EmpowHer: When are people with Alzheimer's disease more likely to act out?

Jan Dougherty: The evening hours are very difficult for most individuals with Alzheimer's disease and that is the number one issue is fatigue. These folks again are challenged as they are making their way through the day having to sort through language, having to do everyday tests that call upon so much more of them. If they haven't had a rest period along that way, which often times they haven't, because these have been very busy people and we expect them to keep up with their pace and they can't. And come evening time, we find that they've become irritable, that they've become physically agitated, wanting to move around a lot, they might become paranoid, we might see very unwanted behaviors and the issue really is fatigue.

Then if we understand that, we look at what led into it 24 hours before time, we've got a plan and factor that in, and fact we hear from the - with the patients and families we work with and we say, we want you to take a nap at 2 o'clock everyday. Now you don't have to lay down your bed, perhaps you just want to sit in your favorite chair and listen to music, not CNN but something comfortable, something relaxing; we need to give your brain and your body some downtime. Then I would say going into the evening time before dinner, offering a snack for this individual, making sure that the TV isn't blaring again, controlling that kind of excess stimuli will really help the evenings be much better.

We call those the bewitching hours. For women, don't get this, because they know what happened to their two year-old, if they missed a nap or they missed a snack or one more herein on the way home at the end of the day, the two year-old has a melt down in the frozen food isle. Again these are not children. So I don't want to make the analogy but women get what happens to children without naps. We are doing the same thing to these very fragile brains who need the same sort of regulation and help; an assistance for them to be their best, just as we wanted our children to be their best going into the evening hours.