More and more, I think the word around this is getting out, and we’re trying to be a part of that movement, no pun intended. But we really want to help educate and create awareness around the fact that A, you can build strength as you age, B, it’s really, really important, and C, we want to be a resource to help people take that first step, because what I personally experienced with my mom is, it’s hard to do on your own.

Are you caring for others while working and trying to live your own life? Wondering how to find the time for your own health and happiness? Well, you’re in the right place. The Happy Healthy caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole Care Network, is the show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others. Hello and welcome. I’m your host, Elizabeth Miller. I’m a fellow family caregiver, a care advocate, a professional speaker, author, certified caregiving consultant, and certified senior advisor. If this is Your first time listening. Thank you for being here. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self-care and caregiving into their lives.

Each episode has an accompanying show notes page. If you’d like more detail about the topics, products, and resources we speak about, or you want to see any of the related photos, you’ll find the show notes by going to the website happyhealthy Caregiver. com and underneath the podcast menu, click the image or episode. Number for today’s show. The link for the show notes will also be in your podcast platform’s episode description. Now, let’s get to it. Let’s jump into this episode.

Hi, welcome to the show. Delighted that you are here. Before we get into this caregiver spotlight with Eric, I first want to just share a couple of things on my own. First of all, does your company, your association, or your community have events that appreciate family caregivers, educate their attendees, or promote overall well-being? If so, you Might want to let them know that Happy Healthy caregiver is more than a podcast. In fact, the primary way that I earn a living and invest in all of the resources that I create and to help family caregivers is through speaking at conferences, corporate events, and webinars.

I invite you to check out my speaker page on my website, where you’ll find my sizzle reel, my four most popular programs, and testimonials. If you are not yet on the Happy Healthy caregiver email list. I’m not sure what you’re waiting for. Let me do the heavy lifting for you. I curate content that I think would be meaningful to family caregivers, including something happy, something healthy, and something caregiver related, and I send that out every Tuesday direct to your inbox. I never will share your email because I also hate spam as much as you do.

I’ll link to it in the show notes so that you can sign up and get the support in your inbox every week. I’d like to thank our episode sponsor. Rare patient voice. Did you know that you can earn cash in exchange for sharing your opinion? Well, Rare Patient Voice or RPV helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions. RPV offers you the opportunity to voice your opinions to improve medical products and services while earning cash rewards. If you’re interested in joining the RPV panel, go to rarepatientvoice.com/happyhealthycaregiver.

For this episode segment of what I’m reading, I have a 5-star read that I want to recommend for you. It’s called The Book of Lost Names. It’s by Kristen Harmel. This book flips between two time period stories, but you’re really getting the same characters, so it’s easy to keep track of. Eva Abrams is a semi-retired librarian in Florida. She’s shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. It’s an image. a book that she hasn’t seen in more than 60 years, a book she recognizes as the book of Lost names.

So back in 1942, was forced to flee Paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the free zone, where she began forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland, but erasing people comes with a price and along with a mysterious handsome forger named Remy, Eva decides she must find a way to Preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in the Book of Lost names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Remy disappears.

One of my favorite quotes from this book is those who realize books are magic will have the brightest lives. I hope that you can check this book out and see if it’s a great fit for you. It is more than this historical fiction story. It’s also a love story that’s woven into the plot. There is a lot of research from the author, and it really reads like it’s a true story. My favorite thing that I want to share with you this week are my pets. I love them.

They give me so much joy, and they give me a lot of self-care, frankly. They teach me that doing nothing is OK sometimes. Nobody is better at relaxing than these two dogs. We have two, Sunny and Shadow. It’s kind of hard to kind of get them both on the screen here, so I’m gonna share a picture for those who are watching on YouTube. Shadow’s a boy, 23 year old. Shih-tzu and Sunny is a girl. She’s a 5 year old, supposedly mini goldendoodle, and they are, they’re buds. They tolerate each other pretty well.

You’re not gonna find them typically snuggling together and sometimes Sunny is gonna annoy her big brother shadow, who’s littler than she is, because she really loves to be chased, so she just wants to kind of get him to chase her, but he’s, he’s way too old for that. He’s 14. And in a lot of ways, I feel like we’re caregivers for shadow. He sleeps most of the time. He has accidents, particularly if he’s like shifting from location to location. We’ve got to watch him like a hawk when he wanders, and he won’t let us know, unfortunately, when he has to go out anymore.

He has accidents in his crate and in different parts of the house. He eats and drinks so fast, and he can toss it all back up if we don’t slow that process down. So that requires care. We don’t really get to walk Shadow much anymore. He’s more of a mosier, I will say. Sometimes we take shadow on his little jaunts and then he’s more sniffing involved than walking, but we then will take Sunny out for a more extensive walk. They both love their family. Shadow was particularly super protective in his younger years, but now he’s mellowed as he’s aged and his eyesight and his hearing have mellowed him quite a bit.

Sunny is all about love. She needs lots of love and TLC and she wants to be where the people are. She’s probably helping to keep Shadow feeling a little bit more spry. Someone once called her regal as an adjective, and I really felt that that is a good attribute to her. She does have a few tricks and she loves a good car ride, and she will give you a full facial, particularly my daughter gets full facials if you let her. So, thought of something like dog-related product that I could share with you, that is a favorite thing.

