At Barbourville Health and Rehabilitation Center, we are blessed to receive visitors throughout the Christmas season.
We would like to thank the Knox Central Gear Up Bible Class for singing beautiful Christmas carols for all to hear and bringing gifts to residents. The thoughtfulness of strangers means more than you know to not only the residents, but to staff, family members and visitors as well.
Higher levels of social interaction—even peripheral interactions—can have a high payoff for elderly folks, according to Bryan James, an epidemiologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago.
In one study, James looked at how social activity affected cognitive decline. Over 1100 seniors without dementia at baseline were measured on their social activity levels and then tested periodically on their cognitive functioning over a 12-year period. The rate of cognitive decline was 70 percent less in people with frequent social contact than those with low social activity.
His results are truly dramatic. Even when he and his colleagues statistically control for risk factors like smoking or a history of disease, they still find that someone with high levels of social activity has 43 percent less disability than someone who has low levels of social activity, and about half the rate of cognitive decline.
Barbourville Health and Rehabilitation Center is a 50,000-square-foot, 135-bed facility (with nine private rooms) located in Barbourville, Kentucky. Our facility offers 24-hour nursing care, physicians, pharmaceutical services, lab services, along with speech, physical and occupational therapies.