Senior Star at Weber Place has recently added two programs to enhance the lives of the clients they serve.
One is a Healthy Hands class. The other is BikeAround, which combines exercise with virtual travel.
For the last year Sue Leitch's has given her hands a healthy workout. And this 69-year-old resident of Senior Star at Weber Place in Romeoville can feel the difference.
Leitch (center) attends Healthy Hands, which Senior Star at Weber Place offers each Thursday. The year-old class is free, led by a certified person trainer with a degree in exercise science and is available to both residents and the general public.
(Above, Michelle Lally, Senior Star program specialist and instructor of the Healthy Hands program leads residents Leitch and Zelma Sybert)
And Leitch, who had a stroke that affected use of her left hand, is impressed with the results.
I'm an avid card player and I could not shuffle because I could not use my left hand," Leitch said. "Now I can."
Elizabeth Bartleman, executive director at Senior Star at Weber Place, said participants range in age from 20 to 60-plus.
"How often do people actually dedicate 25 minutes to their hands?" Bartleman said. "It's amazing how much stress we hold in our hands."
The class, Bartleman said, focuses on increasing and preserving the flexibility, strength and mobility of one's hands through various stretching exercises. It may decrease joint pain in people with arthritis.
Even Bartleman, who also practices the exercises, has noticed the benefits.
"I tend to hold stress in my hands and I clench them at night," Bartleman said. "This reduces the pain."
(Senior Star resident Zelma Sybert is pictured above).
Before Otto Soyks' wife Betsy died in 2006, the couple enjoyed traveling around the world.
Recently Otto, now a resident at Senior Star at Weber Place in Romeoville, relived some of those memories through a new program the senior living facility offers called BikeAround.
According to a news release from Senior Star, BikeAround helps seniors, especially those with dementia, take a virtual ride on a stationary, individually adjustable assistive bike to almost any place in the world, thanks to Google Street View.
Senior Star is the first assisted living facility in the United States to offer the program, the release also said.
After entering an address, seniors "bike" to familiar places, such as childhood homes, or to locations they always wanted to see and never did, such as Mount Rushmore or Yellowstone National Park.
Residents can even take "group trips" together.
"It's an opportunity for residents to do that with loved ones or relive family vacations," Bartleman said. "It's an opportunity to share your memories and history and more of who you are as a person."
Bartleman said one woman from Puerto Rico "visited" her home church, which a hurricane had "wiped out." When seniors share stories from their past, such as the trip to the corner candy store, others can now see those treasured places, Bartleman said.
When a resident with dementia says, "I want to go home," the resident can now virtually do just that, Bartleman said. Exercise benefits of BikeAround may include a greater sense of well-being and a reduction in anxiety and depression.
"We start off slowly, about 10 minutes to start off," Bartleman said, "and then build up to what the individual can handle."
Otto's son Bill Soyks of Orland Park called BikeAround "a great concept" but wonders if the program could include other places, such as the island where Otto landed when serving in World War II or the small town in Wisconsin where the family lived when Bill was growing up.
"I know he's got a lot of memories of that town," Bill said. "If he could bike through that, it would mean the world."
KNOW MORE
According to a news release from Senior Star, the exercise benefits of BikeAround may include
• Physically: decrease blood pressure, reduced risk of chronic disease, improved brain health and memory and reduced fall risk
• Emotional health: lower anxiety and lower frequency of depression Reduced fall risk in older adults
• Possible mitigation of the physical and cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
For more information about either program, call 815-439-9955 or visit www.seniorstar.com/weberplace