Alzheimer's Caregiver Tips: Helping Your Loved One Dress
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Throughout our lives, most of us put a fair amount of care and attention into choosing and caring for the clothes we wear. But for people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, dressing can be a challenge. And for family, seeing the difference in their loved one, who once took great pride in how they looked, is a reminder of how their loved one has changed.
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Family caregivers may be confused about whether to step in when Dad selects a plaid shirt and clashing plaid trousers, or Mom puts her blouse on inside out. And their loved one may be resistant to assistance. The National Institute on Aging offers these suggestions on assisted independence, to make the process go more smoothly.
People with Alzheimer's disease often need more time to dress. It can be hard for them to choose their clothes. They might wear the wrong clothing for the season. They also might wear colors that don't go together or forget to put on a piece of clothing. Allow the person to dress on his or her own for as long as possible.
Here are some tips that can help:
Lay out clothes in the order the person should put them on, such as underwear first, then pants, then a shirt, and then a sweater.
Hand the person one thing at a time or give step-by-step dressing instructions.
Put away some clothes in another room to reduce the number of choices. Keep only one or two outfits in the closet or dresser.
Keep the closet locked if needed. This prevents some of the problems people may have while getting dressed.
Buy three or four sets of the same clothes, if the person wants to wear the same clothing every day.
Buy loose-fitting, comfortable clothing. Avoid girdles, control-top pantyhose, knee-high nylons, garters, high heels, tight socks, and bras for women. Sports bras are comfortable and provide good support. Short cotton socks and loose cotton underwear are best. Sweat pants and shorts with elastic waistbands are helpful.
Use Velcro or large zipper pulls for clothing, instead of shoelaces, buttons, or buckles. Try slip-on shoes that won't slide off or shoes with Velcro straps.
This information provided by the National Institute on Aging's Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral Center (ADEAR). Visit the ADEAR website for more information on effective dementia caregiving.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Namenda news from Alzheimersweekly.com
Namenda & Side-Effects
A team of investigators unraveled exactly how Namenda helps Alzheimer's patients without causing serious side effects.
Alzheimer's disease destroys brain cells and their connections (called synapses), causing memory loss and other cognitive problems that disrupt work, hobbies and daily life. Symptoms can be alleviated, in part, by the drug Namenda (marketed in some countries as Ebixa, generically known as memantine).
New research shows a unique advantage of Namenda. Researchers revealed a signaling process that normally helps a healthy brain to communicate. This process can destroy brain cells when it sends the wrong signal. It seems that Namenda can tell the difference between the two, allowing the process to do its job when signals work properly, while blocking it whenever signals will be destructive.
Namenda is currently FDA-approved to treat moderate-to-severe Alzheimer's disease. It was, in part, developed by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Del E. Web Center for Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham).
Namenda improves symptoms by blocking abnormal activity of glutamate, a chemical that transmits messages between nerve cells.
In a study appearing August 18 in The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of investigators at Sanford-Burnham led by Dr. Lipton unravel exactly how Namenda helps Alzheimer's patients without causing serious side effects.
"While Namenda is partially effective in treating Alzheimer's disease, one of its major advantages is how safe and well-tolerated it is clinically," said Dr. Lipton
In treating any disease, one of the most difficult parts of designing a new drug is finding ways to maximize its beneficial effect while minimizing harmful side effects. Namenda is a particularly safe treatment for Alzheimer's disease because it dampens excessive glutamate signaling that occurs away from synapses without blocking glutamate activity at the synapses. This is important because interfering with synaptic glutamate signaling would disrupt normal brain activity.
"We showed definitively for the first time that Namenda, the drug our group developed for Alzheimer's disease, works in a unique way," Dr. Lipton said.
"It inhibits a protein that binds glutamate called the NMDA receptor, but predominantly blocks NMDA receptors that signal molecularly to cause neuronal injury and death. It spares the synaptic receptors that mediate normal communication between nerve cells in the brain."
This finding helps explain why the drug is so well tolerated by Alzheimer's patients and might provide hints for the development of future therapies targeting the NMDA receptor and similar cellular machinery in other diseases.
