Dementia : An acquired progressive cognitive dysfunction syndrome that affects the content of consciousness rather than the level of consciousness. Intellectual disability includes varying degrees of impairment in memory, language, and visuospatial functioning, personality abnormalities and reduced cognitive (generalizing, calculating, judging, synthesizing, and problem-solving) abilities, often accompanied by behavioral and emotional abnormalities, and a marked reduction in the patient’s ability to perform daily living, social, and work functions. The causes of dementia include degenerative and non-degenerative diseases, the former including Alzheimer’s disease (Alzheimer’s disease), frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, dementia with Parkinson’s disease, and the latter, such as vascular dementia, infectious dementia, and dementia caused by metabolic or toxic encephalopathy. Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies are the first, second, and third common causes of dementia in China, respectively. The incidence and prevalence of dementia increase with age. Foreign surveys show that the prevalence of dementia is 1% in people over 60 years old, and over 40% in people over 85 years old. It is reported that the prevalence of dementia in people over 60 years old in China is 0.75%-4.69%. With the aging of the global population, the prevalence of dementia will increase rapidly. Due to the high prevalence and disability rate of this disease, long duration of the disease and large treatment expenses, it brings a huge burden to the patient’s family and society. Clinical manifestations Near-memory deficits are often the earliest clinical manifestation and the core symptom of the disease, as the patient is unable to remember scheduled appointments or tasks, or events that have occurred in the recent past. However, the patient is aware of this and tries to cover up and make up for it by adopting a series of auxiliary measures, such as taking detailed written records or asking others to remind him/her in an uncharacteristic manner, so as to minimize or avoid the adverse effects of memory deficits on the workplace, society, and life, and to cover up memory loss as a symptomatic manifestation. Another early symptom of dementia is a decline in the ability to learn new knowledge and skills, and a tendency to feel tired, frustrated and irritated when encountering unfamiliar tasks. The ability to think abstractly, generalize, synthesize, analyze and make judgments is progressively reduced. Comprehensive memory involvement and deficits in comprehension and judgment may lead to delusions, which are brief, variable, and unsystematic, and usually consist of delusions of theft, loss, suspicion of illness, victimization, or jealousy of the spouse. Impairment of memory and judgment may appear as stereotyped disorder, in which the patient loses the ability to recognize time, place, people and even himself. Therefore, day and night are often indistinguishable, and the patient does not know the way back or roams aimlessly. Emotionally, the patient is emotionally unstable in the early stages, and gradually becomes indifferent and sluggish as the disease progresses. Sometimes the emotions are out of control and become superficial and changeable. The patient may be anxious, depressed, or indifferent, or angry, and may cry or laugh without control. Higher emotional activities, such as shame, morality sense of responsibility and honor are affected the earliest. Personality disorders can sometimes appear early in the disease. The patient becomes lackadaisical and easily fatigued, loses enthusiasm for work, loses interest in activities he or she used to enjoy, seems careless about people and things, sometimes makes ill-timed and poorly constructed jokes, pays less attention to clothing and grooming than before, and becomes untidy and unkempt. Sometimes, the patient may violate social and moral norms by molesting young children or exposing the pubic area. Some patients become suspicious, stubborn and calculating. In the later stage of severe dementia, the patient can not even take care of his daily life, he needs to be taken care of, he is incontinent, he has lost the ability to speak and answer, and some patients do not even recognize their own spouses and children, and they have almost completely lost their orientation to time and place, and they often go out and get lost. Finally, patients die of infection, visceral disease or failure. Nursing points and methods 1, strengthen the care of dementia in old age is important to improve the quality of survival of dementia patients, delay the process of the disease. 2.Regularity of daily living should be ensured to ensure sufficient and high quality sleep, especially for mentally excited patients. Insomniacs can be given a small dose of sleeping pills, clothing should be moderate, room temperature should be cool. Most of the depressed type like to lie down and sleep more, should adjust the sleep, give more stimulation during the day, and encourage the patient to do some useful and interesting manual activities and appropriate physical exercise. 3, can give light and nutritious food, such as cinnamon jujube soup, lean meat, eggs, fish and so on. For those who are obese, it is advisable to give a light diet, eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, such as celery, bean sprouts, cucumbers, bananas, oranges and so on. 4, Alzheimer’s patients, have different degrees of language dysfunction, nursing staff should have enough patience, use all nursing, treatment opportunities, take the initiative to communicate with patients. Often use hand massage head points, to refresh the brain, and further can teach patients to calculate, write. 