Sundowning: Understand The Causes, and Tips to Make it Better

What causes sundowning, and is there anything you can do to decrease the effect? Listen and get show notes: https://bit.ly/3CbLHET

Sundowning is a behavior change in people who become agitated, uncooperative, hallucinate, pace, or have increased confusion as the sun goes down.  It has been found that these behaviors do not only occur for elders with dementia, but also older adults without the disease, young people, and older dogs.

In this Episode:

• 01:44 - Recipe: Mississippi Chicken
• 02:13 - Notable Deaths from 2024
• 05:13 - Sundowning - What is It?
• 08:38 - Things that Make Sundowning Behavior Worse
• 09:17 - What Can Help Sundowning?
• 10:43 - Can Dogs Get Sundowning Behaviors?
• 14:33 - Ranata Suzuki - One Piece of Advice to Hold
• 16:00 - Outro

Understanding Sundowning
The behaviors that are associated with sundowning are confusion, anxiety, agitation or aggressiveness with increased motor activity (e.g. pacing, wandering), and yelling, all of which get worse as the sun is going down. So what causes sundowning? Read more below.

The Link to Circadian Rhythm
The current thinking is that these sundowning behaviors occur at sunset is because of an impairment of the circadian rhythm from damage to the sleep-promoting center in the hypothalamus and decreased production of melatonin. Listen to learn more about the cause and why it is important.

Is There a Way to Help Decrease Sundowning?
We talk about several ways to help, from adjusting light exposure through the day, to adjusting the environment and activities, to possible medications. We also talk about additional physical conditions that can contribute to sundowning that you can watch for such as urinary tract infections and dehydration. Listen to the podcast for a detailed list of ideas.

Related Episodes:

• S3E50: Caring for a Partner with Dementia
• S2E7: Nonpharmacological Management of Dementia
• S3E47: Frontotemporal Dementia Part 1 – What Is FTD?
• S4E16: Understanding Vascular Dementia, the Second-Most Common Form
• S1E48: Alzheimer’s Disease
• S5E37: Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease
• S2E1: Lewy Body Disease
• S1E34: Huntington’s Disease

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