We recently moved Mom into assisted living (and then, within a week into Memory Care). I was visiting her at dinner last week, and she was playing with a little packet of flavored salt (they have various salty seasonings on the table - the one she had was “Garlic/herb.” The caregiver seated with us said she liked to put it in her tea. I didn’t really understand this - I thought she was just playing with it, dissolving it in the tea for fun, when Mom asked if I wanted to try it. So, I took a sip of the tea, and blurted out “Mom!, That’s horrible - how can you drink that!” I started laughing so hard I thought I’d bust a gut. Mom just grinned at me.
The caregiver said she wished she had a video of me trying the tea.
Mom used to be quite an accomplished cook, so this is a bit disturbing, but hey, if she likes it, I’m not going to stop her.
I am a nurse who works with people living with complex dementia issues. This is not unusual. I’m heading out right now but I have stories of similar things. Strong flavors generally are more appealing than subtle ones. That is part of the reason st places lock cupboards up and don’t leave condiments around. Or toothpaste* Or anything that could possibly be considered edible.
*Toothpaste on Ritz crackers was a favourite of one lady I knew.
My guess is it’s a combination of reduced sense of taste/smell (she still likes very strongly flavored foods, like Chinese), and the taste processing in her brain getting messed up, so that the actual flavors don’t matter much anymore… as long as they are intense.
By a few years prior to his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, my father had totally lost his sense of taste. Notoriously abusive, with an uncontrolled temper, he’d throw plates of food across the room, accusing my mother of forgetting how to cook. She happened to be an excellent cook and kept adding more seasoning to his food, to no avail. Eventually, he just forgot that food used to have taste, and ate it anyway.
The primary difference between nursing home care and “memory care” is additional security measures to prevent patients from wandering. In good facilities, there may be activities geared toward the needs of dementia and Alzheimers patients, and extra therapies, but mostly it’s about providing a secure environment for the special challenges of patients who can’t safely monitor their own movement.
beowulf: Look into magnesium supplements, they helped me a lot after I lost my sense of taste. There’s a lot of formulations for pills and liquids, even a topical cream. It could be something as easy as this, which would help out your mom. It’s no fun trying to eat if you get no pleasure from it. Good luck.
That’s exactly what it is. My mother lost all interest in eating even before we had to place her. The only thing that could entice her was ice cream, and it had to be either chocolate or a flavor she could still recognize from sight because that would trigger a “OH I LOVE THIS!” somewhere in her head. At the NH she went for the orange sherbet because she still recognized its color even though she’d never been crazy about it. She’d shove anything vanilla flavored back at you because it tasted “cold”.
Yes.
The place where she is now encourages group activities - movies, cooking demonstrations, listening to live music, etc. I think these really help, especially for my Mom, who would normally just sit by herself and play handheld solitaire.
That might work if the lose of taste was due to a nutritional deficiency but from what I understand the loss of taste and smell in Alzheimer’s is due to brain damage. I doubt any sort of dietary supplement will help with that. Although what the heck, go ahead and try it, presumably the risks of doing so are low.