And this was a product that my cousin Megan had introduced us to when she brought her dog Dax to our house one time and these are the, the joy ride harnesses. They come in different sizes. This is sunny, its pink with the stars, and this is shadow, the red and black plaid. We like them because they’re just comfortable for them. You can, you know, easily strap it around their belly, hook to the leash that you have and then you’ve got your handles if you need to kind of get more control over your dog really easily.

We’ve been using. These for years, these joy ride harnesses. So if you were a dog lover who’s looking for a better solution, don’t like feel like you’re dragging your dog everywhere, um, this might be a good option for you.

Let’s meet today’s caregiver in the spotlight. When Eric Levitan saw his parents’ health decline from afar, he set out to better understand how to impact healthy aging for his family and others. He founded Vivo, a company dedicated to helping older adults stay active and independent. In this episode, we dive into the four cornerstones of healthy aging, and we talk about fall prevention and how to make healthy habits really stick, plus accessible fun ways to add strength training into your daily lives.

And Eric also shares insights on remote caregiving, the growing age tech initiative, talking with loved ones about senior living, and why challenging experience can strengthen both the body and the mind. I hope you enjoy the show.

Hi, Eric. Welcome to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. Hi, Elizabeth, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so excited to dive into this topic. This is, you know, I learned something from every caregiver that I get to chat with, and you have taught me a lot. I don’t know if I’ve stopped to tell you that, but I’m like, you’ve made me smarter in some different ways, and I can’t wait for for you to put it in your own words and share it with the, with the caregiving community.

But first, we always start the show off with a little bit of Empowerment, words of inspiration, stuff that spoke to me, particularly early on in my caregiving season, um, and I put it together in these PDFs for other caregivers if they want to create their own caregiver jar for themselves or somebody else. So your words of wisdom today say, if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. Love and how appropriate for what I do for a living. Yeah. So in caregiving and self-care and stuff like what does that make you?

Think of when you think of like, if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. You know, in every aspect of our lives, we grow when we’re challenged, and it’s a little bit almost unnatural, right? We seek comfort, we seek things that we’re already good at or don’t challenge us because it’s easier, but it’s never those easy moments that build us into who we are. It is the moments where we’re, we’re forced to go outside of our comfort zone and we’re forced to Um, whether it’s physical, whether it’s mental, whether it’s emotional, whether it’s intellectual.

Um, I think these are all things that tend to make us the person that we eventually become. And so there’s a balance there, right, of finding things that bring you peace, finding things that you can relax. But there’s also those things that are challenging you because those are the times when we change and when we expand our worldview. And so I love that quote so much. Thank you. You know, I start out with, you mentioned a lot of different self-care categories too, which I love too is like physical and emotional and all of the things, intellectual and I think that when I, when I speak to groups of people, sometimes I ask the room, like, did anyone have caregiving on their bucket list?

And you know what, nobody did. And at the end of some of my presentations, I say, you know, although I didn’t have caregiving on my bucket list, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And the reason I wouldn’t trade it for the world is it has helped me grown as a Person, as a, you know, as a mom, as a daughter, as a, as a professional, as an entrepreneur. So I do think we have to kind of go through these like roller coaster up and down moments.

First of all, you don’t appreciate the downhill if you don’t go uphill. Like, it’s like having a gloomy day. We got to have those to really appreciate the sunshine, things that are that are happening in our lives. So I, you know, let’s talk about your, your challenge potentially of of caregiving. You know, when did you realize that you were going to need to be some extra hands and some support for your parents, or did you already know that you were going to be one? Was there like a moment where you’re like, Oh, things have changed?

There definitely was, and I think my circumstances is maybe a little bit different from who you might traditionally talk to because I’m what I Referred to as a remote caregiver. And my, my parents live in different states, my parents are divorced. My mom lives in Florida, my dad lives in Pennsylvania, and I live in Atlanta, Georgia. And so to try and navigate any type of care where you’re not there in person has its own set of unique challenges. And so where this really started coming into fruition was my mom had a series of falls.

And at the time, I Kind of chalk that up too. Well, that’s just a part of aging, right? Like that’s nothing unusual. This is sort of to be expected, and little did I know at the time when I was much less educated that there were things going on that were contributing to these falls. I mean, just just a while ago, she’s not that old in my thinking. Like, it’s not like she’s 80, 90 years old. Oh, she’s in her 80s. 0, she is. OK, so you’ve got older parents. OK. But, uh, well, I’m also older myself.

I don’t think so. Thank you. I’m I’m 54 and I’m 54, yeah, I love it. So we, this really started in probably 2018, I think, and, and she was in her 20203s at the time. She was in her mid-70s. And by the way, I think, especially given the experience and what I’ve, what I do now and really focus on every day, I’ve learned that really it’s your mid 70s where there becomes a point where things start to radically change, and it doesn’t have to be that way, of course, and that’s why I’m dedicated to what I do, but For a lot of people, mid 70s is really this point, this turning point, and especially our physical well-being.

And so for my mom, she started having these falls, and by the way, when she felt she couldn’t catch herself. And so every fall was kind of a really significant event that would happen, where she would either have a concussion or significant, you know, bruising and damages. of her body and so not living in the same place and not really being privy to what was happening, I had to figure out how to insert myself into this process. And I’m fortunate that I have a sister who also took this took ownership and responsibility of also being a remote caregiver.

She also does not live in the same place. And so really started learning how do we start to get more visibility, how do we start to have influence on activities of daily living and and making sure she’s doing things and making sure that she’s safe. And so that was a really big, I didn’t know how to do any of it, right? Like there’s some courageous conversations you had to have with your mom like, because I think also sometimes they’re resistant to our help, you know, someone called it one’s powdered butt syndrome, like they powdered our butts, so why would they listen to us?

