Health Literacy for the Elderly
What is Health Literacy Personal health literacy is our ability to find, understand, and use information and services to make informed health-related decisions and actions for ourselves and others. Image Credit: Erie County Department of Health For the elderly, while the "evening years" should ideally be a time of peace, they are often fraught with anxiety because of a profound "biological illiteracy." This blog highlights a critical but often overlooked aspect of aging: Health Literacy . When an individual does not understand the machine they inhabit, they become a passive passenger rather than the captain of their own health. The following sections provide an expansion on these core points: The Anatomy of Aging: A Mystery to Many Many elderly individuals view their bodies as a "black box." They experience pain or decline as a vague, inevitable cloud rather than a specific physiological process. They are unable to distinguish between "normal aging...