Mealtime is essential to the elderly as they need to nourish themselves with nutritious food to stay healthy. There is one mealtime challenge that we want to mention: choking. Choking is when your air passage gets blocked, resulting in difficulty in breathing. Sometimes, it can be inevitable, and your elderly can be in danger of suffocating.

Advant Home Health Services, Inc. is a home health care agency in Dallas, Texas that offers constant supervision for the elderly, including in their mealtimes. We provide home health care in Texas because we want to help your loved ones.

• Meal Preparation

  Some foods pose a choking hazard for the elderly. Examples are chunks of meat, vegetables, and fruits. We suggest that the meat has to be ground, finely chopped, or pulled. For the fruits and vegetables, they have to be seedless and sliced into small pieces. Included in the tasks of our home health aide in preparing meals is to cut or slice the foods into smaller pieces. It is easier for the seniors to chew and swallow smaller portions of food, minimizing the risk of choking.

• Focus on Eating

  Sometimes during mealtime, your senior loved ones get distracted with their phones or with the television. Therefore, you can anticipate possible choking on their end because of these distractions. Our home health aide can see to it that they gently remind your loved ones to focus on eating. They can also try and put away potential distractions because chewing and swallowing their food may require a higher level of concentration.

It is imperative to keep a close eye on your elderly because choking is sometimes silent and you won’t hear it if it happens.