Spending patterns of older Americans

This will take a little time to read and study, but I suggest it because you may be in the same boat as we: by 2050, when our children are 80+ there will twice as many seniors as today. So the purpose of the study (BLS) is to figure out how do people over 65 spend money (we’re consumer units). 

The first thing you notice is how income, which peaks in the 50s, drops in the 70s (retirement pensions, savings, investments—which is why we need to elect capitalists). I think the food category is high, but that’s because it probably includes eating out—and we sort of tuck that into entertainment (we don't do much for entertainment). Everyone eats out much more than they need to—food is pretty reasonable, but if you’re paying someone to prepare and serve it, not so much. In 2013, Americans spent 5.6 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food at home and 4.3 percent on food away from home.  

I was surprised that housing costs (as percent of income) were as high as the study shows.

Contributions got lumped into “other” so that’s a pretty sloppy category. I know there are all sorts of categories we could reduce, but really don’t have the will. But I just love shopping for clothes at resale stores and getting brand name jeans for $1.00. I didn’t discover them til after I retired. For nice stuff, I just let my daughter do that for Christmas and birthdays.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-5/spending-patterns-of-older-americans.htm

Have you looked at your pension balance today?

Even though the left, particularly Obama, love to blame Bush for the housing bubble bursting in 2007-2008 which was actually a result of years of government interference in the housing market, I'm NOT going to blame Obama for what is happening in China this week which is making mincemeat of my pension funds.

 China's economy has become so powerful, the only protection is for us is to have a president and Congress who are capitalists instead of socialists in heart and policy. Socialists only know how to tax the workers to spread the wealth. That doesn't grow the economy.  The irony is that China got this strong by kicking out its communist economists and liberalizing its capitalists. Right now, China's economy is in free fall.

I just got my TIAA-CREF December account report.  I withdrew (by law it's required after 70.5 years) about $4,000, but my gains in investment were about $8,000, so I ended the month at a higher balance than I started with.  That's how every retiree hopes it will work out.  However, the top .01% of the population lost billions on paper this week, and it is now trickling down to  those of us who saved and scrimped during our working years to have enough to retire.  I socked away 15% every month from my paycheck (maximum allowed) in addition to the required amount for the state pension. My health care comes out of my pension, and that's about 13%.  If all I had was a pension, I'd be in poverty.

Health and Fitness: Keeping Your Golden Years Golden, guest blogger Helen Hilton

As they approach retirement, many people choose to stop focusing on health and fitness, instead leading increasingly sedentary lifestyles. This is a grave mistake. Exercise and healthy eating can actually help to slow many of the effects of the aging process. As our God-given bodies begin to age many of us choose to accept and embrace this aging process, but many more struggle to accept their changing abilities and those extra aches and pains that they feel at the end of the day. The good news is that you can choose to minimize the effects of the aging process on your body and that it is much easier to achieve than you might think: Staying healthy and feeling your best is important as you age, and the two sure-fire ways to ensure that you remain as active and health as possible are to eat well and to exercise regularly:

Eat Well, Live Well

Healthy home grown fruits and vegetables should be at the heart of every meal you eat (the five a day rule has been in place for a long time and it continues to hold true), but there is more to eating well as a senior than simply maintaining the same healthy diet that you have enjoyed during your younger years. You should begin to opt for low fat dairy products in order to lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of hypertension. You should also avoid too much red meat, instead opting for plenty of low fat but protein rich chicken and fish instead. Finally, it’s important that you do remember to eat three healthy meals every day: as we age our appetites tend to get smaller, and whilst it is OK to eat smaller portions to suit your appetite, you should avoid skipping meals which can have a massively detrimental effect on your overall health and wellbeing.

Exercise and Repair Your Muscles

Exercise is important at any age, but it becomes increasingly important as we age. As well as benefiting our physical fitness and health levels, exercise can also improve how you feel mentally and emotionally, and generally contribute to your quality of life. As we age our physiology begins to change, leaving us with reduced muscle mass and weaker and more brittle bones. After the age of forty the metabolism also slows down, which can lead to weight gain. All of these factors combined serve to make exercise vital to the aging population. Exercise can improve your core strength, rebuild your muscle mass, and help you feel more supple and revitalized. The more you exercise now, the easier you will find it to continue having good mobility as you age. Despite this all being good, common sense, an incredible 78% of men and women over the age of 40 either don’t get an adequate amount of exercise or simply choose not to exercise at all. You only get one body, and it’s an important responsibility to take care of it to the best of your ability for the full length of your life.

