Understanding Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Understanding Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Dealing with Dementia and the progression of Alzheimer\'s disease through its three stages is often a daunting and distressing task. Most often relatives feel isolated and without help as if they were to be left alone, having no help to deal with the "unknown". They are also afraid of having to watch their loved ones become more and more distant, potentially losing a horrible battle with this disease. In order to help with this fear of the "unknown" you need to first understand Dementia, Alzheimer's disease and the three stages that accompany Alzheimer's.

Let us first talk about what dementia actually means. Dementia is the name for a group of diseases that affect normal, routine activity of the brain. It's a progressive brain dysfunction which starts by first affecting them by losing their ability to carry out normal, everyday activities and in most cases leads to long term care. These changes in the brain are slow and typically lead to memory loss and confusion, often affecting elderly people's personalities and behaviors. Being able to identify the early indicators of dementia is very important when wanting fast and adequate treatment. The following are some of the indicators of dementia: 1.) A majority of people are forgetful, forgetting names, appointments, meetings, where they were going, etc. When forgetfulness starts effecting more then just oneself, (i.e., at work) it seems to happen more frequent and inexplicable states of confusion are clear; this would be a flag for a decline in memory function. 2.) Throughout the day and week people are busy and can become absent-minded, forgetting about feeding the cat/dog, forget about the pot on the stove. When individuals start to have difficulties with familiar activities, (i.e., feeding pets, feeding self, family), not only could they forget about the pot on the stove or feeding the cat/dog, they don't even know that they're the ones cooking or that they have any animals. 3.) Language problems become apparent with dementia patients. Individuals tend to forget commonly used words and use inappropriate fill-in words which make understanding the sentence or conversation very difficult. 4.) A lot of sufferers have problems with spatial and temporal orientation. Forgetting the day of the week or their location are the most common ones. When this occurs, people with Dementia disease don't know how they got there and can not get back to where they came from, their familiar surroundings. 5.) Impaired capacity of judgment is another indicator. Some examples can be wearing a bathrobe to the grocery store, maybe a heavy jacket or wearing several layers of different blouses on a hot summer day. 6.) Abstract thinking is an everyday problem for dementia patients. Just recognizing the numbers is difficult enough, so when needing to calculate or manipulate numbers it becomes even more challenging. 7.) A majority of people tend to forget about common items they use everyday, i.e., misplacing their wallet, losing track of their keys, etc. Elders with dementia place these common items, as well as other items, in inappropriate places, i.e., placing the iron in the fridge or jewelry in the sugar/flour bowl. Unlike the majority of people that easily find these misplaced items over a period of looking for them, (we remember where the items were placed), dementia patients do not remember where they placed anything. 8.) Very sudden mood swings and behavioral changes happen quite often and without apparent causes in dementia patients. We all understand that people have mood changes, but dementia sometimes make them more severe and sudden. 9.) When a person advances in age the average individual's personality changes to some degree. Dementia affected persons, suddenly or over a long period of time, may experience an obvious personality change. For example, someone who is normally friendly or out going become surprisingly angry, jealous or timid. 10.) Dementia patients tend to loose the enthusiasm in their work and the interest in their hobbies completely without regaining/finding a new enjoyment of a new activity. This loss of initiative can happen to anyone but normally with the elder dementia sufferers (Dementia.com).

There are a number of favorable conditions that can ease these types of situations dealing with the patient and his/her relatives. The conditions of concern in particular are the actual care and organization of their surrounding environment. Improvements can be achieved through physical, emotional and also mental activation, the help of physiotherapists or ergo therapists are examples. There is even help for a number of physical problems such as incontinence, difficulties of food intake and problems of lying down. In the early stage, training of thinking and memory functions should only be carried out carefully, otherwise there is the danger that the patient is always reminded of his/her diminishing mental abilities.

Dementia is a progressive condition that can not be cured but there are some medications that improve the disease symptoms and slow down the progression helping to improve brain function; this is considered to be a positive response to medication. Treatments, along with level of care and certain physical, mental and emotional and mental stimuli can result in some temporary improvements in some patients. Today's drugs of choice for dementia are anti-dementia (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors) or psychotropic drugs. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors prevents the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from being eliminated too fast, thought to be the leading problem in dementia patients. Treatment of behavioral problems involves using psychotropic medications as a supportive therapy with dementia patients. Criticism plays a factor when using psychotropic drugs, many feel as though there used just to shut patients up and behave in a lethargic way in which they can't take part in their normal day to day activities. Therapy of the disturbed dementia patient has come a long way and there has been great progress. These patients can be treated effectively without being seen as lethargic or sleeping all day and roaming around all night.

Alzheimer\'s disease is progressive in nature, meaning that Alzheimer's patients will increasingly show the signs/symptoms of this disease. This rapid progression is accompanied by distinct symptoms, in which divides the disease into three different stages: the first stage being called the mild stage or early-stage Alzheimer, second stage is called the moderate stage or mid-stage Alzheimer and the third is called the advanced stage or late-stage Alzheimer.

Let discuss the first of the three stages which is the early-stage (also