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What is Dementia?

Dementia is one of the cruelest syndromes that can afflict seniors. One should call it a syndrome and not a disease because symptoms of dementia are omnipresent in more than one disease. Dementia causes progressive memory loss as well as affecting a person’s ability in language, problem solving and rational thinking. There are some dementia related hygiene problems which needed to be handle by caregivers or family caregivers. While the affects of Dementia can be slowed, it cannot be reversed or cured. It is one of the most challenging scenarios that home caregiver services and senior home care services have to contend with. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause for Dementia.

What is personal hygiene?

Lets delve into what personal hygiene actually means, since there are a myriad of theories floating around, with misunderstood religious and cultural beliefs often at loggerheads with what has been prescribed by science. Personal hygiene refers to the practice of keeping our bodies and our surroundings clean to avoid growth of parasites and fungus, which lead to painful diseases. Given the recent outbreak of COVID-19 virus and the total chaos it has left the world in, one cannot stress the importance of personal hygiene enough.

Some Dementia Related Hygiene Problems:

Here are the basic activities associated with personal hygiene and which must be carried out regularly (daily if possible) to ensure hygiene.

• Washing your body with water and preferably soap. Washing, especially washing with soap, not only helps to keep us clean, it also keeps us fresh and pleasant for others around us.
• Washing your hair with shampoo or soap everyday, with your bath is a good idea. However, if your hair or scalp is sensitive to soap, at least wash it once a week with shampoo of choice.
• Brushing your teeth daily is an absolute must to prevent tooth decay and gum diseases. While it’s preferable to brush twice (once after breakfast and once before retiring for the night), doing it once is a bare minimum. Using toothpaste or mouthwash also help, keeping your breath minty fresh. Toothpastes and mouthwash also have cleaning properties, which help with keeping your teeth clean.
• One must wash his/her hands with soap after going to the toilet. Not doing so is inviting diseases like Jaundice and Cholera. Washing hands with soap or sanitize is also a must before one eats.
• Change clothes regularly, if not daily. People residing in more tropical climes where one sweats more, should change their clothes daily, especially the undergarments. It is necessary to wash clothes that have already been worn with soap or detergent before wearing them again. While drying, always try and dry in the sun, instead of shade. Sunlight kills a lot of germs that might been left over from the washing.
• While sneezing or coughing, turn away from other people and cover your nose and mouth. This will prevent tiny droplets of your mucus and saliva that get ejected with every sneeze and cough from causing harm to others.
• Change your bed sheet regularly and wash the used bed sheet well and dry it in the sun before using it again. Do the same with pillow and blanket covers. It’s also advised to put out your pillows and blankets out in the sun from time to time. Sunlight kills germs and helps excess moisture evaporate, so that the next time you sleep, you get a warm and dry bed.
• Regularly clean your surroundings. Sweep and vacuum your room or house at least twice or thrice a week to ensure clean floors and carpets.
• Regularly wash your towels, hand towels etc. Keeping them disinfected helps you stay disease free.

How does Dementia affect personal hygiene?

Among the many problems seniors face with Dementia, personal hygiene is one. There are several dementia related hygiene problems. Seniors often forget to do the basic activities associated with personal hygiene, like bathing, brushing their teeth, washing after toilet etc. This is compounded by the fact that often, family carers find it uncomfortable to get them to do such activities, especially bathing and washing, since they might have to see their senior family member- often a parent or grandparent- naked, which might cause them distress.

Also, seeing a family member in such a state might be too much, emotionally, for the family carer. Thus, a senior afflicted with dementia might easily find himself/herself in rather unhygienic conditions and stand the risk of catching diseases associated with personal hygiene, which will compound their misery and make them even less independent. Hence, for seniors with advanced symptoms of dementia are best cared for by professional caregiver services in specialized care homes or communities like senior home care.

Hygiene and Grooming Challenges for the elderly

Having read the last paragraph, one would think that keeping appropriate hygiene is a rather simple task. What we forget however is the fact that the elderly find the very tasks we take for granted as cumbersome. As we grow older, our physical capabilities regress. Add to that the mental regression caused by Dementia, and you can imagine the difficulties. Tasks like washing, brushing teeth and keeping clean surroundings are learnt attributes, which we learn gradually in childhood.

Dementia patients are like children, with one exception. While children retain the learning, with elderly people affected by Dementia, the learning has to be renewed every day. As their conditions progresses in severity, they start from scratch on a daily basis. Caregiver services need to be mindful of that and senior home care facilities have specially trained staff and processes to help seniors follow their basic hygiene routine, often with active human intervention.

What diseases can you get from bad hygiene?

Among the many diseases that you can catch due to poor hygiene, the most common are Food poisoning and diarrhea. If one fails to wash hands before eating or after toilet, then the germs get transported with the food to your stomach, causing food poisoning and diarrhea.

Apart from this, pneumonia and tracheotomy are also common diseases. The most painful diseases though are skin infections like sores and spores caused by bacteria and fungi living and breeding in your skin cells and feeding off you as parasites.

Is lack of personal hygiene a sign of dementia?

Not always. Sometimes, seniors coming into senior home care facilities are unhygienic in their habits. One needs to carefully study whether there has been a change in their behavior and habits regarding personal hygiene over time. If yes, and if they have regressed, we might very well be looking at the onset of Dementia. Care giver services constantly monitor their wards to check for any signs of forgetfulness and confusion while doing the basic tasks.

To counter the symptoms brought about by Dementia, they might device tactics to help the senior citizens stay as independent as possible. This might include placing memory charts in convenient locations, daily problem solving exercises to counter regression in simple problem solving skills and fashioning other practical solutions to help senior citizens keep hygiene conscious. Off course, in the most severe cases, none of these actually work and such seniors are completely dependent on the caregiver services for even basic day to day activities.