Active Minds Lead to Active Lives

As well as ensuring that you take good care of your body, it is also essential to ensure that you take care of your mind and nourish your mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing. Mental health issues and alcohol abuse are common problems that affect women of the baby boomer generation, though these issues are largely unreported by the press. The fact is that as they age their pace of life slows and for many women this can lead to a sadness brought on by an inability to cope with change. Depression also affects one in five seniors living within the United States: many older people are lonely and struggle to cope with their new position in society. It is therefore important to keep your mind as active as your body and remain active within your church and your wider community. As well as protecting your mental wellbeing, this proactivity can also help to keep dementia at bay and ensure you can continue to serve and support those around you.

Lifetime intellectual enrichment delays cognitive impairment

People who maintain high levels of intellectual stimulation throughout life may delay the onset of cognitive impairment by more than 8 years, according to a population-based study of 1718 cognitively normal individuals and 277 individuals with mild cognitive impairment aged 70-89years. The article appeared in the August 2014 issue of JAMA Neurology.

Mid- and late-life cognitive activity like reading, crafts, social activities and games improved cognitive performance.

Six ways to prepare to age well

Well, when I saw that heading, I said, “Too late.”  But these are good reminders published in Health Beat, Harvard Medical School.

1. Adapt your home. Stairs, baths, and kitchens can present hazards for older people. Even if you don't need to make changes now, do an annual safety review so you can make necessary updates if your needs change. [When we remodeled our bathrooms we put in taller base cabinets and “comfort height toilets. Some recent changes in the kitchen, although not sure those will make any difference.]

2. Prevent falls. Falls are a big deal for older people - they often result in fractures that can lead to disability, further health problems, or even death. Safety precautions are important, but so are exercises that can improve balance and strength. [I’m nagging my husband a lot about the ladder and yard work.  We have hired a service for our lake house. We’re both in exercise classes and balance and strength are part of the routine.]

3. Consider your housing options. You might consider investigating naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs). These neighborhoods and housing complexes aren't developed specifically to serve seniors - and, in fact, tend to host a mix of ages - but because they have plenty of coordinated care and support available, they are senior-friendly. [We’ve been living in a NORC since 2002 and love it. We wanted a one floor plan, but have 3, and so far it hasn’t been a problem.  The grounds are gorgeous, and the neighbors the best.]

4. Think ahead about how to get the help you may need. Meal preparation, transportation, home repair, housecleaning, and help with financial tasks such as paying bills might be hired out if you can afford it, or shared among friends and family. Elder services offered in your community might be another option. [I have some friends in their 90s, and am watching carefully. Elder services seem to be quite good in our area. The kitchen repainting was done by professionals this winter.]

5. Plan for emergencies. Who would you call in an emergency? Is there someone who can check in on you regularly? What would you do if you fell and couldn't reach the phone? Keep emergency numbers near each phone or on speed dial. Carry a cellphone (preferably with large buttons and a bright screen), or consider investing in some type of personal alarm system. [We recently got new phones; bigger numbers, but I still like phones with a little heft.  These feel like they’d break if dropped, and the sound quality isn’t that great. We aren’t in the habit of carry cell phones.]

6. Write advance care directives. Advance care directives, such as a living will, durable power of attorney for health care, or health care proxy, allow you to explain the type of medical care you want if you're too sick, confused, or injured to voice your wishes. Every adult should have these documents. [We’ve got the funeral/burial stuff purchased, and wills, and power of attorney, but best of all, our children live close buy.  A family is the best safety net.]

Five Steps to lower risk of Alzhemer's

5 steps to lower Alzheimer’s risk

While there are no surefire ways to prevent Alzheimer’s, by following the five steps below you may lower your risk for this disease — and enhance your overall health as well.

Maintain a healthy weight. Cut back on calories and increase physical activity if you need to shed some pounds.

Check your waistline. To accurately measure your waistline, use a tape measure around the narrowest portion of your waist (usually at the height of the navel and lowest rib). A National Institutes of Health panel recommends waist measurements of no more than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men.

