful and can leave various negative health impacts on the old adults. However, these can be taken care of with the help of various ways and by opting for patient care services.
Table Of Contents
Negative Health Impact Of Stress
- Weak Immune System
Old-aged people who don’t follow a healthy lifestyle and remain stressed about things, feel ill and tired more often. It happens because of constant thinking and stress. When you stress out, your immune system becomes weak and you feel sick.
- Heart Problems
The relationship between stress and heart disease is beyond quantifiable factors. Stress floods the body with adrenaline, which raises blood pressure and heart rate, and causes life-threatening heart problems.
- Loss of Senses
Chronic stress in the elders can also cause loss of senses, especially vision and hearing loss. While dealing with stress can increase your risk of hearing loss, living with hearing loss or tinnitus can also cause a lot of stress. If you’re not hearing as well as you used to, digital hearing aids that are rechargeable can help.
- Digestion Issues
Stress disrupts the digestion system of elders. It makes the stomach feel disturbed and sick. It shuts down the blood flow which further causes contractions in the digestive muscles.
- Loss of Appetite Leading Weakness
It is always believed that loss of appetite is common in the elders, but it is the constant feeling of stress that leads to sickness and loss of appetite.
Common Sources of Stress in The Elderly
Here are some common sources of stress in the old adults. Identify these sources so that you can keep them away from your old ones.
- Changes in financial status after retirement
Change is a constant process in life but as we grow old, we often become very stagnant about this continuous process. While we really enjoy the changes in the young age, it becomes very stressful to accept them after a certain age. The major changes in the lifestyle a major source of stress among elders.
- Over caring for their loved ones
Caring is natural but humans tend to become over caring for their loved ones. They become over obsessive with their kids and grandchildren and start bothering about every little thing which unknowingly causes them stress.
- Death of relatives, beloved or close friends
Being apart from beloved is surely a painful event in anyone’s life. But it becomes even more stressful in old age. Elders often stay at home doing less physical and mental activities that’s why they keep thinking about the bad events that happened to them and stress over it.
- The dependent life
Last but not the least, elders worry too much about not being able to live independently. After an age, they become dependent on their kids, grandchildren or professional health care services.
- Living in isolation
Young adults travel to different places for education, jobs and different reasons leaving their elders alone at home. This is believed to be one of the most common reasons for stress in elders.
How to deal with it?
The only way to ensure that your elders don’t experience stress and its negative impacts is to make sure that they’re given better care. Here’re few ways to deal with it:
- Ensure that the elderly people have somebody to talk and share their heart out.
- It is important to ensure that they’re not alone and someone is always around them to listen their heart out and to make them feel wanted and loved.
- Provide them with a social life and relaxed environment.
- If you’re not able to stay home with them all the time, you can also go for professional patient care services, who take complete care of elders.
If your elders are experiencing stress, it is important to immediate ways to manage the same before it becomes irreversible. We advise you to connect with professionals like Emoha who have expertise in elders.
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