Dementia has a huge impact on cognitive health, but many times families are surprised to discover that dementia can also affect physical health. Many seniors with dementia struggle with unintentional weight loss for a variety of reasons. Working with Alzheimer’s care professionals can help families to address the causes of this weight loss and help family members to maintain a healthy weight.
Nutritional Challenges and Cognitive Decline
Dementia reduces a person’s ability to reason, make good decisions, and remember important activities. This includes basic tasks like eating healthy meals and snacks. People with dementia are much more likely to forget to eat or to eat foods that offer little to no nutritional value. It becomes a vicious cycle, too, because lack of proper nutrition increases confusion and forgetfulness, all of which contribute to weight loss.
Trouble Preparing Meals
People with dementia often have significant difficulty with everyday tasks, like preparing meals. As dementia advances, it becomes even more challenging to plan for eating, shop for food, and then cook and eat meals and snacks. Help from Alzheimer’s care providers can ensure that seniors with dementia have the help they need in order to keep eating well.
Sensory Changes
Age brings with it sensory changes, especially to the senses of both smell and taste, that impact how people enjoy their food. Dementia can cause other sensory changes that also have an impact on taste and smell, and even cause people to find certain foods unappealing for other reasons, like texture. This can cause seniors to avoid eating altogether, so they need help making food as appealing as possible.
Difficulty Swallowing
Some seniors with dementia also experience challenges related to dysphagia, or trouble swallowing. This can make eating uncomfortable or even unsafe, which is a contributing factor for seniors with dementia choosing to eat less often. Home care providers can be there to help seniors with dementia to eat safely and remember to swallow their food.
Underlying Medical Conditions
People with dementia often have other medical conditions that can have an impact on health and on unintentional weight loss. Dental issues, gastrointestinal health issues, and other health conditions can all contribute to weight loss. Likewise, medications that seniors need to take to manage health issues can have an impact on weight, even causing seniors to lose weight unintentionally.
Increased Energy Expenditures
Dementia brings with it a variety of behavioral changes for seniors. Some of those changes, like wandering and restlessness, mean that seniors are expending more energy than they were before. If they haven’t increased their caloric intake, that means they’re more likely to lose weight without intending to do so.
Dementia doesn’t necessarily cause weight loss for seniors, but it can definitely create situations that contribute to unintentional weight loss. Alzheimer’s care providers can help with the practical aspects of helping seniors to eat healthy meals on a regular basis. They can also monitor seniors to ensure that they’re eating enough, hydrating properly, and getting the assistance that they need with other aspects of remaining as healthy as possible.
IF YOU OR AN AGING LOVED ONE IS CONSIDERING HIRING ALZHEIMER’S CARE IN CUPERTINO, CA, PLEASE CONTACT THE CARING STAFF AT HOME HELPERS TODAY. (408) 317-4969