Eat mindfully. Emphasize colorful, vitamin-packed vegetables and fruits; whole grains; protein sources such as fish, lean poultry, tofu, and beans and other legumes; plus healthy fats. Cut down on unnecessary calories from sweets, sodas, refined grains like white bread or white rice, unhealthy fats, fried and fast foods, and mindless snacking. Keep a close eye on portion sizes, too.

Exercise regularly. This simple step does great things for your body. Regular physical activity helps control weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol. Moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise (walking, swimming, biking, rowing) can also help chip away total body fat and abdominal fat over time. Aim for 2 1/2 to 5 hours weekly of brisk walking (at 4 mph). Or try a vigorous exercise like jogging (at 6 mph) for half that time.

Keep an eye on important health numbers. In addition to watching your weight and waistline, ask your doctor whether your cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, and blood sugar are within healthy ranges. Exercise, weight loss if needed, and medications (if necessary) can help keep these numbers on target.

Six things about vitamin D

A number of factors influence a person’s vitamin D levels. Here are six important ones.

1. Where you live. The further away from the Equator you live, the less vitamin D–producing UVB light reaches the earth’s surface during the winter. Residents of Boston, for example, make little if any of the vitamin from November through February. Short days and clothing that covers legs and arms also limit UVB exposure.

2. Air quality. Carbon particles in the air from the burning of fossil fuels, wood, and other materials scatter and absorb UVB rays, diminishing vitamin D production. In contrast, ozone absorbs UVB radiation, so pollution-caused holes in the ozone layer could end up enhancing vitamin D levels.

3. Use of sunscreen. Sunscreen prevents sunburn by blocking UVB light. Theoretically, that means sunscreen use lowers vitamin D levels. But as a practical matter, very few people put on enough sunscreen to block all UVB light, or they use sunscreen irregularly, so sunscreen’s effects on vitamin D might not be that important. An Australian study that’s often cited showed no difference in vitamin D between adults randomly assigned to use sunscreen one summer and those assigned a placebo cream.

4. Skin color. Melanin is the substance in skin that makes it dark. It “competes” for UVB with the substance in the skin that kick-starts the body’s vitamin D production. As a result, dark-skinned people tend to require more UVB exposure than light-skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D.

5. Weight. Body fat sops up vitamin D, so it’s been proposed that it might provide a vitamin D rainy-day fund: a source of the vitamin when intake is low or production is reduced. But studies have also shown that being obese is correlated with low vitamin D levels and that being overweight may affect the bioavailability of vitamin D.

6. Age. Compared with younger people, older people have lower levels of the substance in the skin that UVB light converts into the vitamin D precursor. There’s also experimental evidence that older people are less efficient vitamin D producers than younger people.

Don’t see a link, but this is on their e-mail newsletter. http://www.health.harvard.edu/

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

Alzheimer's research

People genetically prone to Alzheimer’s who went to college, worked in complex fields and stayed engaged intellectually held off the disease almost a decade longer than others, a study found.

Lifelong intellectual activities such as playing music or reading kept the mind fit as people aged and also delayed Alzheimer’s by years for those at risk of the disease who weren’t college educated or worked at challenging jobs, the researchers said in the study published today in JAMA Neurology.

Summary
JAMA Neurology
Among those with an average education and job complexity, brain stimulating pastimes can delay onset of dementia by about 7.3 years compared with people with low levels of mental stimulation in aging. For those who carry the ApoE4 gene, a risk factor for Alzheimer’s found in about 25 percent of the U.S. population, brain stimulating pastimes can delay the onset of the disease by about 3.5 years.

Each generation loses some skills

“Young people in Britain have become a lost generation who can no longer mend gadgets and appliances because they have grown up in a disposable world, the professor giving this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lectures has warned. “

It happens. I didn't know the simplest skills like plucking a chicken or cleaning the wick on a kerosene lamp or putting the bit in the draft horse's mouth that my blind grandmother could do with ease.  There was a time (in my teen years) when I knew how to change a flat tire.  I used to know how to thread a 55 year old sewing machine. And in my 50s, I could code html for a web page. I hope I don't lose my ability to make an apple sour cream pie--I've never written down the instructions. A German immigrant housekeeper who worked for my grandparents would make that for an after school snack for the children (my mom and her sibs) after the long cold walk from the country school, Pineview,  uphill both ways, carrying a cello (or so the story went).

