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Every week, I pour my heart into these words to make your caregiving journey a little lighter and less lonely. Many of you have shared how these stories have brought comfort, perspective, or even a smile on a hard day.

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If you’ve been caregiving for a while — whether personally or professionally — I bet you’re feeling it.

The fact is, caregivers sacrifice a lot and some of those things can’t be gotten back. You can injure your back for life in a single second while helping a loved one transfer, or you can take on stress and exhaustion over a course of years that takes an emotional toll for life.

The first part of prevention is simply knowing the risks, and that’s what we’re going to cover today. There aren’t any guarantees of safety in life, but when you know where the pitfalls are, it’s easier to walk around them.

First, let’s talk about the statistics. Did you know that caregiving is one of the most dangerous professions? We don’t have a lot of great statistics on home and family caregivers because injuries are unreported, but here are some statistics from professional settings:

The reason for this is — overwhelmingly — due to musculoskeletal disorders caused by transferring people: helping them to stand up, sit down, pivot to a chair, get out of bed, and so on. If you’re a caregiver, you’re in very real danger of serious injury. Many a professional caregiver’s career has been ended due to a transfer injury that creates pain for the rest of their lives.

Next, you’re subject to several kinds of physical, emotional, and environmental trauma that would be illegal to do to someone else!

If someone else did this to you, they would be arrested! But we do it to ourselves all of the time.

Now, here’s the real kicker. In 2025, the Alzheimer's Association found that nearly 60% of dementia caregivers have at least one modifiable risk factor that increases their own chances of developing dementia. That means that if you’re a dementia caregiver, you’re 60% more likely to develop the disease yourself…with a big caveat.

That one word, modifiable, is our source of hope. Over the last few years, more and more research has shown that our daily behaviors have a major effect on the likelihood of developing dementia. It amounts to taking care of the basics that we tend to sacrifice when we’re caring for someone else.

However, we can learn to do safer transfers, and we can modify at least some of those issues listed above to help us avoid dementia in the future. Can you pick one thing to work on this week? Maybe you find a few minutes to take a walk one day, or perhaps you’ll make an effort to incorporate some healthier food into your diet (my personal weakest point).

Little changes ripple out to produce big outcomes. You don’t have to be a superhero — heck, in my book you already are! — but if you make one small change you may see the benefits for years to come.

The studies are showing us that self-care isn’t just a nice thing to do when we’re stressed out: it’s essential for our health and for avoiding the very disease that is affecting the people we’re caring for.

Remember, when you change even one small thing, you open the door to growth and health.

You've figured out the medications, the appointments, the paperwork, the behaviors. But when it comes to physically moving your loved one — out of bed, into a car, off the toilet — you're winging it. And your body knows it.

I spent 40+ years studying martial arts. The body mechanics I learned there are light-years ahead of what caregivers are taught — if they're taught anything at all. So I built a 2-hour course that translates those principles into simple, effective techniques you can use immediately. Every transfer. Every time.

I’m going live with this critical information on April 11th. Check it out here.