This week we have been at the Retirement Living Conference on the Gold Coast. The keynote speaker is Lynne Katzmann (pictured below), the Founder and CEO of an American retirement village operator named Juniper Communities.
She was brought to Australia to reveal how her ‘Connect4Life’ program in her retirement villages save lives – in more ways than one.
The big thing is reducing loneliness, which has the same effect as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!
It is a generally accepted opinion that loneliness results in a decline of well-being and has an adverse effect on physical health, possibly through immunologic impairment or neuro-endocrine changes.
Research shows loneliness is pathognomic of depression in old age. It is more dangerous than smoking; high degree of loneliness precipitates suicidal ideas, Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia and adversely affects the immune and cardio-vascular system.
Loneliness is indirectly one of the major causes of hospitalisation and of placement in nursing homes.
Lynne Katzmann’s village program reveals her residents had half the hospital admissions than the greater population! She says her villages deliver ‘service enriched housing’, meaning programs to keep people active in a community.
I believe our Australian retirement villages do the same. Check out this video HERE we made about two years ago on why you may want to think about downsizing to a retirement village.
New retirement villages are being built every week – we now have over 2,000 across Australia. You can find them all HERE at villages.com.au.
The idea is to age well – without the impact of 15 cigarettes a day!