 

My mom, second from left, front row, and her brother Clare, second from right, back row.

God has been faithful and Aunt Mary is dancing on the streets of gold, guest blogger Adrienne Ross

Aunt Mary--my aunt who helped raised me--passed away 2 years ago. In fact, it was 2 years ago last Sunday. When she went into cardiac arrest a year before that and ended up on life support, doctors tried to get us to take her off life support rather than do a tracheotomy. We opted to do the trache surgery, which then meant she had to live in a nursing home--unable to talk, eat, or even move on her own. It also meant that because she had assets--2 houses in her name--and because the nursing home, doctors, etc., would have to be paid, we would be forced legally to sell at least one house, as insurance won't pay until you exhaust all assets. (Those of you with elderly parents might want to keep this in mind. Get stuff out of their names or they'll take it.)

This was the house where I grew up. Not only had we lost the aunt we knew, but we lost our inheritance, but she was worth it. It was difficult all around, and for a year, I traveled the 3 hours one way down to Long Island each Saturday and returned Sunday, sitting by Aunt Mary's side and giving ‪‎my Aunt Alma‬ a break from spending every day--practically all day--there.

After Aunt Mary passed away, there was even more pressure to sell the house. It had to be sold, and the longer it took, the more stress Aunt Alma had. Dealing with lawyers and realtors and the nursing home people and doctors was hard enough after losing her sister, but then there was the cost of heating the house--which was very expensive, along with other costs. Every time it seemed we had a buyer and a contract, it all fell through--time after time. It was a few years of struggle and stress, and then the thought that they would try to make us sell the other house, too--the one Aunt Alma lives in--was added stress. It's not easy to sell a house in the county that has the highest property taxes in the nation! We just kept praying in the midst of the frustration and, admittedly, nervousness.

Now the good news: Finally...I said, FINALLY...we have sold the house! Aunt Alma closed on it and handed the keys over yesterday! Praise GOD! What a journey! And though we have lost so much in the process, we are so glad God has, once again, shown Himself to be faithful, and we have no regrets for making the decisions we did. In that time that Aunt Mary lived after her trache surgery, we saw her begin to move her body, reach for items, squeeze our hands, and attempt to speak. We saw God at work--and we're so glad we chose life. Aunt Mary is now dancing on the streets of gold, and it's all good. As for us, we're moving on!

Ms. Ross is a former high school teacher of English and now owns Adrienne Ross Communications and is a motivational speaker and writer.

Are you walking and eating healthy?

Airport employee sits for 10 years and reaches 370 lb. Starts walking the halls of the airport--loses 200 lb. and her diabetes. Plus she was an overweight child.

 http://www.kcci.com/news/she-walked-off-more-than-200-pounds-at-the-airport/29295568

Saying good-bye, guest blogger Richard Johnson

Retirement is nice a lot of the time, but sometimes it comes up to slap you in the face. When I first retired, I went back to the department (Georgia Southern Communication Arts) frequently, went to plays, visited with old friends, etc. As time went on and the body begins to flag, these visits become less frequent, and some times not at all. It has reached the stage where we only attend a movie once or twice a month, we sit at home, go to the doctors (note the plural), go to church, go to water aerobics, play with the dogs etc. Friends who were once very close evaporate into occasional glances.

Then one day you pick up the paper, glance at the obituaries (in the late seventies, reading the obituaries is an involuntary constant) and you see that a friend with whom you worked closely for almost twenty years, who is fifteen years your junior, has passed away and the funeral is at two o'clock this afternoon. It is hard to explain the reaction. One has a full day scheduled, (for a change) and suddenly getting to the funeral home on time becomes crucial and as an old coot, I get to the wrong funeral home on time, break a few traffic laws reversing directions and finally reaching the place in time to sit in the foyer, watching the funeral through a big window and listening to the sermon and quietly leaving at the end. So long, Kent, I have only seen you a dozen times in the fifteen or sixteen years since you took over my office when I retired, but suddenly there is a hole, and I will miss you. Rest well my friend.

Gait speed and dismobility

A Diagnosis of Dismobility—Giving Mobility Clinical Visibility: A Mobility Working Group Recommendation

Steven R. Cummings, MD; Stephanie Studenski, MD, MPH; Luigi Ferrucci, MD, PhD
JAMA. 2014;311(20):2061-2062. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.3033.

