Treatment
- If possible, a consistent sleeping schedule and daily routine that a sufferer is comfortable with can reduce confusion and agitation.
- If the patient's condition permits, having increased daily activity incorporated into their schedule can help promote an earlier bed time and need for sleep.
- Check for over-napping. Patients may wish to take naps during the day, but unintentionally getting too much sleep will affect nighttime sleep. Physical activity is a great treatment for Alzheimer's, and a natural way to encourage night sleep.
- Caffeine is a great (and fast-working) brain stimulant, but try limiting it at night if a night's sleep is needed.
- Caregivers could try letting patients choose their own sleeping arrangements each night, wherever they feel most comfortable sleeping, as well as allow for a dim light to occupy room to alleviate confusion associated with an unfamiliar place.
- Some evidence supports the use of melatonin to induce sleep.
Read more about this topic: Sundowning (dementia)
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“The treatment of the incident of the assault upon the sailors of the Baltimore is so conciliatory and friendly that I am of the opinion that there is a good prospect that the differences growing out of that serious affair can now be adjusted upon terms satisfactory to this Government by the usual methods and without special powers from Congress.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)