How to Identify Early Signs of Dementia – Identifying The Signs of Dementia

There are various symptoms of dementia depending both on the primary cause and the individual. Nearly everyone with dementia experience some, but not all these symptoms. They may be very evident, or they may not be distinguished for some time. Loss of short-term memory is often the very first sign of dementia.

Medications will assist with some of the irritability, anxiety and restlessness that many individuals with dementia experience. The most successful approach to providing care for the individual is through interpersonal communication. This is not an easy task, as by the time the diagnosis of dementia is given, the brain has already begun to deteriorate.

The biggest red flag with this sign of dementia is if your loved one suddenly experiences difficulties performing tasks that have always come easily to them. An aging person may have successfully navigated their finances for decades, only to have things become a problem recently. Finances are a very important area to keep a close eye on; it’s easier to see the signs of dementia when it comes to money.

The last stage begins to affect the body as well as the mind. The person may have weakness in certain parts of their body. It may cause them to not be able to move their arms and legs. Their ability to speak may worsen to the point of not making any sense when they talk.

A growing difficulty on the part of the person to understand numbers and financial concepts. This may first manifest itself by a person having extreme difficulty balancing his or her checkbook. Being unable to remember simple words to describe common objects can also signal a potential problem. Sometimes they will substitute the names of objects for unusual words. They may also stop mid-conversation and not be able to carry on. Even repeating everything you say. 

People with dementia can become lost in familiar places, such as the road they live in, forget where they are or how they got there, and not know how to get back home. They may also confuse night and day.

Other common early signs of dementia can include people forgetting parts of their typical daily schedule. If a person reads the newspaper every morning during breakfast and suddenly stops doing this particular activity with no apparent reason, this may signify the onset of dementia.

People suffering from dementia forget simple words or substitute inappropriate words thus making sentence difficult to understand for the listener. They fail in processing language and experience great difficulty in conveying their messages.

Elderly people can also react with dementia-like symptoms to surgery, infections, sleep deprivation, irregular food intake, dehydration, loneliness, change in domicile or personal crises. This is called delirium, and many if not most dementia patients also have a delirium on top of the physiologial dementia, adding to the symptoms