Slow gait limits independence, decreases quality of life and is associated with an increased risk of disability, hospitalization, placement in long-term care, and accelerated clinical progression of many chronic diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and dementia. Slow gait speed is also a predictor of all-cause mortality.


http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/geriatrics/gait_disorders_in_the_elderly/gait_disorders_in_the_elderly.html

At age 75, slow walkers die ≥ 6 yr earlier than normal velocity walkers and ≥ 10 yr earlier than fast velocity walkers. Gait velocity slows because elderly people take shorter steps at the same rate (cadence). The most likely reason for shortened step length (the distance from one heel strike to the next) is weakness of the calf muscles, which propel the body forward; calf muscle strength is substantially decreased in elderly people. However, elderly people seem to compensate for decreased lower calf power by using their hip flexor and extensor muscles more than young adults.

I wonder if strengthening calf muscles makes any difference. Couldn't hurt.

Strengthening your calves

Tips for your pre-retirement years

• Life tips for my friends and readers who are 45-ish.
• Put away about 15% in your retirement account, above what your employer or government is contributing.
• Take good care of your relationships--they are like gold.
• Ignore all the food fads and scares; eat all the colors, eat less and move more. Just like mom said.
• Everything in moderation; especially alcohol and coffee and just pitch the cigarettes. They've never been found to benefit anything in your body.
• Don't be a pot head even if it is legal--you need every brain cell you have working at full capacity.
• Take care of your ears--turn down the music--and your teeth. Don't become a deaf senior citizen with ugly teeth--it's not pleasant. Take out the ear buds and see a dentist twice a year.
• Go to church. There are thousands of denominations as a result of squabbles that happened years ago. One should meet your needs. The world is actually more religious now than ever before--don't lose out on the benefits.
• Enjoy the many pleasures of owning a pet, but they are not family--don't kid yourself.
• Think about the benefits and responsibilities of being a citizen of the United States. It's not perfect, but it's the only one ever created with idea that the state/monarch/king/president doesn't own the people.

Music and aging

"Music, the most-studied art reviewed, has been shown to have a number of benefits [for older people]. One landmark study compared older adults who were invited to join a choir to those not invited. Twelve months after the study began, choir members showed decreases in doctor visits, falls, and over-the-counter medication use. Improvements were seen in overall health rating and number of activities performed. In a larger study that randomly assigned individuals to a choir program or a control group, the choir partisans had lower scores on a depression/anxiety scale, and higher scores on a quality of life scale. A survey of older amateur singers before and after joining a musical group showed increases in emotional well-being, social life, quality of life, and self-confidence." http://aginginaction.com/2014/01/can-music-dance-and-other-arts-programs-enhance-healthy-aging/

Inspiring, isn't it? 91 year old runs marathons

91-year-old Harriette Thompson set a new world record Sunday after she ran a marathon in San Diego in little over seven hours! Her feat, which also made her the second-oldest woman to complete a marathon in US history, is especially remarkable given that Thompson only completed her last radiation treatment for skin cancer one month ago. The grandmother of ten from Charlotte, North Carolina beat... the previous marathon record for women 90 and up by two hours and 45 minutes.

Thompson ran her first marathon at age 76 and tells people that "it's never too late" to start exercising. She has run in 15 out of the past 16 Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego Marathons and raised over $90,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in the process. A classically trained pianist, Thompson told WFAE that she replays pieces in her head to keep pace while running: "I usually think of Chopin etudes, the ones that are technically difficult, because usually they're pretty fast, and it stimulates me to go a little faster, and also helps pass the time."

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/06/harriette-thompson-marathon

http://www.people.com/article/harriette-thompson-91-finishes-marathon-in-san-diego

http://running.competitor.com/2014/06/news/record-setting-day-harriette-thompson-san-diego_104482

Guest blogger Sarah on retirement

Illness forced Sarah to retire; so she's reevaluating her life.
* * *
It's an interesting thing to retire. We all dream of it, we work for it we know that someday we will enter into that time frame of our lives when everything is supposed to be amazing. Kind of like the ultimate carrot at the end of the stick idea. However, some of us (like me) arrive at that point unexpectedly and find that we don't know how to respond to questions from loving, caring friends about, "How are you adjusting to retirement?" In the interest of reminding myself of how things are progressing, I am going to keep a journal of sorts to list out things that I am finding that I can adapt to very quickly. If that in anyway helps some of my friends as they also make this transition, all the better.

