Disease the "D" in Determine

Disease - any disease, illness or chronic condition which causes you to change the way you eat or makes it hard for you to eat, puts your nutritional health at risk. Four out of five adults in this country have a chronic disease by age 55 that is affected by their diet. But it is not only diabetes and high cholesterol that affects what you eat and how often you eat; it is also confusion or memory loss that take their toll on our diet as we age. One out of five adults experiences memory loss or increasing confusion as they age, and they can actually forget to eat or cannot remember if they did. To ask a friend or family member whose memory loss or confusion seems to be increasing if they ate today and what they ate is a reasonable and important question. Finally, even mental conditions impact nutrition. Feeling sad or depressed happens to about one out of eight older adults, and these feelings can cause big changes in appetite, digestion, energy level, weight and well-being.

“Mild” Alzheimer's Disease

People with “mild” Alzheimer's Disease may:
• experience memory loss,
• Have trouble naming common items,
• Ask or say the same thing over and over,
• Easily get lost,
• Lose interest in things they once liked to do,
• Misplaces things more often than usual
• Exhibits personality changes, not their usual selves with no significant event in their life that might explain the change.