hi and welcome to another episode in the life two point zero show and today we're talking about don't fall for all great holiday yet especially for if there are some of us who are baby boomers us yes and for everyone who's been joining us and watching us we thank you to continue watching us as we say it's a movement by creating a second act that has meaning and purpose for you but also spoke talking about some of the issues and concerns that we are writing this book because such an important thing for us to brain to be doing as our as we get older as our parents get older and love ones get older something that we need to be consciously aware yes so tell us a little bit about how your journey got you to this point i've been a physical therapist for thirty one years and my first job was at jersey shore medical center and that allowed me to work in i'd like to say every area of physical therapy which was nice not just the hospital acute care i worked in rehab subacute the school systems i have treated people from the neonat in the nicu through my oldest person i worked with was one hundred two although i had a friend that i wasn't her physical therapist right time and that was one hundred five wow so i've got no vast experience a all age groups all personalities all behaviors all so situation safe and unsafe which was kind of what led me to put the book together ok because of the unsafe situations that seeing right you know yeah because it's a lot of times you know people would just tell you because i don't think i've seen something like this compilation of you know different checklist from from the driveway all the way you know different parts of your home exactly a lot of it because i've worked in the home care field for sixteen years now what i found is that these nice checklists that people have to give people to point out things end up in the recycling and up at their daughter's home and in the bottom of thing i don't know what happened to it and therefore it doesn't carry over which i wanted to put it together so that people didn't have to fall first right talking the talk to every individual person and put it together so that people can a lay person can pick it up and smoothly go through their home to look at what's around them because let's face it in your home every day you go buy things because they've been there every day i mean why you're here right you literally don't see it right or about you know it's there so therefore you don't consider it to be a problem right and as i say to people when kids are little what do you do you spend a lot of time effort and money to baby proof your home and as people get older you kind of need to do reverse baby proofing or what i like to  because i think the what are three maybe three to four or whatever they're most common fall i don't want to call it  put things right when i go up i'll put it up there on where or i just went shopping i need to put these things up stairs i need to put these items downstairs where do you put them you put them on the table the chair by the door so that you don't forget to either bring them out to the car or bring them in to put them in a safe spot right and these piles coming up so i would say that number one aspect is her wow i would not want that yeah ok number two would be the little loose rugs the throw the the mats that you put because when people come inside you must have them wipe their feet all due respect to wiping your feet i appreciate a good clean floor however those rugs are you there live yes they are yes less rugs are outside a shower because i don't want to drip water all over bathroom so loose rugs towels yeah i'd have to haul number number three number four number three i would say would have to be the fact that there's different heights steps ok whether they be just a single step they're like do you have steps to get into your home no i don't have any well there's door and when you go into the house you realize there's not only the one step to get up to the land outside the home there's the step to get in and then there's the door frame or door jam which is another hazard in itself and then there's the it's not really any steps oh well maybe there's three or four and well i used to usually sleep up stairs which is thirteen steps without a sturdy railing or maybe the railing is on the opposite and outside a lot of buildings if they have to be a certain number of steps in order to have a real line in her own right you worry that i have you know a flower pot here i have a stair post here i lean on that like what would we find in the driveway the driveway yeah people don't think of the driveway is really being a hazard right at your driveway but i don't know about anybody else's driveway ours is an unpaved driveway ok even paid driveway means that sometimes you might have ditches you know you might have where you have crushed rock in the thing but because of the rain underneath the rocks have sunken in so they create a dead been there sort of a slant right so that makes it harder to get in and out of the driveway those would be the common things and again what he said before clutter yeah you don't think of clutter in the driveway but it's there so clutter uneven surfaces and slanted surface those would be three common things that the driveway and that's just the driveway yeah yeah and i want to make it really methodical because i'm that's the way i think when i go to work and i'm going into a person's home where do i start i start when i get out of my car and in the driveway sense yeah that makes a lot because you've got to go in the driveway to get in and out of the right right get the maori right to very functional help them to stay strong better their quick easy things that maybe they can start incorporating into their day so as the universe progress they get a little stronger each day but it's not like this huge you know and you don't have to do huge things at so i said in the book in the book you don't have to change everything nobody's going to change everything they're not going to do or three sixty and say old land i'm going to change everything just like you said it's just not going to happen we're not going to do that in our daily lives either ok so number one has to be hydration and nutrition because these are factors that is specially i notice with the elderly they don't drink as much water because they they drink coffee they drink iced tea they drink their juice they don't drink water how much water have you had today although i had a little with my pills or and then i had my coffee and well i don't like to drink too much water you know because i  i'm just elderly it is a true light at night but therefore what we find is that a lot of them don't drink as much and dehydration does not allow to keep your body nutrition goes without they don't want to eat too much i'm not really hungry i just had a surgery so they really have to focus on quality of food not quantity small snacks high in protein i'm not a nutritionist by any way not a circulation specialist yeah but by what happens when you feel tired and weak you want to sit around writing where so then you get into this vicious cycle i have pain therefore i don't want to move and i don't move so things stay sedentary and then when i go to move i have more pain because on stiff so by circulation what i mean is simple exercises am pumping you're tapping your toes are you sick i said if you're only going to do one exercise i'm hoping you'll do more right it's tapping your toes just like they tell you when you go on an airline you don't sits just still you at least happy or toes and go up and  isn't easy easiest tip i give people about moving around is this take the long way home i tell them yeah you're going to the bathroom we already discussed how many times a day don't just go point a to point b you go to the bathroom you do what you gotta