Alzheimer's disease

President Ronald Reagan designated November as National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month in 1983. Alzheimer is memory loss that disturbs and disrupts daily life.

Person who suffers from Alzheimer disease will face a slow decline in memory.

The ten early signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s are follows.

This checklist can help both patient and family to understand what is going on with the person and while discussing with doctor.

1. Memory loss that disrupts day to day life: One of the most common signs of this disease is forgetting recently learned information. Person will forget dates, events and will ask for the information over and over. Will seek help of memory aids and family members for tasks that they used to do on their own.
2. Planning and solving problems challenge: Ability to develop or plan on task and work with number becomes difficult. Will forget monthly bill numbers and concentration reduces. Making mistakes becomes often.
3. Challenge with familiar tasks: Forgetting daily tasks, trouble driving to familiar location, managing budget or remembering familiar rules. Occasionally needing help to use the settings on a microwave or to record a television show.
4. Confusion with time or place: Losing track of dates, season and passage of time. Trouble in understanding why things are not happening immediately. Sometimes might forget where they are.
5. Vision related problems: For some patients, difficulty in reading, judging distance and color determination or contrast can be painful. Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships is also a sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
6. Problems in communication: Person may stop in the middle of the conversation as they have no idea what is the conversation about and may repeat themselves. Vocabulary problem – finding right words or calling wrong names, addressing wrong person can happen.
7. Misplacing things and forgetting: Keeping things in places where they cannot remember and finding it difficult to digest that they have forgotten is a symptom too.
8. Poor or decreased judgment: Understanding situation, what is going on and who people are or dealing with money can be difficult.
9. Withdrawal from social activities: No interest in hobbies, social activities as they find it difficult to remember things around them. They may not want to take work projects and not participating in sports or events.
10. Change in mood and personality: Confused, suspicious, fearful, depressed, anxious and not believing in people are changes one can see. They will get upset if they are in places where it does not give them familiarity and comfort. They may start approaching things in a different way and can be irritable when things get disrupted.

All these symptoms usually develop slowly and get worse over time, becoming severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. What we need to keep in mind is; Alzheimer’s is not a normal part of aging.

The risk factor is of course the age – 65 and older people suffer more with Alzheimer’s.

However, it is not just restricted to old age. Do you know? The fact is, approximately 200,000 Americans under the age of 65 have younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease and it is called early-onset Alzheimer’s.

If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or a related dementia, you are not alone. There are sources that can help to assist you and your family with Alzheimer’s. Contact your doctor and find out how to get help.

Visit:

• https://www.alz.org/
• https://www.welcoa.org/
• https://www.alzheimerslocator.com

Image credit: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)