In yesterday’s post I discussed some of the interventions in long term care that caregivers have found to be successful.   Some of the additional interventions include:

Incontinence Management: Monitoring incontinence, scheduling bathroom time, and providing reminders are techniques that can help caregivers manage incontinence at home.

Providing a Supportive Environment:  Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease are highly sensitive to their environment and have a decreased tolerance for stress. Your physician or geriatric care manager can help you identify the environmental triggers (for example, lights that are too bright or uncomfortable room or water temperatures) that may cause behavioral problems and work with you to eliminate them.

Traditional Psychosocial Therapy: Counseling can help patients in mild states of dementia reduce anger, anxiety, fear, suspiciousness, frustration, and depression.  A mental health professional can provide advice and encouragement and help the patient interpre his or her feelings.

Reminiscence Therapy: By receiving encouragement and support from peers, patients can draw upon their long-term memory to recall and share events from their past.  Reminiscence therapy often is conducted in group settings but can be used on an individual basis.

Validation:  As dementia progresses, caregivers may find that attempts to correct their loved one’s misstatements or delusion do more harm than good. Validation is a technique in which the family member or caregiver affirms the patient’s attempts to communicate, even if the patient is engaged in a false sense of reality.

Simulated Presence:  A person with moderate to severe dementia may find comfort in simulated conversations with a close friend or family member when the individual cannot be there in person.  A simple audio or videotape recording of the individual recounting past events, with pauses to allow the patient to respond, provides a temporary companionship and allows caregivers to attend to other things.

Pet Therapy:  Petting or watching small pets can improve the mood and behavior of dementia patients.  Pets can be introduced in both group and individual settings.

Recreational Therapies:  Recreational therapies include drawing, collage, coloring, sculpture, dance, and listening to music.  These activities provide a creative outlet for the patient to express emotions without talking.  Other benefits include mood improvement, sensory and intellectual stimulation, decreased agitation, and improved motor skills.

Are you concerned about memory problems?

Please join us on November 15, 2011 for National Memory Screening Day, an annual initiative of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.  Take advantage of free, confidential memory screenings and pick up free educational materials about memory concerns, dementia, caregiving and successful aging.

Location:           ElderCare at Home, Inc. & The Alzheimer’s Care Resource Center

Time:                    10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

For information, call:  800-209-4342

Memory screenings are a significant first step toward finding out if a person may have a memory problem. Memory problems could be caused by Alzheimer’s disease or other medical conditions. A memory screening is not used to diagnose any particular illness and does not replace consultation with a physician or other qualified healthcare professional.

ElderCare at Home and The Alzheimer’s Care Resource Center have participated in National Memory Screening Day since it’s inception in 2003.  We encourage anyone that is concerned with memory loss to call us today and receive this complimentary memory screening tomorrow.  Early diagnosis is so important.  If you have any questions, feel free to call us at 800-209-4342.

Throughout your day as a professional, you or a member of your staff, may provide care, guidance, assistance and support to patients, caregivers, friends or family members of someone that has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia or another memory impairment. AlzheimersTraining.com provides comprehensive and extremely in-depth training and education to professionals, home health agencies, care management firms and other organizations based upon the unique needs of their business or practices. Our prices, as well as comprehensive course descriptions, are listed below and do not include shipping and handling.

The dynamic, interactive Personal Care Attendant Training Program allows you to provide 40 hours of high-quality classroom training in essential care giving, communication and professional skills. With a thoroughly researched, well-organized curriculum, textbooks, workbooks, DVDs and other support materials, the Personal Care Attendant Training Program is a complete ready-to-go package that makes it easy for you to train critically-needed personal and home care workers in all the skills they need.To view available DVD’s click here.

ElderCare At Home has an excellent resource page for all things Dementia related and Alzheimer’s- check it out here!

One of society’s most feared medical conditions is Alzheimer’s disease. So many times, a person is misdiagnosed or never diagnosed at all.  Those individuals are then left untreated and continue to decline. The toll this takes on the patient and their family is unimaginable.

At ElderCare at Home, our primary goal is you to assure you receive an accurate diagnosis as early as possible; provide you and your family with all available resources and possible interventions, as well as to educate, train, reassure, support and advocate for you and your family as you pass through each stage of the disease.  Our goal is to keep you at home, with your family, for as long as it is financially and physically possible.  We do this by providing superior Alzheimer’s Care at Home; professional geriatric care management and private duty home care services in addition to:

Education
ElderCare at Home is a dementia specific geriatric care management and private duty home care agency.  Our affiliated companies, www.AlzheimersTraining.com and The Alzheimer’s Care Resource Center provide very comprehensive services, education and training for the newly diagnosed patient and their caregiver.  We focus on understanding the individual patients ever changing behavior, anticipating new issues that are likely to arise, proactively manage individual patient and family dynamics before they become a crisis, and provide respite care through our Reach Out For Respite Program.  Our services have been proven to delay nursing home placement, help to reduce physician office and emergency room visits, and help to reduce the strain on the primary, family caregiver.

