Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic organic mental illness with a slow onset and progressive exacerbation. In the early stages of the disease, there are some characteristic “disease signal symptoms” that are valuable for diagnosis. Early detection of these symptoms is important for the early diagnosis and treatment of the disease. Some of the common symptoms are as follows.
Loss of recent memory
This is the most common and important early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. Memory is the recollection of people’s past things or experiences. Psychologically, memory is divided into three categories: instantaneous memory, near-event memory and distant memory. Instantaneous memory is the ability to remember things and keep them in the brain for 30 seconds, near-term memory for hours to weeks, and distant memory for months to years. Alzheimer’s disease is mainly caused by the loss of proximal memory, i.e., the inability to recall recent events and the manifestation of amnesia. For example, forgetting where to put things, forgetting important appointments and promises, meeting an acquaintance but not being able to call him by name, not being able to recall what just happened, holding something in his hand and looking for it, forgetting what he was entrusted to do after a while, forgetting to put salt on the stove, forgetting to turn off the gas and tap water switch, etc. At the same time, the patient has time orientation disorder and cannot remember the specific month and year, which seriously affects the patient’s daily life. However, the patient’s distant memory is better, so he or she remembers old events very clearly. At this point, the patient not only fails to realize the severity of his memory loss, but also feels that he has a good memory without acknowledging the disease. These symptoms may go unnoticed in the early stages and are often mistaken as normal until the memory loss becomes more and more severe and medical attention is sought. Therefore, we must pay attention to this important early symptom to avoid delaying treatment.
II. Disorientation
Due to the diminished memory of near events, the patient gradually loses the ability to orient to time and place. When going out, the patient does not know the north and south-east, does not know where he or she is, and cannot remember the places he or she passed when going out or his or her home address. The patient is also confused about what time it is, and sometimes mistakes day for night. As a result, when you go out to places you are familiar with, you may not be able to find your way home, or you may lose your way on the roads around your home. Sometimes when they go out, they go farther and farther away from home, not remembering where they came from, where they are going, and what they are doing, and often need someone to accompany them home. According to the survey, 90% of the elderly who lost their way are Alzheimer’s patients.
Character change
In psychology, personality is a person’s inherent behavior pattern and habitual way of dealing with people in daily life, which is the whole characteristic of a person’s mental activity. Each person has his or her own personality characteristics. The human brain is the dominant fold of mental activity, and if there is a pathological change in the brain, it will inevitably affect a person’s personality. Thus, Alzheimer’s patients will show symptoms of personality change in the early stages. There are two common types of changes, one is that the personality traits of the past become more prominent, such as those who used to be anxious, easily agitated, emotionally unstable, suspicious and other personality traits, these characteristics become more obvious, and it is difficult to get along with people around. Another kind of change is the opposite of the previous character traits, making people feel that the patient is two different personalities, such as a person who was originally very gentle becomes an emotionally unstable, impatient, stubborn and suspicious, unreasonable person; a person who was originally cheerful becomes a depressed, anxious, nervous, lonely, lack of automaticity, selfish, unkind person; an elderly person who was polite and moral becomes nasty talk They may even appear to have no sense of shame, defecate anywhere, undress and undress in public, etc. If an elderly person has such a change in personality, it should be considered as an early symptom of senile dementia.
Fourth, suspicion
There are 20%-25% of Alzheimer’s patients with suspicion as early symptoms, and there may be no memory and intellectual impairment at this time, but as the disease progresses, the suspicion symptoms gradually disappear and obvious memory and intellectual impairment appears. The early suspicion of the disease has many elements, many of which have important diagnostic value.
1, think that their own or home things were stolen, these things are either valuable items, some are worthless daily necessities, and for this reason and nervous fear, think there is no safe place to hide these items, and take these items on their own, or east hide in places where others can not find, and even think that people around, friends and relatives are stealing his things and do not trust them, and mouth to speak “My things were stolen” and even caused family conflicts. In fact, this is due to memory loss of recent events, and forget where to put the items, can not find them for a while and blame others to steal caused, this is known in medical terms as “delusions of being stolen”.
2.Some patients have suspicions that their partners are unfaithful to him (her) and there is a third party outside, so they are not worried about their partners and want them to “confess and be lenient”, and spend their days watching and even stalking their partners, which is known as “jealousy delusion” in medicine.
3, there are patients who feel that they are loved by a young person of the opposite sex or they are in love with a person of the opposite sex, and they pester people (love delusion).
4. Some patients are very “poor” and threaten that their families have no money and they can only live by picking up garbage (delusion of poverty).
In addition, there are other kinds of suspicion. Therefore, for elderly people who have suspicion without memory and symptoms of intellectual impairment, and whose disease has a short course and starts in old age, regular memory and intellectual examinations should be conducted to detect the disease at an early stage.
V. Speech communication difficulties
The symptoms include a decrease in the amount of speech, a feeling that one’s thinking is poor, and silence due to the inability to speak with rich content. Sometimes they forget a certain word or cannot find a suitable word to replace it and suddenly interrupt their speech, or inappropriately add some irrelevant words, making it impossible for people to understand the meaning of their expression. Sometimes changes the topic of conversation at will and lacks focus, giving the impression that his or her speech is somewhat “rambling”. The speech is simple, lacks grammatical structure, and is unable to carry out more complex conversations with people. Some of them cannot even name common things. Due to poor thinking and difficulty in conceptualizing, writing is simple and takes a long time or even difficult to complete, forgetting the strokes of words and having to ask people around them repeatedly.
VI. Difficulty in performing familiar tasks in the past
Due to memory loss, the patient’s ability to live and work is significantly lower than before, and he/she is unable to handle daily work and life problems, often makes mistakes, and is not able to do his/her job well. Unable to pay more sustained attention to a certain matter, doing things upside down, even daily life and household tasks are difficult to complete, such as burning meals, misplacing condiments, burning dishes, etc.
7. Decreased judgment
The judgment of the problems encountered in life is significantly reduced, and thus the ability to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment affects life and work. For example, they are unable to adjust their clothes according to the seasonal climate changes, and are unable to solve simple problems in life. Sometimes they don’t know how to dress up, they don’t dress appropriately in daily life, they wear underwear as outerwear, tops as pants, or cotton jackets in summer, etc.
VIII. Calculation difficulties
The speed of completing complex calculation tasks becomes significantly slower, or for simple calculations, although they can be completed, they are obviously not as fast and accurate as before. Sometimes they are overwhelmed by simple calculations and are unable to perform even simple grocery shopping tasks.
IX. Sexual problems
The main pathological damage site of Alzheimer’s disease is the cerebral cortex, sometimes damage to the limbic system parts of the brain closely related to human sexual activity, resulting in the loss of the patient’s ability to control instinctive activities, showing sexual “release symptoms”, of which hypersexuality is a common early symptom. If an elderly person who usually does not have a strong sex drive suddenly becomes hypersexual, pestering his partner or even harassing the opposite sex; or if an elderly person who is usually very gentle and polite suddenly talks dirty, flirts with the opposite sex in public places or misbehaves with the opposite sex, or even commits “sexual crimes”, the possibility of Alzheimer’s disease should be considered.