Well, that. And I, I get that. And there’s so much pride, and yet I also have learned too with falls, as you probably have, is like, they also get more fearful about falling as they fall. And so they, they retract and they do less. And, and all of those things are, but what, how did you and your sister kind of approach this and what were some of the tools maybe you used to help get some visibility and how did you have those conversations with your mom? Yeah, it wasn’t, it certainly wasn’t easy and even to this day continues to not be easy and It was a series of events that happened that actually started to help dictate how we needed to engage.

And part of it was her life, her life space did start to shrink because now she felt to exactly your point, a fear of falling is actually one of the strongest indicators to falls, because what happens when you have a fear of falling is you start doing less. And doing less is the exact opposite thing that any older adult should be doing. That’s where you start to see a more rapid decline. What we want to do, getting back That very first quote that you had, that’s such a powerful quote.

We want our parents to start challenging themselves more because that’s what, that’s what is encouraging growth, especially from a physical perspective. And so as my mom started doing less, she started seeing less people. She started engaging with the outside world less, and she actually started having more significant health issues. And it culminated specifically with my mom on a surgery that really accelerated this decline. And for the first time, got us, forced us into having the conversation around, she lived alone in a home, in a house, in a in a community in Florida, and she was no longer safe living alone, and those were really, really hard conversations because my mom loved living alone, and she was Self-sufficient, right?

She had a car, she drove, she had hobbies, she did things, but the more that she had these falls, the, and especially this elective surgery, the more her life space started to, to reduce and things got worse. And so we were really forced to spend more time down there, um, and my sister and I started, created a plan. Of how would we piggyback, how would we tag team on these trips to make sure that we were present because being physically present is important. You don’t know what you don’t know when you’re not there.

They’re so good at hiding it. So good. And and it’s not intentional either. And learning, the more we were thrown into this situation, the more we learned falls in particular. are complex, right? It’s not that you’ve necessarily just lost lower body strength or lost balance, but flooring, tripping hazards, lighting, medication, all of these things contribute are contributing factors, and how do you deal with them all. And so one of the big things that we did is started to be there in person and really help to make sure that the was safe.

The other aspect of this was really focusing on what does fall prevention mean? And I’m I’m zeroing in on falls. It was this, but, but that’s, you know, and like, I know, I, I, the lighting, the things you mentioned, the rugs and so forth. And even like, what I didn’t think about initially with mitigating falls is my mom had mobility. Challenges too is like reaching for things, you know, like, oh, I can get that myself, or they want that right away. And so putting things more into their arm’s reach and making it more accessible for them.

Like, I don’t think, you don’t think about that when you’re mitigating falls, I don’t think. That’s right. And, and the more I learned and I just to be a, uh, I like to dive into the research. Yeah, no, do it. Let’s give us the science. So a lot of falls happen, not necessarily because you lose your balance doing your single thing, it’s because you’re distracted. So you are walking across the street, you hear a noise, a dog barks, someone says your name. You turn and look and you trip, right?

There’s, there’s something that happens. So there are ways to actually train yourself and this is kind of gets. To a little bit more of the research behind this, but there is something called dual task exercises which are specifically there to help train you to be able to do two things at once so that distraction doesn’t have such an impact. And like anything in life, doing it repeatedly, right, you get better at it. And so part of this was a learning. Expedition for me on what leads to falls, what are things that are within our power to do to help prevent those falls, and how do you set this up for success and you you talked about it, whether it’s moving things to create less risk, whether it is, but at the same time, not reducing level of challenge because you want that.

You know, one of the things that we talk about all the time. is a lot of people want to avoid stairs completely because they are such fall risks. And you know, it’s an interesting push and pull around that, right, because in some ways stairs are great for people because stairs create that level of challenge. It’s physical exertion to have to do, but you reach a point where it does become unsafe to be on stairs. And so where is that line and spending time, part of that is spending time with the person to help, you know, stairs in some ways can be really wonderful things for people because it’s exercise and it’s.

Yeah, that’s so true. Were you able to to Influence. I’m going to use the word influence instead of convince, influence your mom to live in a, in a senior living community. Actually, we were, but it took a lot and it took significant, unfortunately, you know, unfortunate events to make it, make it necessary. Sometimes I, you know, I found that we had to do the same thing. It was a hard, hard change for my mom. And it’s interesting we’re a similar transition now with my my brother. It’s not really an assisted living community, more of a community for people with disabilities for him to live out the rest of his life, and it’s a big change.

But I feel like letting the crack show, particularly with my mom and like how her choices were having a ripple effect on the rest of our family had a really some influence on that. Like, look, this isn’t just about you, this is about everybody and it It, it’s, I don’t know if that helped influence my mom, but eventually she kind of got to the point. She surely also would kind of retreat sometimes and say, I could have done it. I could have lived on my own, you know. Absolutely.

And, and even now, so my mom’s been in, in a, in an independent living community for geez, probably 1 year, maybe more than 1 year at this point. OK, to make friends? Is she, she is, this is, it was such a good move and it was the right move and, and maybe the, the advice that I would share with others who are listening is when it’s time, you’ll know it’s time and there is an adjustment period and that’s really what I was going to get to is those first couple of months were an adjustment to move.

