To Independence... and Beyond!!

When looking at my glyphs side-by-side that I drew during my first and last semester of class in OT school, I made the following observations:        Differences The first difference I noticed between my two glyphs was that I added glasses to my person. According to the key, this indicates that I now feel that I have had more experience in leadership roles than most other people my age at this point in life. I believe that I made this change due to the fact that I have taken on two leadership roles since being in OT school: Anatomy TA and SOTA Public Relations Chair. I am proud of myself for stepping up and applying for these roles and earning them. Each position taught me so much about the importance of being pro-active, self-directed, organized, and confident in my abilities as a leader. I also noticed that my person's hair transitioned from being only curly to being half straight/half curly. This reflects that I used to see leadership as being solely ab...

Today in OCP Older Adults, Ashley Ludlow came to talk to us about Aging and Nutrition. I really enjoyed learning from her expertise on diet and nutrition as it relates to aging populations, and my main takeaways from her lecture were as follows: • Nutrition in elderly populations can be addressed through primary, secondary, or tertiary prevention. Primary prevention will aim to slow down the aging process, secondary prevention will aim to slow the progression of a chronic nutrition-related disease, and tertiary prevention involves medical nutrition therapy. • 1 in 8 Americans experience food insecurity and do not have access to foods that support a healthy diet and lifestyle. Those who are food insecure are 30% more likely to experience decline in ADL performance. • Elderly populations are 50% more likely to develop diabetes and 14% more likely to develop hypertension. • Loneliness/social isolation has the same health effect of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 50% of seniors are consi...