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Long term care (LTC) is a seemingly inevitable event in any person’s life because everybody gets weak and becomes susceptible to geriatric diseases as he ages. Despite this depressing reality, health care professionals say there are some people who did not have to experience LTC. These people either left while they were asleep or died in a terrible accident. Now if you’re luckier you can live into your 90s or even make it to your 100th birthday without a serious medical condition. Your current lifestyle and your family’s health history, however, will determine if this is possible. Individuals who are genetically predisposed to a chronic illness are usually advised to prepare for the worse. For instance, if your grandmother died of a heart attack and two of your aunts have succumbed to pericardial effusion, this makes you a potential candidate for a heart disease . Consult your doctor, or perhaps a geriatrician, to find out the best way to deal with heart diseases at an older age. Now if your family’s health history is clean, meaning there had been no records of deaths resulting from any debilitating diseases, this is partly good news but do not be too complacent. Your lifestyle is also an important determinant of how your health will turn out in the future. Let’s say you’re from a health conscious family and you actually grew up on your mom’s vegetable recipes and your dad’s bench press and dumbbells . As an adult, however, you’re a chain smoker and a heavy drinker so these make you a potential candidate for cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, cancer, and lung diseases. In Case You’ll Need Long Term Care Preventions is better than cure is an age-old adage which you’ve probably heard countless times but it speaks the truth and this is, perhaps, the reason doctors and other health care professionals don’t get tired advising it to their patients. Paying attention to what you eat, exercising regularly and staying away from vices and stress factors can delay your need for LTC. If you really manage to stay healthy you might never need it all. Unfortunately, according to the prediction of health care experts a bigger percentage of the country’s population will require LTC between today and 2050. It’s true that people shall be living longer but longevity is almost always accompanied by serious health problems. LTC is not designed for necessarily sick people but for anybody who is no longer capable of performing the basic activities of daily living (ADL) such as bathing, eating, dressing, proper use of the toilet, continence, and transferring from the chair to the bed and vice versa. One’s incapability to perform the simplest ADLs stems from a disability, an injury, a chronic illness, or infirmity as a result of old age. In case you wind up needing LTC 18 years from now you’ll need at least $500,000 to be able to cover your expenses in a nursing home, in an assisted living facility, or those which you would incur from in-home care. Don’t risk your assets, come up with a concrete long term care plan for this is the only way that you can keep yourself from falling into the financial hole.
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