Holidays are the perfect time to check on grandma's health
Sitting around the table at the holidays is an opportunity to take stock of the cognitive health of your elderly relatives, said Robert Stern, professor of neurology and director of the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Centers Clinical Core.
If an older relative is having significant problems with memory at a holiday gathering, don't just brush it off as “just aging,'” he said. “It's important to take these things seriously.”
Because Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, is a disease of old age, Stern said, learning the signs and symptoms is critical to know whether your elderly loved one needs to be seen by a specialist.
“The earliest problem is the inability to learn new information,” he said. “Memory difficulty isn't about recalling things from the past. The problem with Alzheimer's is the learning of new information.”
So here is a checklist of behaviors, courtesy of Stern, to be aware of with elderly relatives over the holidays.
• The elderly person repeats the same story over and over: “Significant changes to memory and other cognitive skills is not part of normal aging. When there's a big problem like that, it's important to be seen by a doctor. Sometimes the difficulties can be reversed, e.g. if the problem is hypothyroidism or a vitamin deficiency or even depression.”
• The elderly person doesn't remember what someone told them — where a grandchild is going to college, for instance — and asks the grandchild again later: “No matter how hard one might try to come up with it, or how many cues are given, it's just not there.”
• The elderly person, who is usually neat and organized, can't get the meal cooked in time or has forgotten key ingredients: “When routine tasks are difficult or the person is overwhelmed trying to prepare a meal because there are too many things going on and so withdraws or becomes anxious, those are all signs.”
• Changes in mood and personality: “These are all brain changes, so if a person is suddenly paranoid, or fearful or depressed when they never were before, don't just say, ‘oh, they're just being crazy.'”
Stern said there are other signs, too: trouble getting words out, problems with correctly identifying the time and place, and poor judgment, such as giving credit card information over the phone to a telemarketer.
If a loved one is identified as having significant cognitive difficulties, one of the most important things a family member can do is to get that person into a clinical trial, said Stern, “because for the first time we have several drugs in the pipeline. There's huge hope, and the only to way to advance this research is to get people to participate.”