From your own house, where you are essentially by yourself into a community where you have a much smaller, you know, space that feels small and encourages you to get out and and meet all these people and do all these events. And that’s a transition in itself. And, and it’s OK that that’s a transition, you should expect that transition. And you shouldn’t expect instant happiness of of leaving your home and moving into a community, there will be an adjustment period, and even a year plus later, I think my mom is still has some of those memories of, I love having my house, right?

That’s hard to give up. Yeah, I know, it is hard. It is hard. And yeah, it’s, you know, peace of mind for her that she can reach out to somebody if a fall. Were to happen. Peace of mind for you also know that she’s not gonna be sitting on the floor for a length of time with, you know, nobody coming to her aid. Like people are going to miss her and she’s going to have that social stimulation and all of those things. So it’s, it’s hard though.

It’s a grief. It’s a grief. It is. You, you grieve more than people. You can grieve your change, and we grieve as caregivers. And like, life looks, I’m sure you didn’t have, your intention wasn’t to go do all these multiple trips, you know, to help support your parents. You’ve got a very full life and business of your own, and it’s, it’s a grief. It absolutely is, and that’s, that’s the right word. That’s really well said, Elizabeth, that it is a grief of grief doesn’t have to be loss, grief can be changed. Yeah.

And sometimes it takes some adjustment to really acclimate to that. So you have, you know, you were working caregiver. Like how was that in juggling those visits and things like that? And also, did you, did you find any tools or technology that were going to help give you visibility for for the falls and the other things going on? So a Uh, it’s a very complicated answer, uh, because it’s a whole bunch of things. One of the things that I learned was actually how to do shorter, more frequent trips.

In the past, going to see either my mom or my dad was, uh, a bit more of a, you know, I’m there for 34 days, you know, I really want to get as much time with them as I can. It this. Point in my life I was also starting a business and really hard to do that. And one of the things that I found just for me personally was more frequent shorter trips like literally going down for 24 hours and I’m fortunate that Atlanta is this hub of Delta, right, that there’s lots of options for flying and I’m also very fortunate that I am in an environment where I can afford to Buy tickets to see my mom on a frequent basis, which is, you know, amazing.

And so I just kind of decided for myself, I’d rather do frequent short trips than longer trips because I just couldn’t make that happen for myself. And then the other we did is we set up again this network of how we were going to do this. So my sister did the same thing and she also kind of adopted this more frequent. Shorter trips and rather than being there together, we really did try to alternate and increase that visibility and then without necessarily getting too far into the depths of what I do, I actually created a business so that I could see my mom and my dad more often and help reduce their falls.

It became a really important thing to me was The journey that I went on with my mom in particular with falls, but also my dad had his own share of physical, you know, ailments and complexity challenges was I learned something very, very important that we all lose muscle mass as we age. There’s actually a name for this. It’s called sarcopenia, which most people have never heard that word before. S A R C O P E N I A, sarcopenia. Oh my gosh, you win the spelling bee. Amazing.

Yes, I can only spell that because I’ve spelled it about 1000 times. Well, we’ll link to it. We’ll link to that in the show notes too. Yeah, it’s a really important word to know, especially for caregivers, that as we age, and by the way, this process starts in our 30s, which is super depressing, but it’s very subtle in our 33s and 40s and even into our 50s, where we don’t really notice, we begin to notice probably more in our 50s as I’m going through it myself, but it really starts to accelerate this loss of muscle mass and strength starts to accelerate in our 60s and 70s.

It’s, you know, there’s no coincidence that kind of the pains of aging that we all begin to feel are in those time frames. It is directly correlated with all of these things that happen to our bodies. This is one of those. And so losing lower body strength, losing core strength, this impacts the way that we move through the world, it moves. How we recognize how our bodies are moving through the world, which is referred to as proprioception, and it’s all related to our muscle mass and our strength.

And so as I learned about this, learned and married this with my mom having these falls, I knew my mom needed to really focus on building her strength and getting my mom to do. Was she a gym rat before? No, no. And one of my favorites, uh, you know, talking about challenge, this is something, a conversation I, I vividly remember with my mom, which was, Mom, going to the gym is great, but you actually have to challenge yourself in the gym. The thing that she would do by default is maybe sit on a stationary bike and barely move the pedals, right?

Yeah. And you’re not gonna, some mobility is better than none, but you’re not gonna see big changes. I’m like, Mom, you, it has to be hard enough that you sweat. And she said to me something that stuck with me, ladies don’t sweat. And that was her mindset, right? Is she didn’t know how to push herself in an exercise, uh, uh, you know, environment, and that’s what’s required. And so it took a lot of pride. Prodding and the prodding doesn’t work, right? Just telling someone the benefits of this help someone enter what we refer to as a state of ready to change is it’s got to be more than that and it’s got to be personal for them.

And so one of the things that I found is, no matter how much I would connect my mom with a trainer or an exercise class or a YMCA, it did not move the needle for her. And for me, what I eventually figured out is If I volunteered to do something with her, then she was immediately up for it, right? She wanted to spend time with you. She wanted to spend time with her adult child and that became something that was a great epiphany for me, which was, if I can be involved in this activity that encourages my mom to do something healthy, she would do it.

 

So how do I do that, right? I live in a different state. And that led me down this path of what if we could create an online exercise program that was interactive that was small enough that would allow us to interact, to be peers in the same program that would really help my mom build strength and that ended up evolving into this business that I started. I love it when, you know, a caregiving experience and the goal was to help mom get stronger so she could have More mobility, more quality of life.

