What your aging parent eats can make a tremendous difference in their health and quality of life, including impacting health issues they are living with, such as RLS. As a family caregiver, making modifications to your senior’s daily diet can be a vital step in improving your parent’s overall health and helping them to manage their symptoms.
Some ways your parent’s diet can make a difference for your parent’s restless leg syndrome include:
- Avoid caffeine. Drinking or eating foods and beverages with caffeine can make a negative impact on your parent’s symptoms in a variety of ways. Caffeine stimulates the mind and body, triggering the nerve response. It also reduces your parent’s ability to sleep deeply, which can lead to fatigue and worsened symptoms
- Increase iron. Talk to your parent’s doctor about their iron levels to find out if they might have a deficiency. Iron deficiency without anemia has been linked to many health issues, including RLS. It is important to supplement iron only when recommended and supervised by their doctor
- Eliminate alcohol. Alcohol can lead to and exacerbate your parent’s symptoms. If your senior drinks, encourage them to stop
- Decrease refined sugar. Consuming refined sugar can negatively impact your parent’s health in many ways, especially if they are living with certain health issues such as diabetes. Some people with RLS also experience sensitivity to refined sugar, and may have more frequent or more severe symptoms when they consume too much of it. Find ways to cut sugar out of your parent’s diet, but avoid artificial sweeteners as these may also lead to symptoms
Making meaningful changes to your aging parent’s diet is often one of the most beneficial and accessible steps you can take to help them deal with health issues and challenges. Simply reducing or eliminating certain things from their daily diet, or encouraging them to get more of the nutrients their body needs to thrive can help to reduce symptoms, improve functioning, and lessen the negative impact of a wide variety of illnesses and conditions. Sometimes, however, these changes can be difficult for both of you. Fortunately, helping with a healthy diet is one of the personalized services that can be provided by an elder care provider. This elderly home care services provider can help your parent understand the changes in their diet, bring them grocery shopping to stock their kitchen, and prepare meals and snacks for them. They can even further the benefits by cooking with your senior to boost their mental and emotional health, and stimulate their mind for stronger cognitive processing and sharper memory skills.
When you are in need of care for a senior loved one, consider senior care provided by Golden Heart Senior Care. We have offices nationwide. For more information, call us today at (800) 601-2792.
