Alzheimer’s disease is a common and intense mental degeneration that mostly occurs among the elderly. This disease causes a person to lose track of regular life affairs and forget everything that was once held in high esteem. Recent incidents, acquaintances, and visited places often escape the mind. A person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease even fails to recognise close connections like family and friends. A comprehensive and holistic rehabilitation procedure helps the patient cope with regular life in terms of performing activities that are to a certain extent independent of others. Rehabilitation in Alzheimer’s disease differs from one person to another, based on the symptoms during extreme cases. However, there are specific guidelines that are followed throughout the general course of rehabilitation for such patients.
Physical Exercises and Activities: Patients are treated by therapists on a regular basis, who train them to carry out easy physical exercises so that their bodies regain the energy that is lost due to daily mental fatigue. Exercises and physical therapies rejuvenate the body’s central nervous, skeletal, and muscular system, thereby attempting to cease further depreciation of the brain cells.
Similar and Rewarding Activities: Therapists make the patients carry out certain important activities on a regular basis so that they gradually develop a habit of conducting daily chores for their survival. Such activities are set against specific rewards for the patients. Setting a bar in the form of rewards, encourages the patients to regularly carry out the duties allotted to them. In this way, therapists get patients to carry out their regular tasks easily, without having to remember everything because the gifts provide enough encouragement to do the same.
Regular Socialisation, yet in Confinement: Patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease are supposed to be kept in confinement for their own safety because rapid loss of memory makes them wander around, trying to recall and relocate everything. However, it is vital for them to engage in regular socialisation. Speaking to family members, friends, and the doctors, encourages the patients to utilise their minds, gradually causing the brain cells to work. Positive and relaxing conversations often trigger old memories. Apart from these, it is always good to spend time with special people because the moment one feels loved, positive development within the body begins to take place!
Teaching the Basics Again, and Practising Regularly: Therapists are allotted the task of teaching a set of similar activities and words to the patients everyday. Learning and practising the same tasks everyday over and over again makes the brain accept the mechanics of everyday life. In this way, the patients are encouraged to do their own tasks and keep themselves active. Even mechanical tasks require some mental effort, which enables the patients to activate their brain cells.
Independence and Personal Space for Patients: Although patients are kept in confinement while undergoing rehabilitation processes, it is vital to provide them with personal space so that they can carry out regular activities on their own, thereby learning how to manage every day independently. Carrying out small tasks on their own makes the patients think about the stages of every activity, thereby enabling the engagement of the mind.
Physical and Mental Games: Rehabilitation therapies for Alzheimer’s patients involve engaging them in games that require both the mind and body. Coordination of the mind and the body enables a holistic therapeutic approach and thereby increases the chances of a gradual journey towards independence as much as possible.
Alzheimer’s disease is one in which patients can be provided the best possible care by means of effective therapeutic rehabilitation procedures, even for a lifetime. Providing the patients with intense care and a loving environment plays an important role in enabling them to live their lives as independently as possible.