Today’s full time workers have a lot on their plate. They work a full workweek, often including overtime hours. They head home and concentrate on family life, spending time with spouses, children and other family activities. And now more than ever, they spend time at their parents’ homes taking care of daily chores they can’t attend to themselves.

Baby boomers today are now in their 40’s and 50’s, with a wide range of responsibilities. Because their parents are in their 70’s, 80’s and beyond, they are also facing the facts of making decisions for their parents; a responsibility that is often difficult and time consuming. It’s also having a huge impact on businesses, and employee productivity.

According to The MetLife Caregiving Costs Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business, produced jointly between MetLife Mature Market Institute and the National Alliance for Caregiving, U.S. businesses lose between $17.1 billion to $33.6 billion per year on employees taking time off to care for elderly family members. This is an increase of $4 billion in each category up from 10 years previously. And as baby boomers continue to age, this number will also continue to rise proportionately.

Today’s caregivers make up about 21 percent of the working population. They spend time shuffling their elderly loved ones to appointments, or spending time caring for their needs. Because of the changes in insurance and pension options, caregivers are opting to take on more responsibility, and bypassing the traditional elderly care options.

Increasingly men are also taking on the role of caregiver. Currently about 39 percent of caregivers are men assuming the primary caregiver position. Not only are they assuming this caregiver role, but they are also tackling it while holding down a full time managerial or executive position.

All of this is helping change the way businesses are handling employee relations. With these statistics, it’s easy to see why employers need to being making concessions for today’s caregivers, and take a proactive approach to care giving in the future.

To start, an employer needs to move beyond awareness, and create programs to help their employees through different stages of life.

Education can begin in the workplace. Many employers offer brown bag lunch seminars, or other resources to offer ideas and solutions to their employees. In many cases, just knowing about resources and help in your community can take some of the burden off day-to-day chores.

Human resource departments are also beginning to hire geriatric managers that can help an employee assess their situation, and make recommendations based on the needs of the employee and his or her family.

Flexible work hours are also becoming more acceptable. Because of a variety of family needs, being able to come in early, or work later into the evening can be a big benefit. Telecommuting is also becoming an option with the high tech options available to employers.

Above all, being open to ideas and possibilities will be key in the future. As the needs of the elderly continue to increase, only time will tell how well employers can handle their needs. To be successful in the future will demand a variety of options, and the ability to change.

Scientists speaking at a health briefing in London said that people over 60 should supplement their diet with probiotic bacteria for stomach health, and to protect against digestive conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrom (IBS).

The experts recommended probiotic drinks, yogurts or capsules, because they tend to contain “friendly” bacteria such as bifidobacteria or lactobacilli, which aid digestion. Studies have shown that having a balance of friendly bacteria can hamper the ability of “unfriendly” bacteria — such as E.coli or campylobacter — to take hold in the body and cause disease.

Supplementation is especially important for people over 60, the experts say, because they tend to have 1,000 times fewer friendly bacteria in their stomachs than other adults. Also, supplementation can help compensate for antibiotics, which reduce the levels of all strains of bacteria in the stomach.

While the experts in London lauded the benefits of foods such as yogurts, they simultaneously cautioned UK consumers to be on the lookout for smaller brands that were ineffective. According to Glenn Gibson, professor of food microbiology at Reading University, only about half of the roughly 50 yogurt brands available in the UK — such as Nestle, Danone (Dannon in the United States), Seven Seas and Yakult — were effective.

According to holistic nutritionist Mike Adams, neither seniors nor anyone else need turn to dairy products — which can, themselves, cause stagnation in the digestion system — to get their probiotics. Non-dairy superfoods such as Emerald Balance contain these helpful probiotics, along with a host of other healthy nutrients. “Probiotic supplementation is simple, affordable and very effective at boosting gastrointestinal health and support immune function,” Adams said.

“To give you an idea of how important friendly flora is to your health,” he explained, “consider this: There are more non-human cells in your body than human cells. In other words, the population of bacteria in your digestive tract exceeds the total number of your own cells in your entire body. Obviously, it’s a good idea to make sure those bacteria populations are friendly.”