Home Medical Alert Systems

Home Medical Alert Systems are Essential for Seniors on Their Own

Why the increasing need for home medical alert systems?

It's simple. Although the rates of stroke are going down -- perhaps due to increased awareness and access to 911, and perhaps due to lifestyles changes such as fewer people smoking -- there is one "risk factor" for strokes and heart attacks that is growing daily. And that's increasing age.

There are about seventy-eight million boomers in the United States, according to the Census Bureau in 2009.

Home Medical Alert Systems Will Be Needed by Millions of Baby Boomers

The oldest boomers begin to turn 65 next year in 2011. That means we've only just begun to get "old" -- as that is usually defined. Yet our risk for stroke doubles with every decade past age 55. So 2011 marks just the beginning of our risk doubling.

The "baby boom" started in 1946 as de-commissioned soldiers began arriving back in the country after having fought World War II. It didn't happen overnight, of course, but having survived the biggest war in history, they started doing what they'd no doubt looked forward to while crossing Europe and the Pacific Ocean, while lying awake at night wondering if they'd survive to see the next sunrise.

They returned home and began to marry the sweethearts they'd left behind.

If that was not possible -- some didn't have sweethearts to leave behind, or the sweethearts didn't wait for them, or they'd changed too much during the course of the war to return to the same relationship or perhaps they'd stopped loving that particular girl -- they eventually found another woman, got married and started having children.

And in those days, using birth control was not routine for married couples, even for non-Catholics. Catholics were known for having larger families than average, but even non-Catholics normally had two to four kids.

So the explosion of babies didn't stop in a year or so, but kept going.

I don't know whether the Korean War added to it, by giving the younger brothers of the World War II generation a chance to experience combat themselves, and pushing them to return home to get married themselves, but every year the number of babies born exceeded the year before, until the boom peaked in 1957 at 4,300,000. After that, the numbers started going down (though remaining much higher than average) until 1964, the last year.

Most Boomers Aren't Ready for Nursing Homes, but We're Still at Risk, and so Will Continue to Install Home Medical Alert Systems

We've had a lot of long, strange trips, and I believe have many more to go, but as a generation we're getting close to that dreaded situation "growing old." Something we've tried to avoid since we were teenagers and heard The Who sing, "Hope I die before I grow old." Two members of The Who have already done so.

But we're just as afraid of death as everybody else, and want to live forever. As a generation we've been a lot more concerned about fitness and health than most before us. We started the vitamin and jogging fads in the 1970s.

However, all the things we're (in)famous for: hippies, yuppies, protesting, the New Age etc have always been the province of a minority. The majority lived more or less normal lives.

And now face the advance of years.

Our parents the World War II generation are reaching advanced old age, going into nursing homes and dying.

That leaves us to live alone with an increasing risk of heart attack, stroke, and damaging falls.

We don't want to face it, but we're a rapidly increasing market for home medical alert systems.

Next: Medical Alert Alarm System -- for protecting your elderly and disabled loved ones.