do and stead of going back to your favorite chair let's take a look throughout the kids living room until you become a little fatigued not exhausted and then you sit  down you enjoy a meal snack you get up you move around where do you go you walk around the kitchen the dining room until you become a little fatigued this can easily become a nice easy routine and that's what we were saying this back my grandmother because we were one of us would have to walk her to the store which was a few blocks but every single day she had to go to the store so i remember say well why isn't growing more just like buy are everything like cup yeah i have some clients that would like to you know they might get a cup of coffee every day do they need to get no on that but they do that or they get a can of soup or some like yet at the right or is something like that and every day i see them walking back and forth i like cats phenomenon yes because we're not only talking about the circulation we're talking about the mind because let's face it again we're going back to those that tired there we very don't feel like moving the sitting around what happens to the brain go we need brain food my friend likes to call it brain food we need puzzles we need right interaction and you're not going to get there on the couch with the t v no matter how many write over right so that's the other important part to incorporate to keep the body strong would be hydration nutrition would be simple you know right right around but also this the yeah so if us really thinks that it would be good that they're easy to incorporate they are which is really good it's just it's easy to make better harriet right right well i don't want it to that again that's why really write the book and i said to them that i really do want to prevent falls because if you think about it a fall is not just a physical injury for some people it literally  that's right yeah i heard story after story after story my grandmother fell she had surgery or my grandmother felt they wouldn't let her have surgery because she was too old or had other hand other he conditions yeah therefore she didn't move around then her mind started going what triggers it feel i feel like in some people triggers that that all or isolation it triggers like we said lack of brain food yeah they're sitting around they're not getting the mental stimulation they're also not getting the hydration they're not hungry because they're not moving around so you're not getting the hydration and that's why i included a section in the book because people don't have to only look around the room for safety hazards they need some tips on things like alzheimer's a lot of people are dealing with people that even if it's not called just don't see as good they have the cataracts and things like that so i added some tips on some things of low vision pet safety what i mean by pet safety well these people have pets which does help them stay longer because it write things like that but how are they going to get down to the kitty litter how are they going to get the cat's food down on the floor so i mention a section on how you can change things with taking care of your pets ok so that the pets stay safe the people are happy and again to drive or not drive i run into them all the time and i always tell people it all the time and i just tell my daughter to give me the keys i'm fine yeah oh they will take the keys and just do it on all one on ones around or they will call the car dealership and say i lost my keys  oh no well i don't know that they will call the dealership and they'll say i lost my keys i need another set well they don't know right so they're all let me help you mr jones we're going to bring you now i'm going to set over they have to actually remove the car if they don't want the person to drive the car can't be because as long as that carson that driveway they're in their mind yeah right right yeah i just need to get a little stronger and then i'm going out there and i'm going to drive myself to the store so you know you need to look at all these things it's not just pick up the road it's not sturdy the van it's during the whole way and that's why i again you said you haven't seen something like this the nice thing is i haven't either i haven't talked to a lot of their office i've talked to a lot of assisted living so i like i love the way corporate a little bit of everything i mean everything and i talked with a lot of people about their grandparents about their you know my own grandmother with the seeing right what things that we incorporated to make sure that it was very detailed in every room not just walk in there is their clothes are ok you're good you know s have to say you know that i think it's i guess i'm not at the point where i think a ball falls right but i know that thing some point in my life b e i just remember i remember one time greg and i we were we were on a cruise and was a lady that was she was just going down the stairs and she slipped she slipped and as she slipped she bounced up hit her head and we're like packages in it doesn't matter what age and it happened yeah i find myself even now because maybe because of my training because all right i admit it before i started this book i had a fall on ice right i will use how they look these people say oh i don't i don't look at walker it makes me feel old i dealt with this with my grandmother she says well i don't i don't want to use that walker it makes me look old she was in her ninety's and i said she goes oh it is just be embarrassing for me ready to use a walker and i said to her and i've said this to many clients ok tell me grandma what's going to be more embarrassing to use a walker to get where you want to them laugh partly because my tagline is fall is a four letter curse word and i tell you the really fast the first time i used it with this person i think she was in her late eighty's and i was talking to her and i said i don't want to hear you you know if you make you know laugh and kind of make it think that it's a choice or say yes to incorporate them to let them decide you know we're not going to remove that obstacle from your house we're just going to move it so you don't have to move around it and take it as a side where they move it or you know what you know their grandson joe we could really use that piece of furniture and i don't really need it more yeah great but the more you make it their idea service i personally work for hackensack meridian at home that's just one of many many you care services so how does a person access home care services well number one is when they go to the hospital they have a you know what surgery or maybe they're in for dehydration or whatever they're in for their week when they get home the discharge planner or social work from the hospital says ok we're going to hook you up with home because there are businesses that's you know an easy way or they go to rehab and the rehab discharge planner i always tell people if you're in a rehab or a hospital and you know your loved one is being discharged and they say they're not mentioning anything but you're thinking they need help say home care services can be a nurse it can be a home health aide it can be physical therapy occupational therapy speech therapy dietitian all these services are being available at the whoa ok the last way is a community where for all you go to your primary says that your weaker and you you say to could i have a little physical therapy i can't get home now very important if you are receiving home care services you must be home bound which means you can't get out of the house it doesn't mean you can't drive god it means that you can't physically get out of the home because you're in too much pain you're exhausted you're week you're short of brass there is a list but you have to be homebound in order to qualify for a home