5, eat food to chew more, eat meals to eat seven minutes full, eat more dried fruit to increase chewing can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. New short-term memory is stored in the brain has a close relationship with the “hippocampus” region responsible for memory cells. As people age, the “hippocampus” cells begin to deteriorate, leading to a decrease in short-term memory. When people chew, the brain “hippocampus” area cells will be a large increase. 6, often eat choline, vitamin B12 rich food: because acetylcholine has the role of memory enhancement. And acetylcholine is synthesized by choline. Therefore, you should eat more choline-rich foods, such as soy products, eggs, peanuts, walnuts, fish, meat, oats, millet and so on. Foods rich in vitamin B12 mainly include kelp, red curd, stinky tofu, cabbage and radish. 7, emphasize to do “three fixed, three high, three low and two quit”, that is, fixed time, fixed quantity, fixed quality, high protein, high unsaturated fatty acids, high vitamins, low fat, low calories, low salt and quit smoking, quit drinking. Nerve cell activity and memory need enough protein, energy, lecithin, choline, vitamins, potassium, sodium, phosphorus and trace elements, so attention should be paid to the supplementation of nutritional elements. Foods with antioxidant effects (such as red wine) are important for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and atherosclerosis. B12-rich foods are: daisies, mushrooms, soybeans, eggs, milk, animal kidneys and a variety of fermented soy products, etc.; folic acid-rich foods are: green leafy vegetables, citrus, tomatoes, cauliflower, watermelon, mushrooms, yeast, beef, 8, to actively prevent and control constipation: constipation is one of the important causes of dementia. Because often constipated people, their intestines will produce ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, histamine, mercaptan and indole and other toxic substances, these toxic substances will enter the brain with the blood circulation, thus inducing Alzheimer’s disease. 9, to frequently move the fingers: often do finger movements of the mind gymnastics: such as handicrafts, carving, cartography, paper-cutting, typing, as well as playing musical instruments with the fingers, etc., and often use the fingers to rotate the steel ball or pecan, or with both hands to stretch the fist movement, can make the brain blood flow surface to expand, promote blood circulation, effective massage of the brain, the study believes that frequent activities of the fingers, the prevention of hardening of the arteries, the prevention and treatment of dementia is beneficial. 10, try not to use aluminum cookware and tableware. Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease The prevention of Alzheimer’s disease should start from middle age, and Alzheimer’s disease, such as in the pre-dementia or light dementia period is found, and take corresponding measures in life, do it consistently, is completely able to control its development, and can be made to a certain extent to the good direction of the transformation. First, create a good living environment Older comrades after retirement to the changed environment is difficult to adapt to for a while, excessive attachment to the past life and colleagues and friends, will damage brain cells, bright light will stabilize their mood, while the dim environment will aggravate their symptoms. Pay attention to maintain interpersonal relationships to avoid long-term depression and depression, because depression is also a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Second, pay attention to adjust the psychological factors, a good state of mind is to maintain the health of the nervous system, is to prevent premature aging, to prevent the brain function of the important factors. Third, strengthen physical exercise: many people know that exercise can reduce the chance of stroke, in fact, can also promote the production of nerve growth factor, to prevent brain degeneration. Such as insisting on walking, playing tai chi, doing health exercises or practicing qigong, etc., is conducive to the lifting of the inhibitory function of the brain, improve the activity level of the central nervous system. 1, prevention of old age in addition to holistic whole-body activities, try to move more fingers. More brain, more learning, such as reading newspapers and books, playing chess, learning foreign languages, memorizing poems, learning computers, learning books and paintings, but also play intellectual puzzles, making models, especially talking with people to discuss, etc., can help to maintain and enhance the memory function and intelligence. 2, there are several simple and effective exercise, can delay the hardening of brain nerve cells, can prevent Alzheimer’s type of dementia: early in the morning and evening every day in the fresh air, brisk walking for an hour: brisk walking can exercise the lower lumbar tense muscle, improve the amount of oxygen uptake, help to stimulate the brain cells, to prevent brain cell degradation, the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease has an ideal effectiveness. Implementation of head and neck rotation exercise: this exercise can not only make the rotation of the upper spine become smooth, but also slow down the cerebral arteriosclerosis, prevention of Alzheimer’s. The method is to slowly move the head and neck to the right and left. The method is to slowly rotate the head and neck from left to right 100 times, and then rotate the head and neck from right to left 100 times. In addition, etiologic prevention is the key to preventing Alzheimer’s disease, so it is essential to actively prevent and treat high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, control blood pressure and blood sugar, and reduce blood lipids and blood viscosity.