Drowsiness, Staring May Signal Alzheimer’s

There is a new study out that states that they have found some initial symptoms of Alzheimer’s. These symptoms include listlessness, daydreaming and forgetting what you were going to say is or forgetfulness.

Analysts have discovered that human beings with these initial symptoms had over four and a half times better chance of mental deterioration than persons that did not have these experiences. They also found out that if these people have Alzheimer’s disease, their tendencies to this disease were worse than the average patient and that their achievements on various cognitive exams were poorer than the average Alzheimer patient.

Researchers have discovered that individuals with a minimum of three varying signs of mental lapses were 4.6 times more likely to have mental deterioration than individuals without such occurrences. Additionally, individuals with mental lapses found out that their Alzheimer signs were worse and their performance on both remembering and thought tests was worse.

Now a lot of people will have these forgetful episodes. This by itself does not mean that you are a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. These occur in everyone at one time or another and definitely have a tendency to occur as one gets older. If you are being evaluated for memory issues or thinking problems, make sure to let your physician also be aware of any forgetful episodes that you might be having.

These forgetful episodes have been linked to something known as mental deterioration with Lewy bodies. This causes clumps of proteins to form in neurons. The clumps of proteins are what is known as Lewy bodies. It is not at this time known if this is associated with Alzheimer’s disease, but it is the second most common form of dementia.

Brand New Alzheimer’s Signs

In this research, 511 mature adults were evaluated for both Alzheimer’s disease and also any other type of mental deterioration. A member of the family was also evaluated at the same time.

The results showed that twelve percent of those who participated met the criteria for having mental lapses, but they also exhibited a minimum of three of the following signs:

  • Feeling tired most of the time even after getting plenty of rest
  • Resting at least a couple of hours before 7:00 in the
  • Having some mental lapses
  • Daydreaming for a long stretch of time

The results indicated that those individuals with at least three signs of mental blackout periods had greater chance to be pinpointed with having Alzheimer’s disease. Additionally, of the 511, 216 were pinpointed with having a mild case of mental deterioration, twenty-five individuals had moments when they blanked out as compared with only two not having any signs of mental deterioration. Professionals in the medical field agree that more research will need to be done to figure out if mental lapses should be added to tests when pinpointing if a patient has mental deterioration.