Mirth involves embracing amusement and laughter, and it is unfortunately in short supply at times. International Mirth Month is all about helping to make laughter and joy more of a cornerstone in your senior’s daily life. What helps a great deal is to talk with your senior about what brings more happiness into her life so that you can help her to experience more of that on a regular basis. Here are just a few of the different ways that embracing this philosophy can help your elderly family member’s life to improve.
More Mirth Can Improve Mobility
It might sound made up, but laughing more often and experiencing a lot more joy can help with mobility. If your elderly family member is sedentary or has been experiencing limited mobility for whatever reason, her muscles and her joints can stiffen up and feel difficult for her to move. Laughing more often can cause small movements in her body that loosen up those stiff areas and may help her to be more likely to gradually increase her movement over time.
Laughing More Can Reduce Stress
Laughter releases lots of hormones, endorphins, and neurotransmitters that all work to reduce stress levels. When your elderly family member laughs more often, more of those happy chemicals are released and they can do more to reduce her stress levels. Plus it’s more difficult to be stressed when someone is enjoying a good laugh regularly.
It Can Also Reduce Depression
Those same chemicals that can help to relieve stress can also help your elderly family member to experience less depression. Often seniors find themselves battling depression due to health issues, isolation, and changes in their lives that they can’t control. By allowing more mirth into her daily life, your elderly family member may just find that she is better able to manage her depression.
Embracing Mirth Reduces Social Isolation
Speaking of social isolation, when your elderly family member is feeling isolated that’s definitely not going to help her to experience mirth. Finding ways for her to have more positive encounters with other people, such as via home care assistance, can go a long way toward helping your aging family member to reduce isolation and loneliness.
Laughter Helps to Reduce Pain
As mirth does all of these other things, it can also help your elderly family member to experience less pain, too. The same chemicals that can reduce stress and depression can also help in pain management. This can be an important tool in helping your elderly family member to have the best possible quality of life as she deals with issues causing chronic pain.
Finding ways to introduce more mirth into your senior’s life also enables you to add more mirth to your own life. Working with home care assistance can help you and your elderly family member to find other ways to help her make every day more enjoyable and easier, on multiple levels.
Source: https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/tools/healing-benefits-humor-laughter.asp
If you or an aging loved one is considering home care assistance in Billings, MT, call the caring staff at SYNERGY Home Care of Billings today. 406-839-2390