Namenda is now available in an XR and a generic to save money and take fewer doses a day. Go to www.alzheimersweekly.com/treatment/namenda-&-side-effects-a804.html
A team of investigators unraveled exactly how Namenda helps Alzheimer's patients without causing serious side effects.
Alzheimer's disease destroys brain cells and their connections (called synapses), causing memory loss and other cognitive problems that disrupt work, hobbies and daily life. Symptoms can be alleviated, in part, by the drug Namenda (marketed in some countries as Ebixa, generically known as memantine).
New research shows a unique advantage of Namenda. Researchers revealed a signaling process that normally helps a healthy brain to communicate. This process can destroy brain cells when it sends the wrong signal. It seems that Namenda can tell the difference between the two, allowing the process to do its job when signals work properly, while blocking it whenever signals will be destructive.
Namenda is currently FDA-approved to treat moderate-to-severe Alzheimer's disease. It was, in part, developed by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Del E. Web Center for Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham).
Namenda improves symptoms by blocking abnormal activity of glutamate, a chemical that transmits messages between nerve cells.
In a study appearing August 18 in The Journal of Neuroscience, a team of investigators at Sanford-Burnham led by Dr. Lipton unravel exactly how Namenda helps Alzheimer's patients without causing serious side effects.
"While Namenda is partially effective in treating Alzheimer's disease, one of its major advantages is how safe and well-tolerated it is clinically," said Dr. Lipton
In treating any disease, one of the most difficult parts of designing a new drug is finding ways to maximize its beneficial effect while minimizing harmful side effects. Namenda is a particularly safe treatment for Alzheimer's disease because it dampens excessive glutamate signaling that occurs away from synapses without blocking glutamate activity at the synapses. This is important because interfering with synaptic glutamate signaling would disrupt normal brain activity.
"We showed definitively for the first time that Namenda, the drug our group developed for Alzheimer's disease, works in a unique way," Dr. Lipton said.
"It inhibits a protein that binds glutamate called the NMDA receptor, but predominantly blocks NMDA receptors that signal molecularly to cause neuronal injury and death. It spares the synaptic receptors that mediate normal communication between nerve cells in the brain."
This finding helps explain why the drug is so well tolerated by Alzheimer's patients and might provide hints for the development of future therapies targeting the NMDA receptor and similar cellular machinery in other diseases.
Namenda is now available in an XR and a generic to save money and take fewer doses a day. Go to www.alzheimersweekly.com/treatment/namenda-&-side-effects-a804.html
Friday, August 20, 2010
Make Happiness Happen
I am on WATD tomorrow morning talking about how to bring happiness to someone with dementia. My column in the SS Senior News www.southshoresenior.com has the same ideas. I'm including it here for those of you who don't get the paper (you should; log on and read some good articles)
Make Happiness Happen
Believe it or not, August is Happiness Happens Month. Where do they come up with these titles for months anyway? How does one make happiness happen? One of my coaches, Susan, gave me a plaque that reads: ‘We don’t remember days; we only remember moments.’ That is true for all of us. We remember the joy in seeing our first born for the first time. We remember a moment on a vacation that brings a smile or a tear.
We hear a song and the feeling it evokes brings to remembrance who we were with and what we were doing. We are capable of pulling those special memories out of our head and enjoy them again.
Happiness for the person with Alzheimer’s however doesn’t just happen. Since often all the person with memory loss is aware of is this moment, caregivers need to find how to create as many happy moments throughout the day as possible. For each person this can be different. Does music bring a smile? One wife, unable to make her aphasic husband understand her invitation to come to the table to eat, recalled his happiness while ballroom dancing in years past. They had gone dancing weekly then. She decided to put on dance music each meal and invite him to dance which he willingly did. Then she danced him to the table with a smile. When he saw the visual cues of a meal on the table he was ready to sit and eat. She felt joy seeing the happiness on his face so she continued this dance routine three times a day.
A daughter taped the Judge Judy Show, seeing the enjoyment her mother got whenever she watched it. When her mother became restless or irritable, she popped in a Judge Judy tape. Voila; instant smiles and contentment!
So what makes your family member with Alzheimer’s smile? Is it old photos? Is it plants? Does he love the beach, sunsets, baseball games? Try offering those activities and see what feelings of happiness you can make happen for both of you.
