Signs and Symptoms of Dementia

Blessings beloved friends! I hope and pray that today finds you all doing well. Today I am focusing on the signs and symptoms of Dementia. I am sharing a couple websites and excerpts from them to help you to understand what the signs and symptoms of Dementia are. Please click on the links to find out some more signs and symptoms that I couldn't put in the blog. As always, please feel free to email me anytime at barbgadway@yahoo.com. HUGS!!!!!!!❤ 

https://www.healthline.com/health/dementia/early-warning-signs

Symptoms of dementia

If you or your loved one is experiencing memory problems, don’t immediately conclude that it’s dementia. A person needs to have at least two types of impairment that significantly interfere with everyday life to receive a dementia diagnosis.

In addition to difficulty remembering, the person may also experience impairments in:

• language
• communication
• focus
• reasoning

1. Subtle short-term memory changes

Trouble with memory can be an early symptom of dementia. The changes are often subtle and tend to involve short-term memory. An older person may be able to remember events that took place years ago but not what they had for breakfast.

Other symptoms of changes in short-term memory include forgetting where they left an item, struggling to remember why they entered a particular room, or forgetting what they were supposed to do on any given day.

2. Difficulty finding the right words

Another early symptom of dementia is struggling to communicate thoughts. A person with dementia may have difficulty explaining something or finding the right words to express themselves. Having a conversation with a person who has dementia can be difficult, and it may take longer than usual to conclude.

3. Changes in mood

A change in mood is also common with dementia. If you have dementia, it isn’t always easy to recognize this in yourself, but you may notice this change in someone else. Depression, for instance, is typical of early dementia.

Along with mood changes, you might also see a shift in personality. One typical type of personality change seen with dementia is a shift from being shy to outgoing. This is because the condition often affects judgment.

https://www.healthline.com/health/dementia/early-warning-signs

Please click on the above link to find out more. 😊

• Facts about dementia

  Early signs and symptoms of dementia may go unrecognized, but the first sign is usually loss of short-term memory.
• Some of the other early dementia symptoms and signs include:
  • Personality changes
  • Mood swings
  • Poor judgment
  • Paranoia or suspiciousness
• Some of the intermediate signs and symptoms of dementia include
  • Worsening of early dementia symptoms
  • Abnormal moods
  • Confabulation
  • Inability to learn new information
• Some of the later signs and symptoms of dementia include
  • Worsening of the intermediate signs and symptoms of dementia
  • Inability to walk or move to place to place unassisted
  • Complete loss of short and long term memory

https://www.emedicinehealth.com/dementia_overview/article_em.htm

Please click on above link to find out more 😊

I hope the information that I shared today helps you out a bit in understanding Dementia and what the signs and symptoms of it are. Have a blessed day/afternoon/evening your way! Much Love ❤

Be a Blessing- Have Perfect Peace of Jesus' Grace

What gives me the most hope every day is God's grace; knowing that his grace is going to give me the strength for whatever I face, knowing that nothing is a surprise to God. Rick Warren

Ephesians 4:7

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

Paul said in Romans 5:20, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” But that radical concept opens a theological floodgate. The biblical writer Jude warned that it is possible to “change the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 4 NIV). Why be good if you know you will be forgiven? Not even an emphasis on repentance erases this danger completely.

In Romans 6, Paul spoke directly to the point. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” He gave a short, explosive answer: “Certainly not!” (vv.1-2) and used an analogy that starkly contrasts death and life. “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (v.2). No Christian resurrected to new life should be pining for sin.

Yet wickedness does not always seem to have the stench of death about it. Sin can be downright appealing.

Paul recognized this, so he advised: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body” (vv.11-12).

If we truly grasped the wonder of God’s love for us, we would spend our days trying to fathom and share, not exploit, His grace.

Eternal life is a gift from God. It’s not something we earn by working for it. We are saved by God’s grace, through faith in Christ (Eph. 2:8–9).

Dear God, Your undeserved favor has made it possible for us to be saved from our sin. You have shown us amazing grace. Thank You for
the gift You gave. Use me to tell others about You and what You have done. Amen!

Today dear friends I encourage you to remember that Grace is for the desperate, the needy, the broken, those who cannot make it on their own. Grace is for all of us. Remember too that Jesus fulfilled the perfect requirements of the law so that we may enjoy the perfect peace of His grace. Today dear friends  Be a Blessing- Have Perfect peace of Jesus' Grace.😊❤

Hi dear friends! I hope that wherever you are in this big, beautiful world that you are all staying warm. My heart goes out to all who have endured this brutally cold winter we have been having here on the east coast of the USA and also for any in other parts of the USA or world that have endured terrible natural disasters or weather. You all have my heartfelt prayers. Today and this weekend, I am focusing on Dementia. Just what exactly is dementia? I am going to share some links to websites and excerpts from them to hopefully help all in understanding what dementia actually is. Sending HUGS & Blessings to all!!!! Please feel free to email me at barbgadway@live.com anytime. 

