The Ten Early Signs of Dementia

Teepa Snow is a Dementia and Alzheimer’s care expert who trains and helps agencies, facilities, and families. She is an occupational therapist and advocate for those living with dementia and has made it her personal mission to help families and professionals better understand how it feels to be living with the challenges and changes that accompany various forms of the condition so that life can be lived fully and well.

In this post, Teepa discusses the Ten Early Signs of Dementia.

First on the list is memory loss for recent or new information. This is one of the most common things we notice in the early stage of dementia. When one repeats self frequently, you should be automatically nervous. According to Teepa, one should not have more trouble holding on to important new information than one can access the old stuff.

Next on the list are difficulty doing familiar but difficult tasks like managing money, medications and driving; problems with word finding , mis-naming, or misunderstanding; getting confused about time or place – getting lost while driving, missing several appointments; When dealing with these situations, providing the right answers to one’s confusion, is critical. The combination of the memory problems and the reasoning skills problems will wear you out if you actually think it’s going to stick, because then you get frustrated. That is when proper breathing helps.

There is a study where they compared people who are caregiving for people with dementia and people who are not. And what they found is people who were caregiving for people with dementia had cortisol levels – negative stress hormone that’s fifty percent higher than the normal person. Having high cortisol levels makes it very difficult for you to see the big picture. It keeps your brain from working really well in decision-making tasks. You’re not able to see the big picture and sort of make good decisions and choices based on information out there because you can’t handle it all. High level of cortisol also raises your blood pressure, your heart rate and your blood sugar. Therefore, people who are caregiving for people with dementia are more at risk for developing dementia themselves. On a positive note, this study showed that with proper breathing, their cortisol levels return to normal.

So if you’re a caregiver to people with dementia or Alzheimer’s, remember to stop and do those three deep cleansing breaths. Breathe in, breathe out.

The list also includes decline in judgment – not thinking through like before; difficulty in problem solving or reasoning; misplacing things – putting them in an ‘odd place’; changes in mood or behavior; changes in typical personality; and loss of initiation – withdrawal from normal patterns of activities and interests.