Having Intellectual Wellness

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome to the answers for elders radio show. meet the trusted experts who will give you straight answers and we’ll health guide you on the path of later life care. Now here’s your host, founder, caregiver and CEO, Susan Newman, and welcome back everyone to answers for elders radio network. And we’re here on the eight foundational principles of wellness. In your number six. Is that correct? I think believe here. Number six. Yeah, I know where it’s. Number seven. Number seven, number seven. See Im lose count. And in our last segment a lata led. Let us know. We’re going to talk about intellectual moments, which is knowledge, it’s learning, it’s growing. So filming in a little bit about how you guys. Absolutely so. You mentioned a few things. You know, it’s knowledge, it’s learning and growing. This was a challenging beliefs. So you said earlier. Stand that. You know, this is a fairly large community. We have a hundred and forty five apartment homes here, and I do calm homes because their part of residence homes, and we have at least a hundred and sixty five characters, right, and everyone has a differences, everyone’s personalities, as we talked about solutely, and so some of that is, you know, getting together and group settings talking about political or, you know, financial issues that are going on in our world. So critical thinking, you know, being able to use our minds and think critically on different topics. In fact, that’s actually one of the things that we offer here on side our communities and several others, is it’s part of that intellectual one has. It’s critical thought. What does that critical thought look like? And so we take current events and we read our current events and we have discussions on that. So, you know, I miss going to school sometimes. I Miss My College, university years and not necessarily the Tess, but I miss it because we were in platforms where we can talk to each other about critical issues that we’re going on in our world, respectfully going back to our core values and respectfully with love, but still be able to think and use our minds to think on which is so important absolute especially in our eight years correct. When we tend, you know, our world gets smaller, especially for seniors life that had been isolated through pandemic or they live at home still to this day, you know, and so they don’t have the social interactions. They don’t have the be the ability to exercise that that mind part. And you know that’s how depression sets and that’s how lonely is sets in. There’s all kinds of mental health issues that result without that intellectual, you know, being used intellectual part of you. So your goal obviously is to keep minds active. Keep minds active from critical you know, doing critical topics or critical events. You know, we also do book clubs, or some of those are some of my favorites. You know, the book clause where we do a book review, talk about the books, have some height, you know, some tea and and tea sandwiches and and against in the group setting. So it touches on different areas of of ONUANA’s is the from social, the intellectual, of course, going back to occupacial and emotionals. So it triggers a lot of different things. But a more importantly, you’ve heard the agel saying if you don’t use it, you lose it. So we talked about you know, some of our communities do have an the ability to do memory care. So soilber like at this time, we don’t have an exclusive memory care neighborhood. That being said, we do emphasize intellectual ones so that we’re exercising our brain. Well, exercise declines a you know, the brain, and so you know there’s a lot of seniors that live independently but they still have some sense of memory issues right, and so understanding that to keep those, you know them is active as possible and keep them, you know, their brains working part of the I think it just goes without saying. We haven’t really talked about it, except we did talk about healthcare earlier. But, you know, even being current medications right, make sure that that there isn’t a cognition issue on particular medication. You have professionals that could potentially recognize things like this, where the average person, like son or daughter or if they live alone, they may not necessarily recognize. Absolutely. We have several different pharmacies that we work with and PTOT doctors that have great relationships with and we thank God for them as well, to allow us to really incompass, to understand what’s going on with our residents. But again with the the socialization that we provide, the activites that we provide. Ted Talks again. We talked about me moving nights, but all that goes into that intellectual wellness as well, because we want to keep our resins thinking, we want to keep their brains. Act of the brain is a muscle. I think we forget, get that. I forget that. Puzzles, you know, working together with puzzles. Yesterday we are doing a word, word search, you know, in a group like setting, and so at laws our residence to again participate and have fun with each other. At the same time, we have a group. I stay here on set at the community, as Yall know, so you’ve heard from the last radio shows. So I stay here at the community that I come down on at seven o’clock and I we have a group of resents playing Pino Oh my God, and I yeah, so there’s a beautiful group of so sobody well, and so at seven o’clock at night I had two big tables and there are playing peano fall and either life bridge and they’re using their brains are you know, they’re doing all their you know, I don’t like bridge because it’s for me it’s too mentally stranius. But they have their notes and they’re taking the exactly they’re calculating who’s winning. It’s truly