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Comment by foobarbaz33 | Hacker News Reader

Your dad crawling up the stairs is helping to fend off muscle atrophy. There's a risk of course. Falling down the stairs could lead to death after complications. But it's not as out-right bad as you might assume, and crawling reduces the fall risk a bit.

Falling is a risk even with normal walking. But if you don't have some movement in their life, they degrade faster and die sooner. There is risk from all choices

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My dad suggested there are three events that turn an individual from "able to be home" to assisted care (which is very expensive).

1) Change in ability to walk, which triggers 2) Inability to take care of and feed themselves, which triggers a slew of medications to try to combat 3) Inability to go to bathroom by themselves

Keep people moving. Build strength early - strength training is great (people begin losing strength as early as 50's and it dominos). Eat more healthily earlier in life and continue (when a person cannot cook for themselves, they tend to eat high salt, high fat, frozen foods - which becomes less healthy). Also, look into assisted policy care insurance.

Agree with you on everything, except frozen foods. I am in my mid 30s. I like to cook and try to eat healthy. I have read at many places on the internet that frozen vegetables in some occasions are healthier than the ones I can at the supermarket- because they are flash frozen, retaining most nutritional value vegetables stay out in shipping and shelves far too long losing nutritional value. Also that they tend to be picked before their time to accommodate for shipping and shelving while frozen vegetables are picked ripe for freezing.

Frozen processed foods like pizzas, ready to eat foods loaded with preservatives are bad as one can imagine.

It was counterintuitive to me that frozen veggies can be better than fresh looking ones from supermarket. Same goes with tomatoes from supermarket shelves versus tomatoes in a tin - apparently the tin ones have better nutrients because they were more ripe when they went into the tin, while supermarket tomatoes were picked well before they were ripe.

I was eating frozen pizzas quite regularly in my twenties and thirties. At 32 I was diagnosed with pre-hypertension. The doctor was suggesting pills. I went home and evaluated my sodium intake. Those pizzas are insane with the sodium. I stopped eating them and haven't had one since. Shortly after, my blood pressure went back to normal/good levels. Ten years later I'm still healthy...and eating much better than I did when I was younger.

Pizza can be a downward spiral- huge amount of carbs, salt and cheese in a single slice, and most people eat multiple slices.

https://xkcd.com/1616/

I read that as "frozen foods that are high in fat and salt".

Your interpretation is what I meant. Above poster does have a point about vegetables frozen being more healthy.

It depends on how you prepare the food too- many type of vegetables have different nutrition content when eaten raw rather than cooked.

I know this is another information rabbit hole. But, I’d love to know what happens to nutrients with various forms of cooking and combinations with various cooking elements like salt, pepper, chillies, turmeric, cumin etc. A purely scientific approach to cooking that experiments to improve commonly used recipes for nutritional value would be amazing.

The best way to cook vegetables, according to research papers: https://youtu.be/8aIyb4atRjk

See if you can access food science papers through your library.

Falling has worse outcomes than the immediate ones. Both my parents passed away after a chain of events that began with a low-speed fall just onto the floor that damaged their lower body. The resulting incapacity and muscular wastage led to a multitude of issues that I don't want to go into but I would say that keeping elderly people safe from falls is extremely important. That and diet and healthcare. Activity is crucial, but done safely.

My mom went a similar way. Low speed fall right after her bath, no obvious damage, but she was on the floor for over 48 hours. Life alert was not a waterproof model and so she had not yet put it back on. The weakness induced by lack of food and water then being in a hospital bed for weeks rendered her unable to walk (she had used a cane prior, though would have been better with a walker). While in hospital and the recovery facility she was not allowed her medications for breast cancer, and within 5 weeks of her fall, cancer cells were found in some pleural fluid buildup. At that point it was hospice. These things just pile on top of each other, and at a late stage in life recovery is much harder.

A relative of mine (M/90) recently went from fairly independent to passing within three weeks of what appeared - initially - to be a moderate fall. The cascading health impacts were all secondary to the fall itself.

I am no expert but I do question the tactic of avoiding dangerous things like stairs based on unscientific anecdote of my own experience. Both my parents live upstairs in a two story house. My Dad still drives, which terrifies me. He recently started a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles with my sister in the car who took over after a bout an hour, understandably. My Dad retired from work reluctantly at 90. They do a bunch of things that worry me but they are also 92 and 91 and living active independent lives. So there is some value in the risk taking.

I do think there is science to back up the idea that as your parents get older it is really helpful for them to have younger friends. For my Dad this came through work, for my Mom through friends who enjoyed concerts and plays. The point is to try to get them to have a connection with younger people. It's depressing, but my Mom says all her original friends have died off. For your parents it could be a hobby, taking care of grand kids, etc.

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