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Continue readingThe Eyes Have It
We’ve covered seniors and hearing loss, including the incredible regenerative benefits of music for brain health. There are even technologies that help senior living communities keep residents engaged with hearing assistance that adjusts individual sound for multiple residents simultaneously — a real boon considering that by age 85, 80 percent of people have some degree of hearing loss.
But aside from exhorting seniors to get their eyes checked, visual stimulation hasn’t been addressed with the same vigor. Until now.
AI Vision
NuEyes, profiled here, functions like digital hearing aids for the eyes, and is certainly a blessing for those with low vision. However, it’s still a pricey out-of-pocket expense for someone who relies on Medicare or other insurance to cover health care costs (unless they have a HELOC or HECM, which might be an excellent resource to tap for health restoration until wearable technology becomes a reimbursable expense.)
Similarly, Oculus, a virtual reality company that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought in 2014, could soon enable a doctor sitting in San Francisco to see patients in a clinic in Kenya. The VR headgear would allow the user to move around and interact with people in the distant environment, participating in research, treatment — possibly even surgery. Impressive.
A fully immersive experienceÂ
While these visual breakthroughs are very valuable, they don’t directly address the need of seniors who are homebound or unable to travel, and longing to see the sights they remember from years gone by, even just the everyday experiences they can no longer physically access: movies, museums, concerts. Or maybe they long to attend their granddaughter’s college graduation, taking place in a far-flung locale.
Enter Jake Kahana, a New York-based designer and film director who recognizes that while VR is a hot button for Millennials, seniors are the fastest-growing population cohort, and are much more likely than their grandchildren to become armchair travelers. So Kahana created BettVR With Age, a series of VR films that explores how we can use virtual reality to improve the quality of life for seniors and people with limited mobility.
He began with immersive research, visiting centers such as DOROT, a non-profit organization whose goal is to alleviate social isolation and provide concrete services to older adults, in order to discover what seniors might find useful in a VR experience. MIT startup Rendever, which helps seniors living in care facilities “relive, reconnect, and re-inspire”, supplied the software.
Days of Future Past
Kahana then created ten films, from a violin concert to a dance rehearsal, a World War II-era theatre performance to a museum tour. Combined with Google Maps’ VR app, Kahana was able to “send” bedbound 78-year-old Craig Palmer to Amsterdam, Stonehenge (a favorite vacation site of his), and a stretch of Broadway where the former singer and actor lived and worked for many years. He was even able to poke his head backstage at an Upper West Side nightclub he often visited — all without leaving his apartment.
After the fifteen-minute VR excursion down memory lane concluded and Kahana removed the headset, he asked for Palmer’s feedback. Ever the actor, Palmer grinned and replied, “It was awesome. But it would be better if I had a scotch.”
More Than Fun and Games
And virtual reality offers more than just a good time. It can be a game-changer for senior health and mood, which may be especially helpful for your reverse mortgage clients and prospects who are choosing to age in place.
Dennis Lally, co-founder of Boston-based Rendever, says VR is being studied as a way to reduce pain, anxiety, stress and social isolation. “With VR, it’s now possible to track the human interaction with virtual tasks and leverage virtual reality analytics to measure the success of these activities.” Massachusetts General Hospital is in the process of testing Rendever for such outcomes.
In San Francisco, physician Sonya Kim developed Aloha VR to help depressed and agitated patients to a better quality of life. She’s witnessed violent dementia patients become more relaxed after using VR.
Finally, VR headsets are making significant inroads into long-term-care facilities. The resident engagement director at one assisted living and memory care community reports, “Five minutes after they try VR, they are so stimulated. It’s a mood changer. They are laughing and smiling and engaged.”
Rendever is now in more than 30 senior facilities; by year-end 2017, they plan to be in several hundred nationwide. And it might be just the ticket for a HECM client who, while happy the HECM allows her to remain at home as she ages, would dearly love to do some armchair traveling.
What are your thoughts? Please leave your input in the Comments section below, and share this post on social media using the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn icons at the top of this page. Thank you!
Space, The Final Frontier: Seniors Living Apart Together
People choose not to cohabit for various reasons. They may live far apart geographically, and love their respective homes too much to move. Or they want to remain near kids/grandkids. A huge issue for older adults is lifestyle, and feeling that each partner’s long-standing habits might not mesh well under one roof.
How we choose to live is as personal as our food and clothing preferences — perhaps more so. And while marriage or living together is still the norm for most couples, there’s another living arrangement that’s raising interest, if not eyebrows: LAT, or living apart together. The relative oxymoron may be especially appealing to seniors — and to reverse mortgage professionals, for whom one couple could yield two potential HECMs.
To share or not to share, that is the question
As someone who once conceived the idea of side-by-side houses conjoined by a Great Room where a couple might meet for a meal, or when both decide they want to spend time together, LAT appeals to me as one creative solution to being partnered without necessarily sharing the same dwelling 24/7.
Such an arrangement might have been viewed askance a few decades ago. But now it’s gaining currency, particularly with those who say they’re “set in their ways”, yet are in a long-term relationship. And by the time people retire, many care a lot less about what others think than they did in their younger years.
Janice Handler, a retired lawyer in her late 60s, and husband Norman Ilowite, 85, have been LAT since they married in 1978. Ilowite spends most of his time aboard a 40-foot yacht; his wife lives in a two-bedroom apartment she purchased in 1993. They spend weekends together on the boat and winters in her apartment and, while Handler doubted the arrangement would work well at first, she now says she’d choose it again in a heartbeat. With an eye on her husband’s age, however, Handler avers they may need to rethink their LAT arrangement in the near future.
Another couple, in their 70s, has always been avant-garde: after meeting at a youth group 48 years ago, they finally wed in 2007. And while they’ve been happily LAT the entire time, as they age they say they might consider a single roof if one of them becomes seriously ill.
Key factors that affect the LAT decision
“U.S. society has yet to recognize LAT as a legitimate choice. If more people — young and old, married or not — saw LAT as an option, it might save them from a lot of future heartache,” says Jacquelyn Benson, assistant professor in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri. Discussions about end-of-life planning and caregiving can be sensitive to talk about; however, LAT couples should make it a priority to have these conversations both as a couple and with their families. Many of us wait until a crisis to address those issues, but in situations like LAT where there are no socially prescribed norms dictating behavior, these conversations may be more important than ever.”
While it’s true that many older adults who’ve already been in a long-term marriage and are now divorced or widowed may not want to merge their lives so completely again at this stage, for some, the issue may be as simple as not wanting to change your surname if you remarry.
A 93-year-old Australian woman consistently refused her beau’s proposal for two decades, thinking taking his surname would be disrespectful to her deceased husband. When she learned she could keep her own last name she finally said yes, much to her longtime love’s delight. And since she had already convinced him to move to her town so the pair could be together, it’s a safe bet their years as a LAT couple might conclude with the wedding.
What are your thoughts? Please leave your input in the Comments section below, and share this post on social media using the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn icons at the top of this page. Thank you!
