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Alzheimer's Disease: 10 Warning Signs
The Alzheimer's Association Greater New Jersey Chapter

Memory loss that disrupts everyday life is not part of the normal aging process. It is a symptom of dementia, a gradual and progressive decline in memory, thinking, and reasoning skills. The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer's disease, a disorder that results in the loss of brain cells.

The Alzheimer's Association believes that it is critical for people with dementia and their families to receive information, care, and support as early as possible. To help family members and health care professionals recognize warning signs of Alzheimer's disease, the Association has developed a checklist of common symptoms.

• Recent memory loss that affects job performance: Everyone forgets things and then recalls them later. People with Alzheimer's disease forget often, never recall and repeatedly ask the same question, forgetting the earlier answer.
• Difficulty performing familiar tasks: People with Alzheimer's disease could prepare a meal, forget to serve it and even forget they made it.
• Problems with language: A person with Alzheimer's may forget simple words or use inappropriate words, making speech incomprehensible.
• Disorientation to time and place: People with Alzheimer's may get lost on their own street and forget how they got there or how to get home.
• Poor or weaker judgment: Even a normal person might get distracted and fail to watch a child. A person with Alzheimer's disease could entirely forget the child under their care and leave the home.
• Problems with abstract thinking: Anybody can have trouble balancing a checkbook; a person suffering from Alzheimer's could completely forget what the numbers are and what needs to be done with them.
• Misplacing things: A person with Alzheimer's disease may put things in inappropriate places - an iron in the freezer, or a wristwatch in the sugar bowl - and not be able to retrieve them.
• Changes in mood or behavior: Everyone has occasional mood swings, but people with Alzheimer's can have rapid mood swings -- from calm to tears to anger -- within minutes.
• Personality changes: A person with Alzheimer's may change drastically and inappropriately, becoming irritable, suspicious or fearful.
• Loss of initiative: People with Alzheimer's may become passive and reluctant to get involved in activities.

The Alzheimer's Association Greater New Jersey Chapter provides programs and services to individuals with Alzheimer's disease, their families and caregivers who live in the New Jersey counties of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren. It is estimated that there are currently more than 350,000 individuals and their family caregivers in these counties who are struggling to cope with the challenges of Alzheimer's disease. Association programs and services include: education and training, support groups, respite assistance, and a toll-free telephone HelpLine. For more information, please contact the Association at one of the numbers below.

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