Caregivers at Risk: 5 Crucial Choices to Keep You Healthy

“You’re a caregiver? Make sure you take care of yourself too.”

As a caregiver for my husband, Tom, who has a young-onset dementia, I’ve often heard those words of wisdom. But since I work full time from home while bearing the extra responsibilities of caregiving, I had one big question: How?

Caregiving for someone who is living with dementia puts me at greater risk for developing health problems including anxiety, depression, and even dementia itself. Discovering this truth helped motivate me to pursue my own healthy lifestyle goals, encompassing several realms.

To achieve those goals, I had to make several key choices for a healthy diet and lifestyle. Although I didn’t articulate them for some time, these are the choices that, over time, have had the most positive impact.

  1. Seek the Kingdom First:

I’ve had this commitment for many years, but every so often, I need to renew it. Since I’m a Christ-follower, I have a daily commitment to spend time reading my Bible and praying as well as participating in corporate worship and other church activities. Author Tammy Kennington also discusses the importance of this key spiritual element in her post, “Four Keys to Combat the Effects of Stress and Anxiety on the Body” at this link.

Before I became a caregiver, this discipline was a natural habit. These days, my time is less and less my own. When I’m reading my Bible or praying, my husband often interrupts me with a question, a problem, or other needs. Consequentially, I’ve returned to some of the practices I had as a young mother—reading short sections rather than long blocks of Scripture, praying during my morning walk around our family room, or reading a devotional late in the day to help focus my thoughts toward God.

As Tom’s dementia progresses, our participation in church activities has changed. He no longer has the attention span or interest for long Bible studies or classes, but he still loves singing in a senior adult choir that visits nursing homes. I’ve adjusted my work schedule to make sure we can both participate.

Bonus blessing: The music we sing ministers to my spirit, and I love the contact with this often-neglected segment of our population too.

  1. Follow Daniel’s Plan :

My husband’s dementia has stolen both his sense of smell and his sense of taste. Because of this, he has a strong preference for sweets and high-fat, high-carb comfort foods. At first, I followed my doctor’s advice, giving him a healthy diet with extras centered around his preferred sweets and comfort foods. But over time, because of my busy work schedule and his unhealthy preferences, it became easier and easier to rely on comfort foods and neglect a healthy diet and eating—for both of us.

It took a 21-Day Daniel Fast to help us reset. (Susan shares some of her experiences with this fast in the article, “Healthy Snacks to Entice Your Kids to Eat Real Food” here—along with some great recipes for healthy snacks.) During this time, I realized that, although Tom doesn’t have the discipline to avoid all the foods banned in a typical Daniel Plan, designing our healthy diet around vegetables, fruits, and whole grains means he can fill up on those and often doesn’t want the other, less healthy options.

Bonus blessing: Healthy eating, drinking more water, and eliminating the diet sodas has left me feeling much better too!

  1. Amp Up the Exercise:

 For more than two decades, I’ve taken long, brisk walks once or twice a day as a means of exercise. Tom joined me for a while after his diagnosis, but for the past several months, he’s had a severe back problem that has him moving much more slowly and using a walker. I don’t want to take up space in my house with a treadmill, so I walk around our family room every morning and night. In the past, I usually settled for ten thousand steps. Over the past six months, I realized that if I intentionally made an effort to walk faster, I could easily walk twelve to fourteen thousand steps which is close to six miles. I also walk during work-related phone calls when I can which proved to be an easy way to take a break from the computer and get in some steps.

Bonus blessing: I’ve added some weight training and strengthening stretches to my routine as well—more ways to complement my healthy lifestyle and help me feel better all at once!

  1. Sleep On It:

I’m not going to lie. As a confirmed night owl, finding adequate sleep is my most challenging commitment. I’ve always had a lot of energy, and I often taken advantage of late-night bursts to make deadlines, finish housework, or accomplish any number of other tasks that I couldn’t get done during the day. But I’m learning to resist the temptation to skimp on sleep. My husband’s dementia has made him a more restless sleeper, and I treasure the nights when he sleeps well, because when he does, I can too.

I realized the extent of my sleep deprivation when I took a vacation with my mother this past summer. I spent the first few nights sleeping ten hours or more. By now, I’ve (almost) stopped staying up late to try to accomplish tasks while Tom sleeps, and I try to get at least seven hours of sleep each night.

Bonus blessing: I feel so good getting an adequate amount of sleep each night.

  1. Play Along:

 As a caregiver, I’ve found that play is just as important to me as it is to my five-year-old grandson. Because he lives nearby, he and I have the opportunity to play together often. Our games include hide-and-seek, tag, taking walks, racing cars, and playing “Baby,” in which we take turns being the baby and the Mommy or Daddy. When he’s not around, my times of play—also known as activities I enjoy—include reading, baking, growing roses and other flowers, and even housecleaning because of the break it provides from my normal routine. Filling and maintaining our bird feeders and watching the birds that frequent them has also become a means of play for me, and Tom enjoys watching the birds as well. In fact, I read recently that birdwatching is a recommended activity for people living with dementia.

My top priority as a caregiver is to give my husband his best life—a happy and healthy lifestyle—as a person living with dementia.

Bonus blessing: Making wise choices for myself benefits Tom too!

Author Bio

Marti Pieper’s eclectic publishing career includes ghostwriting a young adult memoir that made the ECPA bestseller list and traveling to six Latin American countries to write stories of teen mission trips along with an award-winning missionary memoir. She has written seven traditionally published nonfiction books and edited many more, written and edited for both print and digital publications, and taught at multiple writers conferences. Find her at www.martipieper.com, where her “Snapshots of Dementia” blog details life with her husband.

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