It’s long been known that music has the ability to reach into recesses of the mind, even of dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers. Those long-ago favorite tunes can actually seem to bring life back to those people who spend long days in a mental prison.

As a family caregiver, you know the stress of being on call 24/7. You understand how very hard it can be to keep up with your other responsibilities. You’ve learned that great love for the person you take care of is no guarantee against burnout.

What happens if you simply need a day or two off? What if you get called out of town and have no one to cover for you? Should you think about contacting a professional home health care agency before the need arises?

According to the most recent Pew Research report on caregivers, 4 out of 10 Americans are currently caring for aging parents, and MetLife Mature Market Institute research estimates over 10 million of us are doing this directly, while millions more are contributing to the cost of assisted living care. Middle aged adults are often juggling this with continuing to care for their grown children, earning them the nickname "the sandwich generation". Additionally, 50% of adult caregivers are also employed full time. It's not easy, and one of the most stressful parts of caring for one's parents is managing health.

As more individuals decide to "age in place," the role of the family caregiver has drastically changed. In most cases, a loved one lives a bit farther away than the family caregiver would like, however, this rarely changes the caregiver duties that come with helping a loved one.

You love your aging parents and you want to see them live safely at home with all the emotional and physical support they need. But let's face reality - being a home-based caregiver can cause a tremendous financial bind if you have to modify of give up your paid employment to play the role.

Managing someone's health is a team sport! It often involves multiple people, hundreds (if not thousands) of miles in between the caregivers and their loved one, and busy schedules that need to be coordinated.

For many, caregiver duties can be a full time job. Often on top of a real full time job.

Sociologists note that we're living in a unique time in American history. It's believed that, for the first time ever, the modern generation of adults is expected to care both for their children and their own parents at the same time.

While caregiving from far away is becoming far more common, and certainly becoming more possible with advances in technology, there are still some components that people need to understand when taking on the responsibility that comes with caregiver duties.

Two-thirds of the older population in American suffers from at least two chronic conditions, but the healthcare system currently focuses on individual diseases. Medical care for these situations consumes 66% of all health care spending. It probably goes without saying, if you are managing multiple chronic conditions, it is costly and confusing, and requires meticulous organization to ensure that information gets to the right people at the right time.