And, um, you had some experience maybe in technology, software, and executive leadership and could pair that up with something that you saw as a need for your mom, yes, but for really all older adults. And it pairs physical self-care, right? In social self-care and maybe even some intellectual self-care and helping people live out their best sight. Life. So, there is science, right, involved in this too. Like sometimes I strength train 223 times a week, 3 times is the goal, right? I go to a place called Trained, shout out to Trained and Maryetta, love you, love your small groups, Madison.

But there is science around why strength training is so important, and I, I have a hard time articulating that to my other 54 year old friends, the other people that I, that I come around like, what do you say? To your friends even to kind of get them on board. So we, we can start doing this earlier. Yeah, there is so much science and we’re living in a moment right now where more and more this is becoming, I think the awareness, the education, the narrative around just how potent this strength training is for anybody, is it’s really coming at the top of the trees.

Look, 60 Minutes, you had a gentleman named Dr. Peter Atia, who is a Um, kind of a, a celebrity longevity physician that uh many people, he has a book out there called Outlive, which is a fabulous resource for understanding how to really dive into healthy living to what he talks about is have the best last 33 years of your life, the marginal 10 years of your life. How do you maximize that? You make sure you have good mobility, good emotional state, good mental state, good cognitive state, and there are things that are all within, you know, grasp that we can do.

And really at the top of that is exercise and specifically building strength. OK. I just sort of known at this point as being arguably the most potent intervention that you can do to preserve your quality of life, to preserve your health, to preserve your cognition as you get older. And more and more, I think the word around this is getting out, and we’re trying to be a part of that movement, no pun intended. But we really want to help educate and create awareness around the fact that A, you can build strength as you age, B, it’s really, really important, and See, we want to be a resource to help people take that first step, because what I personally experienced with my mom is, it’s hard to do on your own, right, especially as you get older, especially as you’ve lost a lot of the core functionality or capabilities or movement, mobility, balance, etc.

That it’s, it’s intimidating. It’s scary, it’s embarrassing, right? Shame is a part of this, and people don’t even want to acknowledge to themselves how much strength and mobility they’ve lost. And so having a resource that understands this, that can guide someone through how to get started became really important. important for me to help with my and my dad and it subsequently kind of allowed me to impact a lot more people than just my parents. So the name of your business is VIVO, and we’ll certainly link to it and it says it’s it’s a subscription service.

I don’t know if there’s a way for people to kind of To try it out. But how, how do you recommend like somebody’s listening, they’re interested, they’re like, my person needs this. I’m willing to also show up with them because you’ve said that this, that’s not the requirement, right? But that is the recommended way to get adoption is is to do it. So what, what’s, how to walk us through it, like what’s the process? Well, I’m happy to share more about in particular, but even trying to make this generic, regardless, because movement is such an important element that literally should be something that everyone Thinks about every day.

How am I going to get out there and experience the world, increase my mobility and challenge myself, right? I love so much that we started with that quote, because that’s what it’s all about. And that is what promotes growth. That is what promotes health. That’s what promotes independence and quality of life. So there’s lots of different ways to do it, and no two people are the same and Vivo is just one, right? Happy to talk more about that. I’m obviously passionate about. Yeah, great remote option. Well, certainly plug your plug, but whatever.

Some of the other options too. So when we think about exercise, there’s really 3 elements that we need to think about, and that’s aerobic, you know, getting your heart rate up. That is strength, challenging your muscles, and it’s balance, which is practicing balancing. There are certain movements that are really important that we have to do that are specifically around balance, which is such an important underlying, you know, foundational element of this. There are physical activity guidelines that exist. Some people are aware of them, some people are not.

Uh, I’ll say them here just so everybody knows, is 150 of, of moderate, 210 minutes, excuse me, of moderate aerobic exercise every single week. I really that or 210 minutes of vigorous activity. How do you the difference between moderate and vigorous. There’s always this thing called the talk test. If you can hold a conversation while you’re exercising and be a little bit breathy but still talk, that’s a good sweet spot for moderate. Vigorous is you’re going to have a hard time keeping a conversation going. You’re going to be breathing heavy.

But that down 210 minutes of moderate. exercise a week. Think about how you can accomplish that. You don’t want to do it all at once, right? How can you do that, spread it across the week, maybe 22 days a week, do 22020 minutes of something that’s a little bit challenging. Walking a dog often is not challenging. Not my dog, so freaking slow. And my dog, he wants to stop and sniff all the stuff, right? So I hear that’s good for their brain too, the sniffing. Yeah, yeah. That is actually a stimulation and activity for a dog, not so much a human, right?

For us, we need to get our heart rates up. And so one of the things I want everyone to walk as much as possible. Walking is one of these really wonderfully outsized, you know, amazing activities, but often walking is not challenging enough. And walk at a good pace, maybe walk and and make sure hills are a part of that, right? Do things to make. A weighted vest. You like those? A weighted vest, you know, there’s certainly really popular and there’s a lot of people that really uh subscribe to that.

It definitely creates more challenge. There’s not a ton of science on the weighted vest yet. It’s still a little bit nascent, but it’s certainly something that has gotten a lot of attention and it’s a way to create challenge. That is why the weighted vest exists is to turn walking into a more challenging activity. But look for. Those things that get you moving and get your heart rate up. So that can be group exercise classes at your YMCA, silver sneakers and programs like that that are often offered for free through a Medicare Advantage plan are wonderful options and do things that get your heart rate up.