amazing. Yeah, but again, that’s exercise in the brain. That’s saying active. The synopsis are working on they’re cryptically thinking. And again it has been proven to slow down the process of memorize house and just the social stimulation wrap of conversation is so valuable and and understanding that if you know, if you’re thinking about you know, I have so many families coming to me and say, well, mom and dad are are fine, or mom’s fine, she lives by yourself. Well, she doesn’t get out much, doesn’t drive, she doesn’t do on those or to me I get red flags on that because I know there’s a lot of us ice right, and this society is change, the world is changed. We don’t necessarily have this, you know, this ability now to right, able to just, you know, have family around us all the time. Right, people live in other parts of the country, right. So we don’t have the regular relationships anymore. And to be in a community where there are types of activities. It really promotes a better quality of life and I think part of that quality of life is so important is that mental intellectual development in right and use of that great right development is key to you just said the some of the key words that I feel our instimental and intellectual honest it’s it’s challenging, right. So, yeah, I do. You know, I was just recently talking to a family that’s looking to make a move and, you know, he said, I don’t want to go to a prison. I feel like I would be going to a prison. And so as we were talking about, you know, his currently home, his current home situation. He’s not driving, he’s just going from one room to the next. I said, so help me understand how doing for that. Your home is not currently a prison. You’re not getting out, you’re not doing the things that you used to love to do, you’re not around of the people. So again challenging critically to think about his current situation, you know, and I think the fear was, if I go to a community, I’m not going to be able to do these things all. Well, no, you aren’t. About that right, number one right, about that emotional wellness and where you made it. Number one right, as it’s that core root of how how I feel about things. Right. And sometimes, you know, we do a challenge him how if I feel and what I think. All the time they yeah, that’s it, that’s it. You know, we buy on emotion sometimes. Know, and emotionally there’s a trigger and then we justify with logic later. And if you justify with that logic later, making a move to a coasting your community makes sense because the logic is there right. So this this gentleman followed his logic to say no, I’m not, I’m living in a prison right now. This is I’m not going to lose my freedom. So I’m not going to lose my sense of purpose and not going to lose it. It’s in fact going to be I’m going to be able to team that get more of it. And emotionally, we had to walk through the emotional part of making a move and making a major decision. But again, when you justify with the logic, doesn’t make sense. And I think that’s what we do here on a daily basis to offer that part of wellness to our residents, but also with our family members, to you know, we have a lot of support groups that we offer for our families and and I think that’s great because intellectually they have to justify certain decisions for themselves. To I wanted to your community a couple weeks ago and you were doing a talk and I don’t remember what it was about. I think was the history of Morning Star. That’s correct. Yeah, you know, but it was good to learn about this organization that you know, that is a wire of this community and and to really understand, you know, the foundational part and I think for you to stand them and share that people who are very engaged because you are part of that right, your part and you’re building that history and it makes them feel part of it. Right as I have a lot of mouth, but yeah, I had over we had over thirty five residents down for that particular talk and yeah, you know, we were taught. We were talking about Ken Yeager, who is our owner morning star, and you know where he came from. You know he grew up on a farm and you know he grew up in poverty and the he’s just as incredible human being, sure, but you know he was raised with eleve another stiff length, and so just to hear his leg a see his purpose, being able to provide that intellectual insight to what truly makes Morningstar Morning Star, was incredible. Yes, you know, I love this and Elena, I know that we’ve got one last foundational principle coming up and moment is that. So we’re going to talk about physical one less physical honest. Ah, you know what’s to done. I want to get physical. Physical, you know what physical is really a really important and certainly you know, I think that there’s a lot of things we have to talk about. Oh yeah, and for those of you again that are listening to this podcast, yes, we’re at more. We Start Suer living in silver lake, Everett, Washington. But you guys have how many communities across the country? So we currently have a thirty four, but we are growing. Yeah, we’re actively building and so we’re produced open the Kirkland washes open and Kirkland washingtear about to open it. Hillsborough organ we have two in Sant Jose that were are under construction right now. Lower hers is under constructions to open this year, as we have Houston, Texas as well. That’s open. We’re opening some of others in Colorado as far where we we guard our beginnings and where we got our start. So I love actively growing and it’s been great. And Yeah, well, and we’re going to talk about getting physical right after this. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care. So visit our website and discover our decision guys. That will help you also navigate decision making. Find us at answers for elders, docom