Trinity Homecare is committed to providing exceptional care and support to individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. You might wonder, how can live-in care help slow down Alzheimer’s decline? Key risk factors for the progression of Alzheimer’s include loneliness, depression, a sedentary lifestyle, and poor diet. Ensuring the well-being of those with Alzheimer’s involves taking special care of their physical and mental health, but this is often challenging without support.
A live-in carer from Trinity Homecare can make a significant difference. By offering companionship, managing mental health conditions, encouraging physical activity, and promoting a balanced diet, our carers help people lead fulfilling lives. Addressing these areas of concern helps slow the progression of Alzheimer’s symptoms, enabling people to maintain their independence and live as comfortably as possible.
At Trinity Homecare, we are dedicated to supporting your loved ones with compassion and expertise, ensuring they never feel vulnerable or alone.
What is Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s is actually a form of dementia, affecting an individual’s memory, thinking, and behaviour. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, which means that symptoms increase in severity as time goes by. In later stages of the disease, it can affect major brain functions and impact an individual’s ability to live independently.
The symptoms of Alzheimer’s are categorised into three stages: the early stage after initial diagnosis, the middle stage as the disease develops, and the later stage when it has the most severe effect.
Here’s what you can typically expect to see in terms of symptoms at each stage:
Early stage
In the early stage, individuals and their loved ones may start to notice the following symptoms:
- Forgetting about recent conversations or events
- Misplacing items
- Forgetting the names of places and objects
- Difficulty thinking of the right words
- Repeating conversations or questions
- Problems with decision-making
- Becoming less flexible
- Hesitancy in trying new things
- Early signs of mood changes, such as increasing anxiety or irritability
- Experiencing periods of confusion
Although these symptoms can be frustrating at times to the individual, at this point, they do not drastically affect daily routine and quality of life. However, at this stage, it may be time to start care planning before symptoms progress.
Middle stage
By the middle stage the early symptoms have progressed along with the appearance of new symptoms. These typically include:
- Feelings of increased confusion and disorientation e.g. getting lost, or losing track of the time of day
- Displaying obsessive, repetitive, or impulsive behaviour
- Experiencing delusions, paranoia, or suspicions about people around them
- Speech or language difficulties (aphasia)
- Sleep problems
- Experiencing frequent mood swings
- Feeling increasingly anxious, depressed, frustrated, or agitated
- Problems with spatial awareness such as judging distances
- Experiencing hallucinations
At this stage, a person living with Alzheimer’s may need help with everyday tasks, from personal care to meal preparation and feeding themselves. A live-in carer can assist and support an individual at this stage.
Later stages
As the disease progresses, so too do the symptoms. In addition, individuals may become increasingly demanding, violent, and suspicious of those around them, making caring a challenging task for inexperienced family caregivers. At this point, Alzheimer’s home care is recommended, as an experienced Alzheimer’s carer can expertly handle difficult situations and help your loved one to manage the symptoms of this progressive disease. Symptoms in the later stages include:
- Experiencing dysphagia or difficulty eating and swallowing
- Requiring assistance to change position or move around
- Unintentional weight loss
- Loss of bladder or bowel control
- Increasingly severe speech problems
- Losing both short and long-term memory
The benefits of Alzheimer’s live-in care
There are certain health conditions that live-in care is suitably appropriate for, Alzheimer’s disease is one such example. The distressing and confusing nature of the disease means that moving a loved one to a care home could be detrimental, furthering the progression of their symptoms.
The confusion caused by relocation and moving into unfamiliar surroundings could be avoided by simply choosing live-in care. Alongside this, the numerous benefits of Alzheimer’s home care include:
- Remaining in the comfortable surroundings of home
- Being cared for by an experienced Alzheimer’s carer
- Maintaining daily routines, hobbies, and interests
- Staying close to family, friends, neighbours, and local community
- Peace of mind for family and friends
- Round-the-clock personalised one-to-one care
- Social stimulus and someone to talk to
- Couples can stay together in the home they love
- Keeping beloved pets
How a live-in carer can help
A live-in carer can help individuals living with Alzheimer’s manage their symptoms in order to reduce feelings of distress and frustration, as a result of the progressively worsening symptoms. An experienced live-in carer can help those living with Alzheimer’s with the following:
- Personal care e.g. bathing, dressing, and toileting
- Meal preparation and gentle reminders to eat and stay hydrated
- Encourage physical activity and healthy eating
- Provide cognitive and social stimulus through conversation
- Clear away clutter to reduce trip and fall hazards
- Light housekeeping
- Medication management
- Mobility support
- Carefully managing challenging behaviours
- Accompaniment to and from healthcare appointments
- Facilitating hobbies, interests, and socialising
Learn more about how live-in care can help to support your loved one with our informative guide to live-in care.
Why choose live-in care?
Alzheimer’s disease is a challenging health condition that progressively gets more difficult to manage with time. Whilst a family caregiver does have their loved one’s best interests at heart, oftentimes they lack the specialist knowledge a professional carer has. Turning to an experienced Alzheimer’s live-in carer for assistance ensures that your loved one receives expert care for their condition.
Furthermore, live-in care is preferable to a care home environment, for people living with Alzheimer’s, as this care service gently supports, reassures, and importantly, maintains an individual’s daily routine. The symptoms of confusion, distress, and anxiety could be exacerbated during the relocation process, and settling into a care home could be more difficult for Alzheimer’s sufferers. With this in mind, receiving care in the familiar surroundings of home is the least disruptive option.
Get in touch today
Live-in care for people living with Alzheimer’s is a preferable form of care that allows individuals to remain in the comfortable and calming surroundings of home. Our dementia live-in care is tailored towards helping the individual, and managing the specific symptoms they need assistance with. Trinity Homecare’s live-in carers are hand-picked to offer personalised one-to-one support right from the early stages of your loved one’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Trinity ranks amongst the top 3% of all nationwide care companies in England, giving you the peace of mind that your loved one will receive the highest standard of live-in Alzheimer’s care and support.
If you would like to learn more about arranging live-in care for your loved one living with Alzheimer’s, simply get in touch with our friendly and professional care team.
- Call our care team
- Undergo a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss your care needs and arrange a care assessment
- After the assessment, a plan of care is created
- A well suited carer is found and placed
- Care can be adapted at any time