What Is Dementia?

Dementia is the loss of cognitive functioning—thinking, remembering, and reasoning—and behavioral abilities to such an extent that it interferes with a person’s daily life and activities. Dementia ranges in severity from the mildest stage, when it is just beginning to affect a person’s functioning, to the most severe stage, when the person must depend completely on others for basic activities of living

Signs and symptoms of dementia result when once-healthy neurons (nerve cells) in the brain stop working, lose connections with other brain cells, and die. While everyone loses some neurons as they age, people with dementia experience far greater loss.

While dementia is more common as people grow older (up to half of all people age 85 or older may have some form of dementia), it is not a normal part of aging. Many people live into their 90s and beyond without any signs of dementia. One type of dementia, frontotemporal disorders, is more common in middle-aged than older adults.

Memory loss, though common, is not the only sign of dementia. For a person to have dementia, he or she must have:

• Two or more core mental functions that are impaired. These functions include memory, language skills, visual perception, and the ability to focus and pay attention. These also include cognitive skills such as the ability to reason and solve problems.
• A loss of brain function severe enough that a person cannot do normal, everyday tasks

In addition, some people with dementia cannot control their emotions. Their personalities may change. They can have delusions, which are strong beliefs without proof, such as the idea that someone is stealing from them. They also may hallucinate, seeing or otherwise experiencing things that are not real.

https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-dementia

{ Please check out the link above to find out even more awesome information } 

Dementia involves damage of nerve cells in the brain, which can occur in several areas of the brain. Dementia affects people differently, depending on the area of the brain affected.

Dementias are often grouped by what they have in common, such as the part of the brain that's affected or whether they worsen over time (progressive dementias). Some dementias, such as those caused by a reaction to medications or vitamin deficiencies, might improve with treatment.

Progressive dementias

Types of dementias that progress and aren't reversible include:

• Alzheimer's disease. In people age 65 and older, Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia.
  Although the cause of Alzheimer's disease isn't known, plaques and tangles are often found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. Plaques are clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid, and tangles are fibrous tangles made up of tau protein.
  Certain genetic factors might make it more likely that people will develop Alzheimer's.
• Vascular dementia. This second most common type of dementia occurs as a result of damage to the vessels that supply blood to your brain. Blood vessel problems can be caused by stroke or other blood vessel conditions.
• Lewy body dementia. Lewy bodies are abnormal clumps of protein that have been found in the brains of people with Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. This is one of the more common types of progressive dementia.
• Frontotemporal dementia. This is a group of diseases characterized by the breakdown (degeneration) of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, the areas generally associated with personality, behavior and language.
  As with other dementias, the cause isn't known.
• Mixed dementia. Autopsy studies of the brains of people 80 and older who had dementia indicate that many had a combination of Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia and Lewy body dementia. Studies are ongoing to determine how having mixed dementia affects symptoms and treatments.

Other disorders linked to dementia

• Huntington's disease. Caused by a genetic mutation, this disease causes certain nerve cells in your brain and spinal cord to waste away. Signs and symptoms, including a severe decline in thinking (cognitive) skills usually appear around age 30 or 40.

• Traumatic brain injury. This condition is caused by repetitive head trauma, such as experienced by boxers, football players or soldiers.
  Depending on the part of the brain that's injured, this condition can cause dementia signs and symptoms, such as depression, explosiveness, memory loss, uncoordinated movement and impaired speech, as well as slow movement, tremors and rigidity (parkinsonism). Symptoms might not appear until years after the trauma.
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. This rare brain disorder usually occurs in people without known risk factors. This condition might be due to an abnormal form of a protein. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be inherited or caused by exposure to diseased brain or nervous system tissue.
  Signs and symptoms of this fatal condition usually appear around age 60.
• Parkinson's disease. Many people with Parkinson's disease eventually develop dementia symptoms (Parkinson's disease dementia).
  

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dementia/symptoms-causes/syc-20352013

{ Please check out the link above to find out even more awesome information } 

I hope these two websites help you in understanding more about Dementia. Have a blessed rest of your day/afternoon/evening! HUGS!!!!!!!❤

Be a Blessing- Don't Show Partiality Treat Everyone Equally!

