General Condition Help

Minimizing household dangers and providing safe home health care for dementia patients can be simple and effective with proper preparation.

Sundowner's Syndrome (also known as sundowning) is a condition that occurs in the late afternoon or early evening when the sun goes down — generally between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. It is not a separate disease but is one of the symptoms of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the Sundowner's Syndrome involves confusion, disorientation, agitation, anger, depression, restlessness, paranoia and mood swings. Some of the behaviors may include wandering, rocking, crying, pacing, hiding things and acting out aggressively.

It is not easy to deal with a parent with dementia or its most common type, Alzheimer’s disease. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 10 million American adults have to cope with the responsibility of caring for a family member suffering from various types of dementia.

Many a patient (or the family) has asked, “What is Alzheimer’s disease, and what makes it different from dementia?” The term dementia refers to a health condition marked by a progressive loss of cognitive or intellectual abilities. There are many types of dementia, arising from different causes, the most common of which is Alzheimer’s disease.

For eleven years I pleaded with my elderly father to allow a caregiver to help him with my ailing mother, but after 55 years of loving each other he adamantly insisted on taking care of her himself. Every caregiver I hired to help him sighed in exasperation, "Jacqueline, I just can't work with your father–his temper is impossible to handle.

Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) is the second most common form of degenerative dementia in the elderly, affecting an estimated 1.3 million people in the United States, yet it is most often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's disease.