Meet The Soft Exosuit That Might Help The Elderly Walk Again

Exoskeletons have, to this point, largely been theoretical in how they work. We’ve been working on them since the ’60s, but until now they’ve essentially been powered scaffolds you strap yourself into. The soft exosuit the military is building, though, is another beast altogether.

Designed partially by Harvard’s Wyss Institute, the basic concept of the suit is to layer muscles over your muscles. Built out of specialty fabrics, it will, in theory, allow soldiers to run further, lift more, and generally be more effective in the field. But, longer-term, it will allow those with muscle problems to get support from the suit and stay active.

It also has fewer of the problems generally associated with these suits, like what they euphemistically call “joint misalignment.” Yes, some powered exoskeletons can break your arm if you use them wrong. You can see why this may be a problem for consumer applications, so Wyss’ soft version is drawing considerable interest from medical device companies. The one problem is that, being soft, it won’t support the user, so they’ll need to able to take both their own weight and the force of the device as it works.

In other words, Grandma won’t be jumping over buildings if she straps this thing on. But then again, she probably just wants to walk without having a piece of metal to lean on, so that’s a good trade-off.

Elderly Greeley massage therapist can still heal with his touch

Andrew Short needed something after his wife died from bone cancer. A year later, massage helped him work out the pain.

Short’s wife died in 1995 and, a year later, he became a massage therapist. It called to him, for reasons he still can’t quite explain, even if they were many of the same reasons he became a Presbyterian minister.

He still doesn’t know how he made it through school with the grief shadowing him, but he did it. A couple years later, the pain had dulled, and he let it go.

Now, at age 75, he’s a therapist once again after graduating from the Academy of Natural Therapy in downtown Greeley.

He’s happily married once again, retired from ministry and, yes, an old guy with a hip issue and a bit of a heart problem.

But he can’t stay away from the healing power of touch. He believes in prayer, but he also believes in his own power.

“You can pray for someone,” he said, “and I’ll fix it another way. Power is a good thing. It’s good to have it, to deal with it and help others with it. Strange things happen when you touch people.”

Short could sit around all day. It sounds like heaven to some, but that’s Short’s hell. He wrestled in college and did Judo later. His favorite moves in Judo are the arm bar and a choke hold on the carotid artery, which puts an opponent to sleep in a minute or so. Power allows you to help or hurt the body. He prefers to help. His handshake tells you he could do either without much effort.

Cathryn was his first wife, and she was a superwoman, he said, a smart mother with college degrees and a good job and heart. He has two sons and five grandchildren by her. Once he mourned, he dated — he was too much of a people person not to — but he wasn’t sure he wanted to get married. Then he met Edie Gause, an executive with the Presbyterian Church. She was three years younger. He once dated a woman for a while who was 12 years younger than him, and it was fun, but they seemed to live in different eras. They couldn’t even talk about music because they grew up with different bands. It got tiring.

But Gause was from his era. They liked the Presbyterian theology and disliked George Bush, even though both of them lived in Texas.

“We agreed on all the biggies right away,” he said. “We figured we could work out the little things.”

Gause is a superwoman as well, he said.

“I don’t know how I got so lucky to have two of them in my life,” he said.

Part of the reason he took up massage again was to help Gause, who battles thoracic outlet syndrome, a group of disorders that occur from the compression of the blood vessels or nerves in the space between the collarbone and first rib. It’s painful, but he helps take it away.

That turned into helping whoever needs it.

“Why not? I enjoy doing good,” he said. “I want to be seen as a good guy, and this is a way to do that. But I enjoy the tips as well.”

Short won’t dismiss prayer. He doesn’t believe you can pray for something and receive something directly in return. You can’t pray for a new car, for instance, and wind up with a Mustang in your garage.

There are things that happen, however, that seem outside of chance. Maybe that’s what prayer gives people.

Short will help work out your hurt while you wait for salvation.

Staff writer Dan England is The Tribune’s Features Editor. His column runs on Tuesday. If you have an idea for a column, call (970) 392-4418 or e-mail dengland@greeleytribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @ DanEngland.

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Setting a roadmap to care for the senior citizens

Nagpur: Geriatric population has always been an ignored group and geriatric medicine a very miniscule part of medical studies in the country. Projections say the number of senior citizens in India would form at least a third of the country's population. Considering this, the medical and social facilities extended to the elderly must be improved, too, experts believe.

Specialists in geriatric medicines from all over the country gathered in the city this weekend to discuss the roadmap that the country needs to follow for healthcare facilities given to the elderly. The 11th annual national conference of Geriatric Society of India (GSI) was conducted in the city this weekend, with the help of Influenza Foundation of India (IFI), Indira Gandhi National Open University ( IGNOU) and Indian Menopause Society (IMS).

