Teepa Snow Discusses the Ten Early Signs of Dementia

here your early warning sign and I'm not going to spend a lot of energy or time on these but I want to just give you a hint if I am really really good at telling you do you remember when you when do you remember that one time when you were a little boy and you had and I'm telling you these old stories over and over and over and yet when you try to get me to hold on to new information I can't do it be nervous because I should not have more trouble hanging on to important new information and I can access that old stuff and when you start seeing it pretty regularly a pattern of it not just once or twice but a pattern you also want to look for having difficulty doing difficult but familiar things like paying the taxes rather than putting them in a drawer somewhere seeking out a financial adviser then telling him to do stuff that I would never have told him to do and then claiming I didn't tell him to do that taking money and moving it around and it's like what are you doing well I needed to move it around trusting people I've not kind of people I'd ever sending money to a post office box in Oklahoma if it's not my habit being taking all my money out of the bank and keeping it at the house inviting people into the house that I don't know to come and fix something we also want to look at problems not just with memory because that's not what it's all about we also want to look at problems where I can't I can't think of the you know the thing that you say one after the other in a row and there's a dot at the end you know the not a sense huh yes words what do you think I meant you get such an attitude now this woman gave me the answer why am I being ugly to her because I felt stupid because I should have known what it was and I didn't like not coming up with it let me give you another example not everybody gets angry let me show you another example of the same kind of thing though you know it's the one after the other and you put them in a thing and there's a dot at the end oh my god no it's not okay it is now I wasn't bad before but now I'm going to get mad why because she told me it was okay that I was stupid oh is that what you meant to do well that's what you did well you are sorry this whole situation is sorry well you are you're going to go straight to hell too that'll be okay now this is where it feels like and I'm going to be honest with you sometimes as a Care Partner it feels like no matter what you do you're not right it's because this disease makes it so hard for me because I think I should know something when I don't know something you give it to me like that it proves to me I don't know something that I know I should I'm a PhD my god I should be able to think of the thing that it's called now if this just happens when you're exhausted when you haven't had any sleep when you're really really worried and it only happens every now and then see this is the tricky part because everyone in this room is going to say one-line hand Palantine and I don't think that that I mean you're all everybody scared of dementia by the way they did this study with older adults and that used to be one of the thing you're most scared of guess what it used to be cancer guess what it is now dementia yeah people are much more scared about this thing than they ever have been before because the numbers are going up and people realize how scary this is so what happens is we start seeing some changes in us we're trying to discount it so one of the most common things somebody says something like I'm a little concerned I can't I can't seem to find the things that I want to say sometimes you know the things that you want to say to people now notice how I use vague terms to describe the thing you know the battles that go one after the other the battles the fattest fat towles fat do you speak English well now these are all kinds of behaviors that just sort of as you're seeing them you're thinking what's going on here and yet on other times I'm perfectly fine I could come up with words and aren't real words called word salad on the other hand I might just speak vaguely on the other hand I might quit talking it's real easy for us to sort of think we have you know all people do that not to this not and you want to think of me who am i what have I done and if it's not consistent with me you don't lose your speaking skills with normal aging you are a little bit more who have you been but it doesn't change dramatically your verbal linguistic stay the same you're a little slower but it's still the same you have the same vocabulary actually have more vocabulary you've ever had before but it takes you longer to go find the words so if people rush you you will still hear anybody normal aging could you slow down just a minute I'm going to tell you that's normal between generations it's also very normal for husband wives to get on each other about this because I'll start you know I was going to tell you that so-and-so came by yesterday yes and he stopped and he said he was going to fix can I tell the story or you go and tell it this is where sometimes you got to sort of sort out what's normal interactive behavior between people and what feels different but after you've been around it for a while you'll start to pick up on it if you're listening and paying attention another one is getting confused about place or time so this is that getting lost driving business this is getting on the interstate and getting turned around and not being able to think of what checks that I'm looking for it can also be getting lost in my life for a moment so in a moment I'm looking for the house I grew up in not the current house and so now I get to a place and it's like god how did I get here because I don't remember the process because I can't hold on to new stuff and all of a sudden I don't know why I got here how did I get here somebody brought me here and left me here and I'm like you're all alone oh my god who is this and I might look at somebody I've known very closely for years and in that moment who are you who are you by the way and you're my wife you're my husband because in that moment I'm thinking I'm 22 in that moment and I am looking for the person in the wedding picture and so what happens is I look at you and you scare me because it's like oh my god who what are you doing in my house who are you especially at night and my daughter is there and it's like who are you what are you doing here mom you know who I am no I don't either who are you I'm your daughter I don't have a little girl I have a little girl but not anything is old you and you focus in on my distress but what you're not realizing is how scary this is for me I mean this actually becomes really scary because in that moment I'm lost and so when I say when my grandfather would say where's grandma he in that moment truly believed he was in a place in his taught in life that it would make sense that she was there and when my mom would say well can't have a push dad he would grieve again the loss and yet he couldn't hold on to that loss so that's not the right answer that's called reality orientation we don't do that anymore that's an old thing we gave that up it's not good for people we're sitting judgment these are things that people are making bad choices problems solving issues these are people who you can go all the way now this is why I don't think it's a good oh I hear you so this is where I think we ought to do oh okay so why are you taking my car key we talked about this well I never agreed that okay - I did not the combination of the memory problems and the reasoning skill problems will wear you Wow if you actually think it's going to stick because you get frustrated because you said we talked about this already you remember the talk I don't you've got to give up the idea that I hold on to things all the time because I can't and so when I say well this is the first I've heard of it your gut reaction your automatic response to that it is not the first time we've talked about this you got