Does Dementia Change with the Seasons?

It’s a hunch I have.  Nothing really spat at me that it was really so, but trying to figure out a connection between weather, seasons, and dementia kept nagging at my heels.  I tried locating any information I could, but it was quite difficult.  The closest I was able to to get was locating studies on light therapies and dementia, but that wasn’t what I was really after.

We do know that light therapy works for those with depression, and also encourages brain wave activity in all people - including those with dementia.

My actual purpose of this post was to locate some indication as to why Mom has a pattern of transitioning into the next levels of her LBD during the seasonal changes.  I was wondering if there was a link, and that, perhaps, there was a commonality between Mom and other patients who demonstrated the same sort of decline/change.

While Mom’s decline wasn’t as pronounced two years ago, it was obvious something was going on.  Nothing prepared me for the demonstration of her visiting the neurologist and acting like a young girl - giggling and swinging her feet as he performed some tests - she was oblivious to the questions he was asking me.  From that point on I began to observe the changes as they snuck in and began to dramatically change her personality and her activities.

A year ago, Mom slipped into a state of congeniality.  She began to discard the venom for sugar.  She was sweet.  It wasn’t something any of us was used to, but we accepted it with open arms.  She was very personable (nothing new), but she was content, as well.  Within weeks, though, she began to slide, bit-by-bit, so that by January she was no longer the same person - the personality was the same, but her cognition level had dropped severely.    Her doctor recognized this, as did the neurologist, and all those around her.

Later, she would change again.  It seemed that these changes would occur  with the change in weather or seasons.  This summer she began to change radically for the worse - late Spring she began not eating and not rising from bed, and this would (as I predicted) become more commonplace.

In the past, before her diagnosis, she would appear fine in late summer, and then have issues near the beginning of September when the weather and the daylight would begin to flux and change here in the Northwest.  January would present more problems, and then around April/May there would be the appearance of something else.  Summer was a season that gave her some energy, but there was something going on that you couldn’t quite pinpoint.

And, here we are, again, in September with more changes and more decline.  

It would be interesting to see if the seasons affect these changes, is it the sun? The weather? the barometric pressures?  It’s obvious it affects the people around me, but how does this affect those with dementia?

Why is there so little information?


I’ll keep digging and see what I can bring to light...that was supposed to be a joke...