By Meghan Streit
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Healthier lifestyles and medical advances mean that people are living decades longer than ever before. But unless you’re a doctor, making the right choices for your health as you age can be confusing.

A team of experts at your service
To help residents make some sense of all of the health and medical information available in the media and on the Internet, Monarch Landing recently sponsored a series of classes called “Insights Into Senior Health.”

Th e two-hour weekly sessions featured experts from different fields  presenting information on topics like Alzheimer’s, blood pressure, diabetes, and  depression. Each class ended with a casual discussion period, in which residents could ask questions or share information with one another.

Sharing information for better health
Aaron Hambrick and Egon Kahn, both pharmacists with Enloe Drugs, Inc., in Des Plaines, facilitated a recent discussion on diabetes. “The people who come [to these classes] are very involved, which makes it informative because we can talk about what they are most interested in,” Hambrick says.

Hambrick and Kahn gave residents information about the signs and symptoms of the disease, and armed them with valuable information on how to best treat it and avoid complications like blindness and nerve damage.

Monarch Landing resident Joyce Foulkes has been participating in all of the sessions and says they have been very informative.

“I thought it would be a good thing to do,” Foulkes says. “When they described the class, I thought that I had better get to know a little more about these things.”

At Monarch Landing, residents have an entire community dedicated to helping them stay healthy and active as long as possible. In addition to a full-time on-site physician and emergency response team, the Naperville community also staff s wellness experts at the fitness and aquatics centers and sponsors special events on a variety of health topics.