Safety
Our professional geriatric care managers are registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, social workers and certified geriatric care managers with years of experience working directly with patients and families living with Alzheimer’s disease.  One of the first things we do is to make sure the patient’s home is safe.  Our home safety evaluation is proprietary and was designed to address the specific safety issues faced by our patients and their caregivers. Safety concerns do not just focus on what happens in the home, but also address what happens when the patient leaves the home.  Our team makes sure that all of our families have a solid plan in place.

The Independence You Need. The Peace of Mind You Desire.

When a family reaches out to ElderCare at Home, one of the first things they want to know is how we can help them keep their loved one at home and independent?  For over 20 years our management team has helped thousands of families in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties not only keep their loved one in the place they most want to be, in their own home, but to give the patient and the caregiver as  much independence as possible.  Our services provide families across the country with the peace of mind they need and they desire.  To learn more about how ElderCare at Home or the Alzheimer’s Care Resource Center can help you, call our 24 hour Alzheimer’s Care Crisis Line at 800-209-4342.

Excellent video-

As we age, the thinking/cognitive part of the brain begins to change:  there is
1) gradual decline in short-term memory;
2) slower processing of thoughts (it takes longer to retrieve what you know); and
3) it takes longer to learn new skills.

Beyond these normal changes, additional cognitive impairment can be caused by a number of sometimes correctable or treatable conditions — anxiety and depression, vitamin deficiencies, medications (too many or the wrong kinds), excess alcohol and other medical illnesses.

For some people, however, cognitive decline may progress to more serious difficulty with thinking and memory, such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia.  MCI means a person has problems with memory, attention, language, orientation (whether to date or place), reasoning skills, insight, and/or judgment that are severe enough to be noticed by others and are reflected on cognitive tests, but are not severe enough to interfere with daily life.

Ten to 15 percent of people with MCI progress to dementia each year.  Dementia (the most common type being Alzheimer’s) means progressive deterioration of those aforementioned cognitive abilities that is severe enough to interfere with daily life, such as managing finances, taking medication safely, cooking and driving.  Factors that may increase risk of MCI and dementia include smoking, poorly controlled chronic illnesses (diabetes and depression, for example), genetics, and people with little social support.

Reducing your risk
The good news is that there are a number of factors that may reduce your risk of dementia.
• Dietary factors — increased fruits and vegetables, coffee (before 3 p.m. so it doesn’t interfere with sleep), mild alcohol intake, omega 3 fatty acids, and limiting saturated fats (butter, lard).
• Cognitive reserve —education level as well as accumulated life knowledge can provide a “cushion” against future cognitive decline.  Learning new things at any age can build cognitive reserve.
• Exercise enhances cardiac health and also protects against cognitive decline.
• Laughter — the use of healthy humor (not sarcasm) strengthens the immune response, lowers blood pressure and provides pain relief; some research shows that one minute of laughter has the health benefits of 10 minutes of aerobics.
• Social support — relationships with family, friends and involvement in community service can protect against the isolation and loneliness that increase the risk of cognitive decline.  Smiling at strangers, a small kindness or compliment to a neighbor or store clerk — it all counts as connecting with others and reaching beyond our own lives — as does working beside others at the brain gym.
• Cognitive/mental skill training — we have long underestimated the ability of the human brain.

There is a growing body of knowledge that suggests that exercising our brain can reduce our risk of cognitive decline just as physical activity can reduce our risk of heart disease.  In particular, learning new things (not just practicing things we already know) is protective, just as learning techniques to help memory, learning how to develop reasoning skills and decrease reaction time — there so many available tools now, here are some of the most common, and most fun!

Puzzles
Comedy Videos
iPads
Wii
X-Box
Book Clubs
Chess
Crossword Puzzles
Sudoku
Mahjong, Bridge & Other Card Games
Bingo
Dominos
Learning a new language

Do you have any more ideas or things that YOU DO to help maintain your brain? We’d love to hear them!  Send us an email at Info@ElderCareatHome.org

I found this story on PBS today and wanted to share it.  Susan Dentzer reports on early onset Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease, and how a forum organized by those suffering from the diagnosis has proven an effective means of coping.
JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, dealing with Alzheimer’s disease at an earlier age. Susan Dentzer reports for our Health Unit, a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RICHARD BOZANICH: This is just really rough.

SUSAN DENTZER, NewsHour Health Correspondent: Richard Bozanich and Jay Smith spent months planning and preparing. On the big day here in Los Angeles, Bill Bridgwater flew in from Colorado. James Smith and his wife, Juanita, came from Minnesota. And Carol Kirsch and her hud, Howard, drove in from ther aging baby boomers present, you might have thought this gathering was about prepring for retirement, launching a second career,acation home. But iasn’t.

FORUM SPEAKER: This is the largest gathering of people with dementia in one room in our country.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, what was billed as the Early Memory Loss Forum was one of the nation’s first-ever gatherings of baby boomers with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, organized and led by these Alzheimer’s sufferers themselves.