That’s the important part though. It’s got to be a little bit challenging. Strength is really recommended to do 23 to 63 times a week. And again, The biggest part of this is it’s got to be a little bit challenging, and far too often, if an older adult is going into the gym, they’re afraid of getting hurt. They don’t want to be embarrassed, and so they’ll grab the lightest weight that they can do and do maybe 26 arm curls of 22 pound, right? That’s not really the goal. The goal is to make something challenging and often for an older adult, they don’t, that maybe hasn’t.

participated in, in strength training before is how do you influence that? A really easy way is get a personal trainer, a personal trainer that understands exercise and aging. Um, that’s not necessarily every personal trainer, right? You have to find specific personal trainers that understand an aging body, and are there certifications for that for that. There’s and it’s gets a little more complex because there’s different Asian bodies, but at the end of the day, what we really want to do is get someone who understands how to work with an older adult because what we do.

want to do our burpees, right? burpees are not a good activity for an older adult, but a lot of trainers will just have everyone who they’re seeing do burpees. And there’s certain things that you just want to know, and all of those contraindications for medication that they’re on, or existing pre-existing, maybe chronic conditions that they have, you just need to understand this. Yeah. That also creates accountability. Seeing a trainer, you have an appointment, right? You schedule something, it becomes a routine. Those are really important things to help create something that’s long lasting behavioral change.

So we try to incorporate all these different things into this program called Vivo. We just happen to offer this as a remote class, as something you do over Zoom. I would never argue that doing something virtually is better than being in person. It is not. Being in person is always better. But sometimes we can’t engage in this stuff in person. My mom lives in Florida. My dad lives in Pennsylvania. I live in Atlanta. I can’t really engage on a weekly basis through, you know, in person. So what we zero in on from the vivo perspective is we really leverage the power of a small group.

A small group is a wonderful vehicle to create behavioral change. A small group allows for two really Really important things, individualized attention and social engagement and community building, and those are both at the heart of what we lean into also these other wonderful benefits, right? It’s, it’s social connection. It’s, it’s dealing with social isolation and loneliness. It is creating a sense of belonging and support. These are all really wonderful things that help create adoption. So with Vivo classes, we Our classes at 22 people. We have a live certified personal trainer who understands exercise and aging, and we have a program that we’ve built based on the latest science around exercise and aging that we know is going to help people get to a level of challenge where they see progress.

 

And so we have 45 minute classes, we encourage people to participate at least twice per week, you know, again, driving to a gym, these are all things that are wonderful if you’ve got access to it. But sometimes if you can just roll out of bed and open up a tablet or a computer, it’s a little bit easier to participate. But so they just need to click a zoom link. They click a Zoom link and they’re in a class, and we actually, we don’t even, we hide the link.

It’s a big button that says join class. OK. We send them an email before their class. They click the button, they’re in their class. You get to see your children or your maybe your friends, people around the country who haven’t seen in a while. I do a class with my mom every Tuesday and Thursday at noon, and it’s myself, my mom, my wife, her parents, my sister, her brother, and occasionally my 21-year-old daughter. And we’re we’re across 5 different states. We’re across 5 different decades of life and all getting an appropriately challenging workout because there’s a way to modify every single movement for.

One of a different level of mobility. So I may be doing push-ups on the floor and my mom is doing a push-up standing next to the wall just extending her arms. She’s getting challenged. I’m getting challenged, my 21 year old daughter’s getting challenged, and it’s this really cool thing where we’re all participating in just doing different variations. What a great, great, great thing. And you know, families who exercise and prioritize their health and happiness, they’re going to be around. With each other a lot longer. So that is, that is a great success story.

And, you know, I just kudos to you, Eric, for making it different and really thinking about it. We, we originally met at Ageech, we call it AgTech Atlanta at that time. Now it’s called Age Tech Connect and I’ll share that because they’ve expanded to other, other cities. But we met and it was so tiny. It was like years ago, it was like people doing things in technology, and I was wanting to connect with different people and understand the space more. Jeffrey, thank you for the work that You’ve done if you’re listening to this, but how is finding this community, like, entrepreneurship is hard, right?

Like, we can build these things, but getting them out into the world with a shoestring budget is really hard. Like, how is the age tech community helped you? Um, and, and why would others want to tune into that space potentially? Yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s something happening right now, specifically in Atlanta, which is why this movement evolved HTech Atlanta, and it has All recognized it’s happening all over the country and it’s really happening all over the world, and it’s really foundationally based on the fact that the demographics globally are changing and with that comes unique challenges that we’ve never seen before.

There aren’t enough caregivers in the world to care for the aging population that is currently happening, and it’s going to get worse. So that means we need change. That means we need change in systems, we need change in infrastructure, we need change in vocation. We need changes in tech. And so we’re kind of you and I both are a part of this thing that’s happening and it’s a little bit of a nascent, you know, stage and early stage, but maturing quickly because there’s a lot of companies that are recognizing or a lot of individuals that are recognizing we need to help this very vulnerable population, and there’s something that we can do.

And what’s been great about this community is we’re all going through similar challenges, right? How do you help an older adults start in a program? Like Vivo, how do you help an older, how do you help a healthcare organization understand what a path is when someone’s having a fall? How do you help um home care agency know how to deal with an increasing need for caregivers when they may not have as many caregivers at their, at their disposal to, to help their populations. Every senior living communities, right, every single part of, of this kind of landscape of people serving older adults is being strained.