"Today, India is home to 95 million senior citizens who make up for 20% of the population. The country is projected to have 171 million elderly people by 2015 and 345 million by 2050. We need to gear up as a society, to be able to give a comfortable life to all these citizens. However, what we see today is that the society concentrating on children and young earning members of the family, sometimes even at the expense of the health of the senior citizens," said Dr Bhau Rajurkar, organizing chairman of the conference. He said that the society is trying to stress the importance of geriatrics as a separate subject in medical curriculum so as to have the necessary number of specialists in the subject.

Home Cleaning Experts Offer Tips on Holiday Cleaning

Home cleaning industry experts discuss time-saving tips for holiday season cleaning

November 3, 2014 —

With the holiday season right around the corner, several cleaning service experts came together to offer some valuable cleaning tips to homeowners this holiday season, which will help minimize the time and effort spent on cleaning and maximize the time spent with family and loved ones.

“The first thing that people complain about during and after the holidays is overeating,” says Katherine Cook, general manager of The Maids New Hampshire. “What we see sometimes when we come to houses with regular cleaning visits is that people do not properly clean their fridges, which in turn results in unnecessary spending at the grocery store.”

According to Cook, about 33 percent of people do not clean their fridge prior to going to the grocery store, which not only may cause overeating and poor meal planning, but also the spread of bacteria, viruses, and parasites inside the fridge, which may cause severe food poisoning. Therefore, Cook suggests that fridge cleaning should be one of the top cleaning chores this and every holiday season.

Another popular cleaning question that people tend to have around the holiday season concerns keeping their floors clean: both before and after the holidays.

“The holiday season is one of the most sociable times of the year,” says Joey Strong, owner of a Durham region carpet cleaning and janitorial services company, “Naturally, your flooring will see more stress that usual, and carpets tend to be the most affected.”

According to Strong, there is no universal tip for carpet cleaning. Each type of stain requires different treatment. However, to achieve the best results, each treatment should be done in a timely fashion.

Other types of flooring will also require attention. Cook suggested two easy, yet effective, solutions for wood and laminate floor cleaning.

“Soak a cloth in tea and just wash down wood floors. Tea will add an extra shine to the wood, eliminate odor, and kill some germs that might dwell in the wood,” suggested Cook. “For laminate flooring, add two table spoons of baby shampoo to a gallon of water and mop the dirty area.”

Another time-saving idea that seems to be a no-brainer, yet is often overlooked according to Cook, is cleaning as you go. Putting dirty dishes right into the dishwasher, wiping stains off right away, and putting away things that are no longer in use will save a lot of time for cooking, decorating, and other fun holiday activities.

“Holidays can be stressful because of all the cleaning that needs to be done,” said Strong “Oftentimes, it is worth hiring professionals for your cleaning needs rather than spending hours on trying to tackle every single cleaning task yourself.”

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Mapping software to track Edinburgh’s elderly

MAPPING software is to be used to track older people across ­Edinburgh in a bid to improve the location of services for the ­elderly.

The move is the first key ­recommendation of a Europe-wide health study.

Italian city Udine has used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to show where older people live and how they move about the city. The information was then used to help decide on the location of services such as pharmacies and ­clinics.

Edinburgh is the only Scottish city to have been included in the pioneering Urbact Healthy Ageing project. The scheme’s leading city is Udine, while the others are Brighton and Hove, south of the Border, Grand Poitiers in France, and Klaipeda in ­Lithuania.

The project aims to “transfer learning” between European cities about their approaches to tackling issues such as demographic ageing and meeting the needs of older residents.

GIS has been used in the past by Edinburgh Council to help with planning, parks and ­transport.

European funding for the project will pay for an IT worker to develop an online mapping tool with key data relating to older people’s services and activities in the city.

Projects in partner cities have highlighted walking groups, urban gardens, poetic therapy and story-telling and ­activities to improve or maintain memory skills.

City health and wellbeing leader Councillor Ricky Henderson, said: “The Urbact Healthy Ageing project is a fantastic ­opportunity to learn about successful ways in which the lives of older people can be improved, and gives us the chance to share our good practice too.

“Promoting healthy and ­active ageing is an essential part of improving lives for older people. If we improve health and wellbeing, then it’s likely that the need for older people to ­access higher levels of care will be delayed.”

Scottish Green health spokeswoman Alison Johnstone agreed.

She said: “Using technology in this way is a great use of resources in an effort to increase the health and wellbeing of our elderly population. Such mapping will greatly help in locating the right services in the right areas. In the years ahead with an ageing population and stretched finances it is only right to the user that services are located in the right places and that they are as accessible as possible.”

Figures show that Scotland’s population is ageing, and by 2035 over-65s will account for more than 30 per cent of people.

Health experts have warned the NHS will struggle to cope with rising numbers of elderly patients with complex needs in the years ahead against a backdrop of reduced resources and dropping bed numbers.