What are the Warning Signs?
There are ten warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Many healthy people experience one or more from time to time, like forgetting a name or misplacing a checkbook. Most people with Alzheimer’s disease will experience all of these signs over the course of their illness.
1. Memory loss
Everyone forgets things and then remembers them later. People with Alzheimer’s disease forget often, never remember and ask the same question over and over, forgetting the earlier answer.
2. Difficulty with familiar tasks
People with Alzheimer’s disease could prepare a meal, forget to serve it, and even forget they made it.
3. Problems with language
A person with Alzheimer’s disease may forget simple words or use the wrong words, making their speech difficult or impossible to understand.
4. Confusion about time and place
People with Alzheimer’s may get lost on their own street and forget how they got there or how to get home.
5. Changes in mood or behavior
Everyone’s mood changes now and then, but people with Alzheimer’s can go from being calm to tears to anger within just a few minutes.
6. Poor judgment
Even a healthy person might get distracted and fail to watch a child. A person with Alzheimer’s disease could entirely forget the child under their care and leave the home.
7. Problems with abstract thinking
Anyone can have trouble balancing a checkbook. People with Alzheimer’s disease could forget completely what the numbers are and what to do with them.
8. Misplacing things
A person with Alzheimer’s disease may put things in the wrong places and not be able to find them later, like a shoe in the refrigerator or a wristwatch in the sugar bowl.
9. Changes in personality
People with Alzheimer’s disease may go from being trusting and kind to paranoid and mean spirited.
10. Loss of initiative
People with Alzheimer’s disease may lose their motivation and become unwilling to get involved in activities they used to enjoy, like gardening or watching television.