Treat others as you wish to be treated. Don't just be nice, but be kind to other people. That can be so rewarding. Mary Lambert Quotes

You are of more value than many sparrows. —Luke 12:7

Charlie Brown, the comic strip character, identified with the underdog, probably because he always felt like one. In one scene he was building a birdhouse when the cynical Lucy came by. “I’m building it for sparrows,” Charlie told her. Lucy said, “For sparrows? Nobody builds birdhouses for sparrows.” “I do,” replied Charlie Brown. “I always stick up for the underbird.”

At times Christians may overlook the “sparrows,” the little people in their worlds. They may ignore those they view as less valuable.

James said it’s wrong for a Christian to practice partiality (James 2:1). It’s a sin to show personal favoritism (v.9). The reasons may be social, economic, educational, or ethnic, but there’s no excuse for disrespecting people with our attitudes and words.

Jesus didn’t do this. He crossed all kinds of traditional barriers to talk with tax-collectors, sinners, non-Jews, people of mixed races, the poor, as well as the rich. He came to identify with each of us, and to pay the price on the cross for all our sins.

When a sparrow falls, the Father takes note of it. But He cares much more for people, including the “underbird.” Perhaps we need a little more Charlie Brown in us.

Lord, help me to love the way that You love
The humble, the lowly, the meek;
And help me to care the way that You care
For sinners, the outcasts, the weak. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen.

Today dear friends, I encourage you to be hospitable and courteous to all, regardless of their race, social status, or appearance. When we show favoritism, we sin against people whom God loves and for whom Christ died. Let’s be gracious to everyone and be careful to avoid showing partiality. And always remember there is no place for prejudice or favoritism in the family of God. We who have been born again through faith in Jesus are equals in God’s sight. And that equality should be evident in the way we treat other believers. Today, Be a Blessing- Don't Show Partiality Treat Everyone Equally! 😊❤

What’s the difference between dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) and schizophrenia?

Today, I am sharing a couple sites to hopefully explain the difference in a way that helps you to understand. I am going to cut back to 3 posts per week due to health issues with my kidneys. I am so thankful to all who so graciously have shown me love and support. I LOVE you all so dearly and am so grateful for you all. I will post mostly the weekends Saturday, Sunday, and either Mondays or Fridays. Without further ado hopefully, the sites I share will help you to understand just 

What’s the difference between dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) and schizophrenia?  😊❤

http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/ask-us/whats-the-difference-between-dissociative-identity-disorder-and-schizophrenia

Sometimes, people confuse dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder, and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia does mean “split mind,” but the name was meant to describe the ‘split’ from reality that you experience during an episode of psychosis, as well as changes in thoughts, emotions, and other functions. Dissociative identity disorder, on the other hand, does cause a split or fragmented understanding of a person’s sense of themselves.

Dissociative identity disorder is really more about fragmented identities than many different personalities that develop on their own. Most people see different parts of their being as part of the whole person. For people who experience DID, identity fragments may have very different characteristics, including their own history, identity, and mannerisms. A key part of DID is dissociation—feeling detached to the world around you. People who experience DID may have many unexplainable gaps in their memory, forget information they’re already learned, or have difficulties recalling things they’ve said or done. Unlike portrayals of DID on TV or in movies, DID may not be obvious to others, and it can take a lot of time to come to the diagnosis.

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that causes hallucinations (sensations that aren’t real) and delusions (beliefs that can’t possibly be true, in addition to other symptoms like jumbled thoughts, jumbled speech, and difficulties expressing emotions. People who experience schizophrenia may hear or feel things that aren’t real or believe things that can’t be real, but these aren’t separate identities.

Please click on the link above and find out even more great info!

https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/dissociativeliving/2010/11/dissociative-identity-disorder-is-not-schizophrenia/

Dissociative Identity Disorder Is Marked by Profound Identity Disturbance

DID was formerly labeled Multiple Personality Disorder for a reason: the disorder is marked by identity disturbance so severe that the sufferer experiences himself not as one person, but many. Rather than the normal levels of identity confusion and identity alteration we all experience, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder live with such profound degrees of both that they appear to have multiple personalities.

In simple terms, what that means is that all the various aspects that make up a person’s identity are separated and walled off from each other in those with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Each aspect of the dissociative identity is real. The disorder isn’t that we’re perceiving the existence of people who don’t actually exist. DID isn’t a thought disorder like Schizophrenia is. It’s a dissociative disorder. In other words, what makes DID a disorder is not these pieces of identity, but how separated those pieces are.

Identity Disturbance Is Not Intrinsic to Schizophrenia

I imagine a diagnosis like Schizophrenia might provoke a certain amount of questioning, “Who am I?” Reconciling oneself to any serious mental illness is bound to involve some initial identity confusion. But this falls within the normal range of dissociation. Schizophrenia itself, as I understand it, really has nothing at all to do with identity, though I can guess at the likely source of the confusion: the name itself.

