The Impact of Wearing Finger Rings on Symptoms of Dementia

In a study, seven female Japanese dementia (Alzheimer's disease) patients (two discontinued wearing the ring since they thougt they might be forced to buy, data is based on five subjects) living in five small-scale nursing homes were asked to put rings (average price eight dollars) on their fingers from 9:00 to 19:00 for seven days. According to a majority of nursing care providers, the "irritability/lability" disappeared during the ring-wearing intervention period in those patients (n=3) showing an interest in rings. There was no effect in the two subjects not displaying an interest in rings.

Without having been asked, the nursing staff told the patients that they looked so beautiful when they saw them wearing rings. The researchers explain the decrease in irritability and lability with the women knowing about their own status of collapsing intellect and words such as "you look so beautiful" having a positive effect on self-esteem alleviating irritability and lability (Yokoi et al., 2017).

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- Teruo Yokoi, Hitoshi Okamura, Tomoka Yamamoto, Katsuya Watanabe, Shigeko Yokoi, Hitoshi Atae, Masayuki Ueda, Takahiro Kuwayama, Shigekazu Sakamoto, Saaya Tomino, Hideo Fujii, Takefumi Honda, Takayosi Morita, Takafumi Yukawa, & Nobuko Harada (2017). Effect of wearing fingers rings on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia: An exploratory study. SAGE Open Medicine, Vol. 5, link
- photograph of Elizabeth Taylor via