Improving Senior Citizen’s Quality of Life                             

                When I taught adult Medical/Surgical Nursing, one of the course components addressed geriatric nursing.  The initial focus was on normal aging and active seniors.   In every class, students appeared shocked that adults over the age of 40 still cared about their physical appearance,  wanted to wear swim suits, and even mores surprisingly that they still wanted to have normal sex lives.   One of the areas that I stressed throughout the course was maintaining Quality of Life for the senior population.    Preventive modalities, treatment aids, management of pain control and rehabilitation were emphasized.  Although retaining self esteem was   addressed, I tended to spend little time on hair loss and wrinkles, as there was little to suggest except wigs, hats, topical moisturizers and plastic surgery for a small percentage of seniors.  

Step forward to 2011.  What a different world, filled with so many more viable options to assist our seniors .   Advances in medicine and dentistry have allowed seniors to live longer and remain active longer.  Many seniors now have careers and/or are active volunteers.   However improvement in appearance for seniors has lagged behind the advances in medicine.  The emphasis still being on beauty in youth, I think at least partially due to the still common misconception that senior citizens don’t care about their appearance.   Sad and untrue.   Improving Quality of Life is especially important during the aging process to maintain self esteem.  Now we have more tools to aid us.  

What is especially interesting are the new stem cell therapy based products which improve the appearance of the skin by stimulating the body’s own cells, producing smoother, healthier appearing skin.  These products are also addressing hair loss in women, as well as men.   Although lack of sex drive in seniors is a misconception, aging may cause more difficulty achieving satisfying sexual activity due to a  decrease in moisture of the vagina as the cells become less active.  Again,  scientists are addressing this issue with stem cell therapy products which stimulate the cells to secrete moisture instead of a gel or lubricant which is temporary and does not address the loss of cell activity producing the problem.  These are just a few of the exciting new advances which address problems which affect our aging population and can improve and extend our Quality of Life.  If you would like to find out more about stem cell based products, go to www.bioRegenerativeSciences.com.    Keep checking back for more on these new advances.      Rita Friedman, RN, PhD., JD., Scientific Advisory Board, BioRegenerative Sciences.