There are certainly things that are different and I'm finding that it's OK, that it's different because life was never meant to remain the same. For me, right now in this first month of official retirement, it's all about perspective. I can bemoan those changes sometimes considered losses or...I can rejoice in the changes that I consider major gains.

The first of these gains is what I am considering to be the throwing out the rulebook about time. Having to go to bed by a certain time because you HAVE to get up by a certain time because you HAVE a major responsibility to others and yourself to show up and do your job. If you are someone that doesn't necessarily sleep on a regular schedule and the pressure of HAVING to do so only makes it worse, consider this a major gain. I think in time I will figure out what my "routine" will be, for instance I just started to cook at 9 pm on a Sunday night and it doesn't matter because...it just doesn't matter. If I am up until 3 am (as I often am) then so be it. Unless I have an appointment (which I don't have very many of these days), it just doesn't matter. So the rulebook for me about going to bed and getting up and doing it over and over again until I've reached the point that it took me 2 days to recover from doing that 5 days is a row - is now over and I will be making my own rules from this point out. It is an amazing feeling of freedom which reduces the stress in my life greatly, which in turn improves the quality of my life and so it all is a process...but a process that I will be defining and making fit this new period in my life.

Stay tuned!

Follow the money--or the votes.

Seniors are not hurting.

"Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) has introduced legislation to increase Social Security benefits and build a government-run supplemental saving plan. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has so captivated progressives with her demands to raise Social Security payments that she is touted as a potential presidential candidate in 2016."

What this country needs is jobs for young people, not pandering to senior citizens. Today's retirees have been warned since their 30s that Social Security won't be there for them, and most of the couples I know have 5 or 6 streams of income, from a 403-b, or 401-k, or private investments, or annuities, or IRAs, or veterans' pension, or Social Security. There are divorced women living in “committed relationships” still getting financial support from the husband that ran off with his secretary 30 years ago. If they married, they’d lose that.

Politicians know seniors vote. Especially Democrats.

Is it too late to put it in reverse?

Oct. 20, 2013 — Scientists report in Nature they have found a novel and unexpected molecular switch that could become a key to slowing some of the ravages of getting older as it prompts blood stem cells to age.

The study is expected to help in the search for therapeutic strategies to slow or reverse the aging process, and possibly rejuvenate these critically important stem cells (called hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs), said scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Ulm in Germany who conducted study.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131020160654.htm

Commonly held myths about end of life issues

Some people don’t have a health care power of attorney or living will because they don’t realize how important these documents are. Others worry that such documents mean they are signing their lives away. Not so.

These powerful documents make sure that you get the treatment you would want for yourself if you couldn’t communicate your wishes. Here are a few myths that shouldn’t get in the way of creating a health care power of attorney or living will:

Myth: More care is always better.

Truth: Not necessarily. Sometimes more care prolongs the dying process without respect for quality of life or comfort. It’s important to know what interventions are truly important. It’s often impossible to know that in advance. That’s where the advice of a healthcare team is invaluable.

Myth: Refusing life support invalidates your life insurance, because you are committing suicide.

Truth: Refusing life support does not mean that you are committing suicide. Instead, the underlying medical problem is considered to be the cause of death.

Myth: If medical treatment is started, it cannot be stopped.

Truth: Not starting a medical treatment and stopping a treatment are the same in the eyes of the law. So you or your health care agent can approve a treatment for a trial period that you think may be helpful without fear that you can’t change your mind later. However, be aware that stopping treatment can be more emotionally difficult than not starting it in the first place.

Myth: If you refuse life-extending treatments, you’re refusing all treatments.

Truth: No matter what treatments you refuse, you should still expect to receive any other care you need or want — especially the pain and symptom management sometimes called intensive comfort care.

Myth: Stopping or refusing artificial nutrition and hydration causes pain for someone who is dying.

Actually, what is listed here as TRUTH is not. You can find valid studies that state removing hydration from a dying person increases their pain.

[Truth: Unlike keeping food or water from a healthy person, for someone who is dying, declining artificial nutrition or intravenous hydration does not cause pain.]

Harvard Health Beat, Sept. 26, 2013