 

And to be able to collaborate, commiserate, your wins, share losses or challenges, um, it’s really, really important just for humanity, right? Like humanity is you’re not alone. This is really, really hard. The analogy I use often is I am I’m pushing a boulder up up a hill every single day while simultaneously getting punched in the stomach. That’s what it feels like to be an entrepreneur, especially in a space that’s new, and you, you can’t just be passionate about an idea, you need to be obsessed with an idea.

They got to take action. Right. And, and, and be really comfortable taking action and be really. Comfortable having failure and not being discouraged and continuing to push through that. There’s a wonderful quote that I got from the movie Moneyball that is probably also in the book because it was a book first, but it was the first person to break through the wall always gets bloodied. And, and that is for a lot of this age tech community, we’re all trying to figure out how to break through that wall.

How do we, how do we take these really cool innovative things that we’re doing. and get this population aware of it and willing to try it and adopt it. And it’s all new. So having a community to support you, to bounce ideas off of, to sharing what’s worked for them that can help influence what you’re doing has been a really big part of this, this journey. Yes, amazing. Well, we’ll find the Moneyball quote because that’s a good one too. And of course we’ll collect connect to the tech connected.

Um, you know, we also found out in that meeting that we had a nice little personal connection, former co-worker turned boss for me and your friend from Duke Allen. So shout out to Alan if you’re, if you’re listening to this and we want you to share it with the, with people in your life. So very cool. Like I just, it’s been great to kind of see this evolve for you over the years. And for you, Eric, like you’ve got a entrepreneurship, caregiving, remote caregiving life, family of your own, boulder building business up the hill.

Besides exercising with your, with your mom and your family a couple times a week, what are the ways that you’re infusing self-care into your life, like into your days and your weeks and little micro ways? Yeah, so what, what really turned me on to this was actually a speaker I saw probably 15 years ago. Uh, that talked about the four cornerstones of healthy aging. And they’re, they’re fairly intuitive. I think most of your listeners will have a basic understanding, but it’s exercise, nutrition, sleep, and he talked about meditation.

I would more broadly call it mental health. And what I’ve really tried to do is focus on those four things and figure out for me, how do I lean into those in a new way. And exercise, we’ve kind of chatted about, that’s become a really core tenet of not just what I do, but Every day with my parents, but what I do for my job, nutrition, really understanding one of the most, the, the biggest misconceptions around nutrition and aging is focused on protein and how important protein is in our diet, because protein actually is the building block for muscle.

So you are exercising, but if you’re not eating enough protein, you’re not going to build that muscle. And how do I translate that to myself? What does healthy eating mean? Plant-based diet versus animal What are the benefits? What are the trade-offs? How much do we need to eat? So that’s become something. Sleep is another really big category unto itself, but understanding how important sleep is for restoration of the body, it’s such an important tool to prevent cognitive decline and other neurocognitive disorders, and how do we approach healthy sleep, right?

The thing that I would most want to point to in this answer is meditation has become something that I have Learned is really beneficial for me. And what kind of meditation do you do because there’s like different types out there. There are and I’ve adopted this focus on mindful meditation and really, you know, shout out to the calm app. That’s what I use to work for me. The guided meditation, the 23 minute daily meditation. Um, it’s funny. This is a sign. I was just thinking the other day like, I got to get back to doing this.

This was really helping me early in my journey. So It’s another sign. I will, I will, I love when this happens too, by the way, because it is a sign. It, you know, the universe sharing, telling us that we should be doing this. 10 minutes feels like a really easy thing to do, right? It’s not 2 hours or an hour, that feels a little more daunting. 10 minutes every day of just mindfulness, and it’s guided, right? So I can literally just click play on this app. It’s a very pleasant person who talks you through, there’s a lot of silence, right?

But I like the rain in the background. The rain in the background too. for the wind like just listening to rain for 10 minutes is calming and soothing. And so that’s just become a part of my routine. And here’s, you know, one thing that has been meaningful for me that I’ll share with you and the listeners. The thing that all of this is centered around is this concept called discipline, and discipline is, I define discipline. I don’t know what the true definition is. I’ll define discipline as doing something when you don’t feel like doing it.

And discipline for me, for a lot of things has been very challenging. But what I found is if I create a routine, a consistent routine, discipline becomes much easier. So if I wake up at the same time every day, if I do a series of activities in a, in a, you know, range on a consistent basis, I have a Vivo schedule so I know what I’m actually. Excising and that allows me to stick to it. I make that 10 minute com app, the first thing that I do when I get out of bed, and it’s just a part of my routine, and that has made discipline easier for me because I, it’s, it’s just something I’m not good at.

And so when I can have this expectation that every day this is what I’m going to do, I end up doing it. And it’s like habit stacking it can be very powerful. For me, I used to do, I used to. Go to a gym, you know, a bigger LA Fitness is the one I went to, and I would sit in the sauna after my workout and I would do it in the sauna for 10 minutes. But I’m not going to the gym. And so when that got disrupted, you know, I need to find a new routine where you say like slots in nicely and it’s like, it’s just what you do after I brush my teeth, I do this. Yeah.

Human beings love routine, right? And not even just humans, all animals love routine. It creates a peace. It creates a level of comfort, and it also helps with that behavioral change. And so even one of the things that we talk about in vivo is brushing your teeth, which is something that generally we have built in baked into our routine from when we were little kids, leverage that to do other things. So balance, practice standing on one leg. In theory, you should be brushing your teeth for 2 minutes.

