Tips for Helping Your Senior Cope with Sundowning
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive form of dementia. This means it will get worse over time, and their challenges, needs, and symptoms will increase. During the middle stage of Alzheimer’s disease, also sometimes referred to as moderate Alzheimer’s disease, approximately 20% of those living with the disease will develop a further condition referred to as sundowning.
Home Care Springfield PA – Tips for Helping Your Senior Cope with Sundowning
One of several different forms of sleep disturbances that can stem from Alzheimer’s disease, sundowning, is characterized by anxiety, confusion, and restlessness during the evening and early night hours. This can be an upsetting and even frightening condition for both your aging parent and you, but fortunately there are ways you can help your senior to cope with this condition and get the rest they need.
Use these tips for helping your senior cope with sundowning:
Avoid lowering the lights during the evening. Keeping the lights on during the evening can help reduce the disorienting effect of shadowy areas.
Ensure that the sleeping environment is as comfortable as possible. Remember people sleep better in cooler environment, and having excessive light in the bedroom, such as from an alarm clock or a television screen, can greatly disrupt sleeping patterns.
Practice good sleep hygiene. This means setting a sleep schedule for your parents, and keeping it as much as possible. Going to bed at the same time each night, and waking up at the same time each morning, establishes rhythms within the body that allows your parents to get tired naturally, and then wake up refreshed. Maintaining the schedule reduces tiredness, and makes it easier for your parents to naturally fall asleep at an appropriate time.
Maintain a daily schedule. Routine and predictability are very important to to elderly adults living with Alzheimer’s disease. By maintaining a schedule each day that includes their meal times, activities, and more, you help your parent to feel more secure, and help them to better predict what comes next, including the steps of getting ready for bed.
Stay active. Encourage your aging parent to stay more active during the day. Both mental and physical stimulation is important to help your parent feel more relaxed and ready for sleep at night.
Being a family caregiver for an elderly adult who is living with Alzheimer’s disease can be extremely difficult. The symptoms and challenges that stem from Alzheimer’s disease often require extensive care which only increases the further in the progression your parent goes. This can lead to stress, exhaustion, and even burn out.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone. Home care can be there for you. A home care provider can step in to fill care gaps, offer support, and give you more time away from your care routine. This can not only ensure your seniors needs are met, and their challenges and limitations handled effectively, but can also preserve your health and well-being throughout this difficult progression.
Source: https://www.alz.org/care/alzheimers-dementia-sleep-issues-sundowning.asp
If you or an aging loved one are considering Home Care Services in Springfield PA, please contact the caring staff at True Direct Home Health Care today.
Doc, as he is called by everyone - staff, patients and clients - first experienced home health care and hospice care while as a colleg student at King's College as he cared for his mother every day while she first battled COPD and then lung cancer. It was during this time that he came to understand that caring for a patient was more than just clinical expertise.
"Admittedly, my strongest attribute is my communication skills and the simple fact that I love to help people. Even the smallest thing you can do for someone really can mean so much to them long term. In fact, it could change them forever. That's what providing quality personal home health care should be all about."
In his spare time, he cooks for homeless shelters and children's music and arts events. He also is highly involved in his local youth sports soccer academy as a coach and Board member.
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