Know All About Dementia Disease - Symptoms & Causes
Dementia Disorder Types, Causes & Treatment
Dementia disorder identifies a group of symptoms that are severe enough to interfere with everyday life, affecting memory, thought and social skills. It’s not a specific disease, but a number of different diseases can cause dementia.
Although dementia generally involves memory loss, memory loss has a number of causes. Having memory loss on your own doesn’t mean you have dementia.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of progressive dementia in older adults, but there are a number of causes for dementia. Any signs of dementia can be reversible, depending upon the cause.
Demence is a general term that describes the lack of ability to think, memory, and other mental abilities.
There are many things that can induce dementia problem. It occurs when the parts of your brain used for learning, memory, decision-making, and language are impaired or diseased.
You may also learn that this is called major neurocognitive disorder. Dementia is not an illness. Instead it is a collection of symptoms caused by other conditions.
Approximately 5%-8% of adults over 65 years of age have some form of dementia.This percentage is doubled every five years after the age of 65. As many as half of the population in the 1980s had a certain level of dementia.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia. About 60-80 percent of people with Alzheimer’s dementia. Yet there are as many as 50 other causes of dementia disorder as possible.
Symptoms & Signs
Symptoms of dementia can improve with treatment. But many of the conditions that cause dementia are not curable.
Depending on the cause, symptoms of dementia disorders vary, but typical signs and symptoms include:
Cognitive modifications
- Loss of memory, commonly found by a partner or someone else,
- Communicating or seeking words challenge
- Visual and spatial skills challenges, such as being lost while driving,
- Reasoning for difficulty or problem-solving
- Difficulty managing complicated assignments
- Difficulty with organization and planning
- Coordination difficulty and motor functions
Psychological modifications
- Modifications of Personality
- The Depression
- The Fear
- Unsuitable conduct
- About anxiety
- Restlessness
- With hallucinations
Phases in Dementia
Dementia disease is often loosely divided into four phases:
Mild deficiency of cognition: marked by general forgetfulness. This affects many individuals as they age, but for others it only leads to dementia.
Mild dementia: There may be cognitive impairments in people with mild dementia that often affect their everyday lives. Symptoms include lack of memory, uncertainty, changes in personality, getting lost, and difficulties planning and executing tasks.
Severe dementia: Everyday life becomes more difficult, and more assistance may be required by the person. Symptoms are similar to but increased by, mild dementia. Individuals may need assistance to get ready and to comb their hair. They can also exhibit major personality changes; for example, for no cause, being paranoid or irritated. Sleep disorders are also likely to occur.
Extreme dementia: The symptoms have deteriorated considerably at this point. There may be a lack of capacity to communicate, and full-time treatment may be required for the person. Simple activities are impossible, such as sitting and keeping one’s head up. Control of the bladder can be lost.
Dementia Types
Several forms of dementia disorders exist, including:
- "Plaques" between dying cells in the brain and "tangles" within the cells (both attributed to protein abnormalities) characterize Alzheimer's disease. In a person with Alzheimer's, the brain tissue has increasingly fewer nerve cells and connections and the overall size of the brain shrinks.
- Lewy-body dementia is a neurodegenerative disease related to dysfunctional brain structures. The modifications in the brain include a protein named alpha-synuclein
- A disorder of two or three forms occurring together refers to mixed dementia. For example, at the same time a person can exhibit both Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia.
- The involvement of the Lewy bodies is often characterized by Parkinson's disease. While Parkinson's is mostly considered a movement disorder, it can lead to symptoms of dementia as well.
- Huntington's illness is identified by particular forms of uncontrolled movements, but dementia disorder is also included.
Causes
Dementia is caused by nerve cells and their brain connections are damaged or destroyed. Dementia can affect people differently and cause different symptoms, depending on the region of the brain that’s affected by the trauma.
Dementia are also grouped according to what they have in common, such as the protein or proteins that are deposited in the brain or the affected portion of the brain. Some disorders, such as those caused by a reaction to drugs or vitamin deficiencies, look like dementia, and they can improve with treatment.
Dementia Diagnosis
To decide whether someone has dementia, there is no single examination. Based on a careful medical history, a physical examination, laboratory tests, and the distinctive changes in thought, day-to-day function and actions associated with each type, doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia disorder. With a high degree of confidence, doctors will decide if a person has dementia.
But the precise type of dementia is more difficult to ascertain because the signs and brain changes of various dementia may overlap. A doctor can diagnose “dementia” in some cases and may not specify a form. It might be important to see a doctor, such as a neurologist or nuero-psychologist, if this happens.
Dementia Prevention
It is understood that some risk factors are associated with dementia disorder. The largest predictor, however is age. Other risk considerations include:
- Smoking and the use of alcohol.
- Atherosclerosis (cardiovascular disease which causes narrowing of the arteries).
- "High levels of low-density lipoprotein ("bad cholesterol).
- Above-average homo cysteine (a form of amino acid) levels in the blood.
- Getting diabetes.
- Mild cognitive impairment can lead to dementia disorder occasionally, but not always.
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