to quit stop back up now I actually want you to practice that that is an important skill I want you to stop I want you to breathe in purse your lips and blow out now this time I want you to focus on belly breathing okay in other words abdominal breathing we're going to get to this and tell you why important this is okay ready breathe in through your nose blow out one more time breathe in blow it out now the reason I just had to do that that's a new skill for you it's called breathing most do you think you know how to do this but when you're a caregiver here is what starts to happen you start to get stressed in caregiving and before you know it before very long you are actually not breathing out you are sucking your ear and you're holding on to it and you're only using the top third of your lungs because you've got issues there are issues every time I go over here there are issues and I don't have time what am I going to have time to do anything for me I am stressed out let me tell you something I can't put and what you don't realize is you're not breathing you're sucking air in but you never let it go and letting it go is an incredibly important skill both in how you deal with things but also in just simple breathing so they took us they did a study they did a study of people who are caring for people who have dementia and they looked at them and they compared them the people who are not caring for people who had dementia and guess what they found out these people oh that's a signal it means we've almost been about 45 minutes already okay let me check in have you learned anything yet about dementia that you didn't know some of you yeah some of you not how about some new skills well you're learning one right now and are you having some fun okay well good okay well then we're come along we'll see what we can do with the rest of this period of time all right so they did this study and what they did is they compared people with dementia who are caregiving for people with dementia people who are not and what they found is people who are caregiving for people with dementia had cortisol levels negative stress hormone that's 50% higher than the normal person now cortisol is a negative stress hormone it's not good to have in your system for long periods of time it's really a good thing to have if you're being chased by a tiger you want to get away from them really quickly but if you're not doing that you don't really want to have high cortisol levels because high cortisol levels in Risa's fat distribution in your organs and around your middle it makes it very difficult for you to see the big picture it actually causes your vision to go like this it keeps your brain from working really well in decision-making tasks you cannot make good decisions when your cortisol level because it's it's a panic it sort of got to make coin got a got to do something you got to move you're not able to see the big picture and sort of make good decisions and choices based on information out there cuz you can't handle all that it also raises your blood pressure your heart rate your blood sugar therefore people who are caregiving for people with dementia are more at risk for developing dementia themselves oh yeah that's not good we don't need more people with dementia there's plenty so here's what we want to do they did a study and they said okay we you guys are super stressed guess what caregivers said oh good something else I'm not doing right great well what am I supposed to do about that I don't have time to get done what I need to do how am I supposed to deal with stress in addition to that they said okay well we need to make this simple let's have them breathe so they actually did they have them stopped five times a day and take three deep cleansing breaths and they actually gave them a kitchen timer to put on their belt because guess what happens to care goes if you don't give them a timer to remember to take care of themselves they won't you people don't take care of yourself you say oh yeah I'll get to that sometime but you don't so five times a day they would stop and they would do those three deep cleansing breaths and after six months they remesh their cortisol level it was back to normal level what does that mean about you as a caregiver you are carrying an incredible burden around and you don't even realize you're not even breathing well you are going into situations I'll tell you how you walk in the house furred person hey Dad how are we doing today you're gonna be ready to take a shower okay let's not find daddy unless you're filthy this is going to go real well I can tell you just don't go there but this is where but notice what I wasn't doing I'm not breathing and unfortunately guess who picks up his cues for me daddy and so now daddy's getting more and more tense and more and more upset what what is it you want to do and before you know it you two are going at it again without even realizing how you got there okay we've got to change our behavior so their behavior will change but it's only going to happen if we're the ones who change first you've got to be willing to make that shift so breathing regularly really really important so when you can think of nothing else to do step back you're not wanting to take a shower I hear you it's a much safer respond it's a response not a reaction you're actually thinking about what you're going to do you're taking that moment to get yourself together before you try to help somebody else you know what they say about that oxygen mask what's the same thing when it's caregiving you've got to move out of caregiving to care partner so it means you have to think now we can go over the rest of these but I don't want to spend a whole lot of time I do want to point out a couple of other things here though the loss of initiation that's probably one of the ones that gets missed the most loss of initiation it means I'm not doing things like I used to I will talk about it but I don't do it so let's say I used to be very active in my faith community I used to run a group of adults and we do study and now I've said well you know I'm not going to do that anymore that I have given them a lot of time of my life and I let somebody else step forward let somebody else do this kind of thing I'm just not going to it or I'm not going to go to churches Sunday or I'm not going to go to Temple this Sunday I'll go I'll do it another time I'll do it another time I'm going to I'm going to clean that up I'm going to clean that all up I'm gonna get in that room and get it all dealt with and not a thing gets done it could be depression but it might not be depression it might be the first signs of dementia because one of the things that their brain can't do is figure out how to go from a thought to actually doing it and so they get stuck and so you'll get home and it's like mom you didn't even eat the sandwich I left you well I just wasn't hungry wasn't about being hungry it's about not being able to get started not being able to figure it out not being able to know what to do first what to do next the sequence through it this is where you go in and you see the bedroom you're like oh what have you done well I was going to put it all away it's all out I know I was sorting it you were not and so you're just you're frustrated because every time you turn around I tear things up in my effort to be helpful but I don't see it that I mean I'm trying to do it but I can't figure it out I start looking at all the piles and then I get sort of flustered and I don't know what to do I don't know I'll get to it just leave it leave it don't mess with it I'm coming back to it but I can't do it

Channel: Senior Helpers National

Views: 1,166,353

Rating: 4.8172545 out of 5

Keywords: Teepa Snow, Dementia, Senior Helpers, Alzheimer's Disease (Disease Or Medical Condition), Senior Care, Inhome Care, Caregiver

Id: pqmqC-702Yg

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 23 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/baileybluetoo]

Teepa snow has excellent presentations.