Bozanich, who’s 49, welcomed the crowd on behalf of himself and co-organizer, Jay Smith.

RICHARD BOZANICH: Our motto has always been that this day was by and for persons with early memory loss. So for those of you who are traveling the same road as the two of us, this day is for you.

SUSAN DENTZER: It isn’t known how many Americans have the early-onset form of Alzheimer’s, but estimates range anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000. The cause isn’t fully understood, either, although several genetic mutations are implicated in some cases.

Meanwhile, it’s estimated that 5.1 million Americans now suffer from all forms of the disease, including the type that typically hits people 65 and older. With the population aging, the number of sufferers with all forms of Alzheimer’s could more than triple over the next 40 years.

We wanted to know more about what it’s like to be struck by Alzheimer’s in the prime of life, so we sat down for a conversation with this group, all suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. All have worked with the National Alzheimer’s Association and are among the nation’s most vocal spokespersons for the urgency of fighting the disease.

This diagnosis came along when you all were at the peak of your careers and the peak of your capabilities.

BILL BRIDGWATER: Prior to the onset of my Alzheimer’s at age 48, I was an information technology executive, and I had held senior-level positions at numerous multibillion-dollar companies.

RICHARD BOZANICH: I was managing editor of Daily Variety, which is an entertainment trade publication.

JAMES SMITH: I was an information technology director for a Fortune 100 company, a global company. I referred to it as our charmed little life, because everything just seemed to be firing on all cylinders.

Developing strange symptoms

SUSAN DENTZER: Each described how these seemingly charmed lives were suddenly interrupted by a bizarre range of symptoms, as Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease, progressively killed neurons in different parts of the brain.As they lunched at the conference, they recalled how they’d sometimes exhibit the classic signs of memory loss, but often the symptoms were altogether different. Work colleagues were among the first to notice.

JAMES SMITH: People would ask me, they would say, “Well, why weren’t you at the meeting?” And I said, “Well, there was no meeting that I’m aware of.” And they said, “Well, you called the meeting. You should be aware of it.”

BILL BRIDGWATER: One of the things that was just driving me to distraction was insomnia. I could not sleep at night. I would get up and do 50 push-ups, 50 sit-ups, 50 leg kicks with each leg, and do everything I could to just drain myself. I laugh and tell people that I didn’t get much sleep, but I was in the best shape of my life.

CHUCK JACKSON: My arm would be sitting here and suddenly it would just shoot up and hit me in the head almost. And my legs would kick.

RICHARD BOZANICH: I was just bumping into walls and bumping into partitions. And, you know, you see a wall in front of you, and the obvious thing is to either go left or right, and I would just walk straight into the wall as if it weren’t there.

Conflicting diagnoses

SUSAN DENTZER: The group told us about dozens of visits to doctors who handed out conflicting diagnoses. Jay Smith, a successful architect who is not related to James Smith, had helped design courts and other facilities for California’s justice system.JAY SMITH, Alzheimer’s Sufferer: I thought I had a brain tumor, so I went to the neurologist, and I didn’t have a brain tumor. He said he thought I had a benign condition called migraine that doesn’t always cause headaches.

JAMES SMITH: For me, the initial diagnosis was depression. Then they shifted over and thought, well, maybe it’s a movement disorder, like MS or something like that. And for a while, they were thinking it might be Huntington’s disease.

SUSAN DENTZER: Most of the group told us the correct diagnosis was only arrived at when they finally got a battery of neuropsychological tests and a PET scan of the brain.

But for Chuck Jackson, who most recently worked as a counselor to laid-off workers, the diagnosis was far easier.

CHUCK JACKSON: We’re one of those groups of families that have the highest rate or incidence of Alzheimer’s in their family. I watched my mother go through it when I was — I was 13 at the time. And when she died at the age of 50, I knew what was coming.

SUSAN DENTZER: In fact, out of his mother’s family of 14 children, 12 died of the disease, thanks to inherited mutation in a gene called PSEN2. Now Jackson and his older brother both have Alzheimer’s.

The group members told us that getting the diagnosis prompted a range of reactions.

JAY SMITH: It came as a shock, because I hadn’t thought about Alzheimer’s or memory loss up to that point, and relief to have an answer, “I can now focus on my life knowing what’s wrong.”

CAROL KIRSCH, Alzheimer’s Sufferer: I just refused to believe it. I just said, “No, this can’t be.” I knew enough about it that I was scared. I was scared.

SUSAN DENTZER: James Smith and his wife, Juanita, spoke at the conference about how they reacted after getting the diagnosis.

JAMES SMITH: We would just lay in bed together, and hold each other, and cry, and really not know — it felt like you were in a maze and all the doors just suddenly slammed shut. And there’s just no path that takes you anywhere. I remember it as being one of the — probably one of the darkest periods of our entire life.

Check out our education video on Why Choose ElderCarefor your Alzheimer’s Care At Home needs!