Alzheimers Disease

Objective: The use of cohesive devices makes discourse comprehend. However, in the discourse of senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type (SDAT) participants, the lack of the use of cohesive devices hinders effective communication. The present study aims to investigate cohesion in the discourse of SDAT participants. Understanding how these people manage their interactions may lead to suitable approaches for them. Method: The methodology of this quantitative research was ex post facto type. The present study has been performed in one of the nursing home in Kermanshah in 2019. And also, the statistic population of this study included 20 participants (10 SDAT participants and 10 normal elderly participants (NE)) who were matched based on age (63-75 years old), gender, illiteracy, and Kurdish language (Kalhori dialect) speaker. To determine the severity of dementia, the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) was performed. Then, the collected interviews were transcribed and coded. The data were analyzed based on Halliday and Hasan's theory (1976) and independent t-test was used to obtain the statistic results. Results: The findings indicate significant differences between groups using grammatical cohesive devices, such as reference (p=0.006), conjunction (p=0.004), ellipsis (p=0.007), and substitution (p=0.426) and lexical cohesive devices such as the same word (p=0.006), synonym (p=0.012), superordinate (p=0.001), general word (p=0.002), and collocation (p=0.387). Conclusion: The results show that grammatical and lexical cohesive devices are used less in the discourse of SDAT Kurdish speakers. However, in the discourse of both SDAT and NE groups, grammatical cohesive devices have more frequency than lexical cohesive devices.

Objective: Alzheimer's is a progressive and debilitating disease of the brain that causes serious damage to human thoughts and memory and is associated with psychological disorders such as insomnia and agitation. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of body-centered meditation on insomnia and agitation in Alzheimer’s patients. Method: The research method was semi-experimental with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. From the statistical population of patients with Alzheimer's disease in mild to moderate levels referred to clinics and Alzheimer's Association of Tehran province, 20 people were selected randomly based on inclusion criteria and assigned into experimental (n = 10) and control groups (n = 10). The research questionnaires were Morin's insomnia (1993) and Cohen-Mansfield's Agitation (1986). Meditation was administered to the experimental group in eight sessions of 90 minutes. The research data were analyzed using multivariate covariance. Results: The results of covariance analysis showed that post-test scores of insomnia and agitation of patients with Alzheimer's in the experimental group were significantly lower than the control group (P≤0 / 005). Conclusion: Body-centered meditation can be used to improve insomnia and agitation in Alzheimer's patients. Keywords: Alzheimer's Disease, agitation, insomnia, meditation, psychiatry

Purpose: The world is getting old. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive disease, which in case of no intervention, this ratio reaches 4 more advanced stages in people over 85 years old. Some methods have shown that they can be effective in preventing and slowing down the course of the disease. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of aerobic exercise program on the quality and some physiological parameters related to sleep in the elderly with Alzheimer's disease. Method: 22 elderly people with Alzheimer's disease were randomly divided into two groups of 11 people: aerobic exercise and control. The subjects in the aerobic training group practiced three sessions every week for twelve weeks and each session lasted for 45 minutes. The sleep quality of the subjects was evaluated by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Questionnaire (PSQI). Physiological variables related to sleep (TG, TC, LDL, HDL) were also measured by blood sampling before and after twelve weeks of aerobic exercise Results: The results showed that the sleep quality of the subjects improved by 31% in the Pied Heroi group, which was statistically significant. In addition, there was a significant improvement in the changes of TG (p=0.034), TC (p=0.017), LDL (p=0.006), and HDL (p=0.016) in the aerobic training group. The results of the independent t test also showed that there was a significant difference in sleep quality between the aerobic training and control groups. However, no relationship was observed between changes in sleep quality and changes in physiological variables related to sleep. Conclusion: It can be concluded that twelve weeks of aerobic exercise improves sleep quality along with some physiological parameters related to sleep in the elderly with Alzheimer's disease and will be useful as a way to treat sleep problems in the elderly.