Coach Beverly
Make Happiness Happen
Believe it or not, August is Happiness Happens Month. Where do they come up with these titles for months anyway? How does one make happiness happen? One of my coaches, Susan, gave me a plaque that reads: ‘We don’t remember days; we only remember moments.’ That is true for all of us. We remember the joy in seeing our first born for the first time. We remember a moment on a vacation that brings a smile or a tear.
We hear a song and the feeling it evokes brings to remembrance who we were with and what we were doing. We are capable of pulling those special memories out of our head and enjoy them again.
Happiness for the person with Alzheimer’s however doesn’t just happen. Since often all the person with memory loss is aware of is this moment, caregivers need to find how to create as many happy moments throughout the day as possible. For each person this can be different. Does music bring a smile? One wife, unable to make her aphasic husband understand her invitation to come to the table to eat, recalled his happiness while ballroom dancing in years past. They had gone dancing weekly then. She decided to put on dance music each meal and invite him to dance which he willingly did. Then she danced him to the table with a smile. When he saw the visual cues of a meal on the table he was ready to sit and eat. She felt joy seeing the happiness on his face so she continued this dance routine three times a day.
A daughter taped the Judge Judy Show, seeing the enjoyment her mother got whenever she watched it. When her mother became restless or irritable, she popped in a Judge Judy tape. Voila; instant smiles and contentment!
So what makes your family member with Alzheimer’s smile? Is it old photos? Is it plants? Does he love the beach, sunsets, baseball games? Try offering those activities and see what feelings of happiness you can make happen for both of you.
Coach Beverly
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Visit our website www.StilMee.com
StilMee's website is updated with all the services we offer. I am excited about the family forum trainings we'll offer in the fall and the StilMee Certification Training for professionals. 5 CEUs for social workers makes it a great way to expand your knowledge of working with folks with dementia. If you are in the healthcare field you will have contact with both those with dementia from various causes and their families. I guess I've always gravitated toward educating the caregivers in whatever healthcare field I was in at the time. I had an educational support group for families of mentally ill people at Deaconess Hospital in the late 70s and early 80s. It amazed me to find the lack of knowledge of the diagnosis a family member had. This is true today of families who muddle through caring for someone with dementia. There is no reason a person must 'muddle' through! There is valuable education from a coach, from support groups, from the Help Line at the Alzheimer's Association 800-272-3900, and books. I'm including a bibliography here that can start you on your way to confidence.
Alzheimer’s A Caregiver’s Guide and Sourcebook by Howard Gruetzner; John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York, 1992.
Alzheimer’s Early Stages; first steps in caring and treatment by Daniel Kuhn, MSW; Hunter House Publishers, Inc., California 1998.
Care That Works; A Relationship Approach to Persons with Dementia by Jitka M. Zgola, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1999.
Learning to Speak Alzheimers by Joanne Koenig Coste, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 2003.
Matters of the Mind…and the Heart Meeting the challenges of Alzheimer care by Beverly Moore, Strategic Book Publishing, New York, New York 2009.
Rethinking Alzheimer’s Care by Sam Fazio, Dorothy Seman, & Jane Stansell, Heatlh Professions Press, Baltimore, London, Winnepeg & Sidney.
I'm Still Here by John Zeisel PhD, Penguin a division of Avery Publishing, NY, NY.
Alzheimer’s A Caregiver’s Guide and Sourcebook by Howard Gruetzner; John Wiley and Sons, Inc. New York, 1992.
Alzheimer’s Early Stages; first steps in caring and treatment by Daniel Kuhn, MSW; Hunter House Publishers, Inc., California 1998.
Care That Works; A Relationship Approach to Persons with Dementia by Jitka M. Zgola, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1999.
Learning to Speak Alzheimers by Joanne Koenig Coste, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 2003.
Matters of the Mind…and the Heart Meeting the challenges of Alzheimer care by Beverly Moore, Strategic Book Publishing, New York, New York 2009.
Rethinking Alzheimer’s Care by Sam Fazio, Dorothy Seman, & Jane Stansell, Heatlh Professions Press, Baltimore, London, Winnepeg & Sidney.
I'm Still Here by John Zeisel PhD, Penguin a division of Avery Publishing, NY, NY.
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