It’s easy to see how schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder got all tangled up together. A split mind sounds at first like an apt descriptor for multiple personalities. But the mind splitting that the name schizophrenia refers to really has nothing to do with personality, with identity. Instead, it references the fractures in cognitive functioning that are the essence of this thought disorder.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Is Not Schizophrenia

The clues to the differences between these two disorders are right there in their names. Dissociative Identity Disorder is characterized by a severely dissociative, or separated, identity. Schizophrenia is characterized by the splitting, or breaking, of the mind’s capacity to function. They are not even remotely the same thing. Continuing to treat them as such perpetuates gross misunderstandings that isolate people with both of these disorders.

Please click on the link above and find out even more great info!

I hope and pray that the information I shared helps you to understand the difference between schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Sending you all love and I will see you all again on Saturday the 6th!❤

Be a Blessing - Live Your Life Peacefully

 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. John 14:27

We all have anxious weeks—filled with worries over the direction our culture is drifting or concerns for our children, our marriages, our businesses, our finances, our personal health and well-being. Nevertheless, Jesus has assured us that despite disturbing circumstances we can be at peace. He said, “My peace I give to you” (John 14:27).Jesus’s days were filled with distress and disorder: He was beleaguered by His enemies and misunderstood by His family and friends. He often had no place to lay His head. Yet there was no trace of anxiety or fretfulness in His manner. He possessed an inner calm, a quiet tranquility. This is the peace He has given us—freedom from anxiety concerning the past, present, and future. The peace He exhibited; His peace. 

In any circumstances, no matter how dire or trivial, we can turn to Jesus in prayer. There in His presence we can make our worries and fears known to Him. Then, Paul assures us, the peace of God will come to “guard [our] hearts and [our] minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7). Even if we’ve had “one of those weeks,” we can have His peace.

Dear Lord, thank You that I can come to You with every care and Your peace will guard my mind. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen!

Today my dear beloved friends, I encourage you to remember that having peace with God does not ensure problem-free living. However, it does steady us during difficult times. Jesus told His followers, “In the world you will have tribulation,” but He also said, “In Me you may have peace” (John 16:33). Because of Christ, the true peace of God can fill our hearts (Col. 3:15).

Peace floods the soul when Christ rules the heart. Today dear ones Be a Blessing- Live Your Life Peacefully.  I am going to cut back to 3 posts per week due to health issues with my kidneys. I am so thankful to all who so graciously have shown me love and support.

I LOVE you all so dearly and am so grateful for you all. I will post mostly the weekends Saturday, Sunday, and either Mondays or Fridays.😊❤

Ideas to Celebrate New Years Eve WITHOUT Alcohol

If you have a loved one with disabilities, alcohol is a BIG no-no because of the medications they are on. I don't drink period for my personal reasons. But for people with disabilities, it would be hard not too if there is alcohol being passed around. It could actually kill a person with a disability to drink alcohol depending on their medications. So as it is New Year's Eve day in my part of the world 😊 I am going to share a couple of really great non- alcohol ideas to celebrate ringing in the New Year. 

1. Eat 12 grapes at midnight

The practice of eating 12 grapes at midnight is common among Spanish-speaking people and countries, according to History.com. The grapes symbolize the hope the person has for the new year and each of its 12 months, and in some cases, people even create 12 wishes, one for each grape, as they devour them. As stated by Food Republic, in Spain, the grapes are eaten as quickly as possible in order to bring good luck, adding an element of superstition to the tradition. 

2. Make New Year's bags

This can be an especially enjoyable option for families with kids, but it could even be great for adult parties too. Disney Family says you can have lots of fun by creating New Year's bags that are meant to be opened each hour and contain a different activity. Happy Home Fairy states you can fill the bags with many different items like:

- A new movie to watch

- Puzzles 

- Activity sheets 

- Candy 

Essentially, you can fill them with whatever you think your group of friends or family will enjoy. Just don't forget to make an 11:55 PM bag that contains noisemakers and confetti.

I hope you enjoyed these different non-alcohol ideas and ways to ring in the New Year! As always, feel free to email me at barbgadway@live.com. I am sharing one non-alcoholic drink option also 😊See you all again on January the second!

Non-Alcoholic Orange Slush Punch

Ingredients

Gluten free

∙ Serves 15

Produce

• 1 packet Jell-o cherry, flavored

Baking & Spices

• 2 cups Sugar

Drinks

• 3 liters Ginger ale
• 8 cups Orange juice

Desserts

• 1 packet Jell-o, flavored orange

Liquids

• 5 cups Water