I don’t know how many of us do that. But if you brush your teeth every day. Do all squat, stand on right leg for a minute, stand on your left for a minute, right? Do one legged and there are ways to build into those routines that help with other aspects of our health. So I use the com app as kind of my my tool. I love that. Well, you know, it’s hard to tell you have passion around this, Eric. But I do have, I’m passionate about self-care, so like we could go all day and talking about this stuff.

So, but we’ve got to keep it short, tighten it up for the, for the listeners. So I’m gonna um close this out with a couple of things from the Just For You Daily self-care journal. This is a book that I wrote to help people prioritize their own personal health and wellness, written with caregivers in mind. So I marked a A couple of pages here. Let’s see what I got for you. We already kind of talked about your quote, so, OK, let’s talk about this one. Who can you count on to make you laugh, or where can you go to count on a good laugh?

I am really lucky that I have a, we have something we started during the pandemic where I have a friend, a good friend who lives in another city who was an amateur poker player. And when the pandemic happened, he’s a college buddy, or this whole group of our fraternity brothers got together and we started playing poker online because none of us could leave the house. And that was in 2020, right? We still do it every Thursday night. Oh, good. And it is nothing, literally nothing but laughing for three hours of hanging out with your college buddies playing online poker while we’ve got a Zoom session up, we can all see each other.

Someone’s playing music, so it feels Like you’re at a bar with your friends and virtual, but we, it is hilarious and so that tool or just through Zoom or there’s a poker website that we go to, it’s, it’s free, but it’s just, it’s really just an excuse to get together. if you remember the name of it, let me know. I will, I will. Yeah, because sometimes people are like, I want to know what it is. I love that that’s another social self-care, intellectual, making you laugh. It’s so emotional. Amazing.

If you could save one photo from your childhood, which one would it be? Like something that just a house. So, uh, I, I jumps out at you. There’s no wrong answer. Yeah, the thing that jumps out at me is I have a picture of myself, I think when I was a 3 year old, 3 years at a piano at a at a baby grand, and I was learning how to play piano and music has become a huge part of my life as an adult. And so looking Back at this picture where I can see that music had an influence on me at an early is really like kind of the scale of you being this little kid on the big piano is kind of very sweet.

What kind of music are you into now? Rock and roll, you know, there’s a lot of classic rock and roll. No, I’ve really tried to get into new music and there’s a lot of really good bands. I’m more into there’s a, there’s a psychedelic rock scene that’s happening, that’s coming back. What? And there’s a lot of bands out of Australia, strangely, that are a part of this movement. Two of the biggest are one, there’s a band called Tame Impala, which most people have heard of. It’s actually just a guy, but he tours with a band.

Tame Impala. Tame Impala, yeah, they’re very popular right now. OK, I’m gonna Spotifying it when we get off later. I guarantee you’ve heard 6 of their songs. OK, my kids will be like, yeah, mom. Yeah, your kids will definitely know. And there’s another band with a really funny name called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which band in this genre that are becoming very popular. OK. See, I love that. This is your this is your self-care routine. That’s awesome. Music is a big part of my self-care routine.

I listen to it, I play it. I play in a local band in Atlanta. I go to a lot of concerts, so this is really, when I’m talking about self-care beyond exercise, beyond some mindfulness, it’s about music. It lets you kind of let go a little bit. Amazing. Well, I know people are going to get a lot of value out of this conversation, you know, talking about healthy aging, not just for our loved ones, but also For ourselves. Like, let’s prioritize our own health and wellness so that you kind of get a twofer with this episode.

We’re learning lots of different things. And so I really appreciate what you’re doing in the space and the impact that you’re making, the education that you’re giving people. If you’ve liked this episode, I want you to share it with other people that you know so that we can continue to kind of get the word out. And I just want to thank you, Eric. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your story. Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. And the last thing that I want to make sure I, how do people get a hold of you?

Yes. Well, sorry, before that. OK, 2 things. Self-care as a caregiver is the most important thing, because if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not going to do a good job taking care of somebody else. And like a lot of things in life, we tend to put ourselves last. It is really important when you’re caring for someone else that you are focusing on yourself. And it’s that, I, I think back to that, you know, the, the speech that they give on the, the flight attendants give when you get on a plane is, you know, in the event that you lose oxygen, put your mask on yourself before you put it on your child.

Same thing when you’re caring for. A parent is you have to take care of yourself or you’re not going to be a good caregiver for your, your aging parents. You can, you can find us at Tevivo.com. We say when you, when you join Vivo, you become a part of a team. So it’s T A M VIVO.com. We do offer a free two week membership. If you check it out, you can check it out, try classes for 2 weeks, and hopefully you’ll see how incredible this is to be a part of this community and to focus on building strength, which improves every part of your life.

Amazing, amazing. Thank you, Eric. High five to you and and Team Vivo. I appreciate you and I hope everyone gets something great from this episode. Thanks so much.

If you’re a fan of this Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast, then you’re gonna love Confessions of a reluctant Caregiver podcast, which is also part of the whole Care Network family. Join sisters JJ and Natalie, who offer a candid, unfiltered space to confess the good, the bad, and the ugly of Being a caregiver. From heartfelt confessions to insightful guest interviews, they’ve got it covered.

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Thanks for listening to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast on the whole Care Network. I hope this episode provided encouragement and practical tips to infuse into your life. You’ll find the show notes and all the resources mentioned at Hahealthy caregiver.com. I also invite you to check out previous episodes of the podcast that you may have missed. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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