Dementia refers to a cluster of behavioral and medical symptoms that can be attributed to several diseases. Therefore, a lot depends on the reason or the original cause that’s causing the symptoms of dementia to appear in a patient’s behavior. Some of those causes can be cured with timely treatment and recovery is possible. Unfortunately, there are also more permanent causes of dementia that cannot be cured, just managed.
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What are the Symptoms of Dementia?
If we were to simply underline the symptoms that are generally referred to as dementia, they would include:
- Temporary and/or permanent memory loss, inability to recognize family members, relatives, friends, and regular acquaintances.
- Loss of balance, orientation, motor coordination, and spatial awareness.
- Communication problems, often exacerbated by Impaired speech.
- Loss of complex cognitive skills necessary to solve problems, do mental calculations, apply reasoning, etc.
- Problem with organizational skills such as time management, planning, and coordinating with others.
- Confusion, permanent brain fog, anxiety, depression, irritability.
- Problems with staying synchronized with the present timeline, mixing up days, dates, and even years.
- Paranoia, bipolar mood swings, aggression, hallucination, complete personality shifts.
If someone close to you is showing any of the above symptoms for a while, they must be taken to a doctor urgently. Symptoms of dementia can arise from a multitude of underlying reasons, but none of them can be ignored without endangering the patient’s future wellbeing.
What are the Causes of Dementia?
Only a neurologist can confirm the cause, but they too will need to order several medical examinations to confirm their primary diagnosis. Therefore, it would be impossible for anyone to assign any one cause to dementia, without access to all the essential facts. Nevertheless, here are some of the most well-established diseases and conditions that are associated with symptoms of dementia in patients:
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Frontotemporal dementia
- Lewy body dementia
- Huntington’s disease
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
- Parkinson’s disease
- Vascular dementia (might be partially reversible)
- Strokes (partial to complete recovery is possible)
- Traumatic brain injury (could be temporary and treatable)
- Hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism (treatable and reversible)
- Subdural hematomas (might be treatable and reversible)
- Brain tumors (might be treatable and reversible)
- Hydrocephalus (Might be treatable and reversible)
If the cause of dementia is determined to be a progressively degenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, or frontotemporal dementia, then it might be time to consider professional help to deal with what is to come. If you live in New Rochelle, look into assisted living New Rochelle, NY. A memory care program for those suffering from the symptoms of dementia can be very helpful.
Can We Prevent Dementia?
Nobody knows whether we can really prevent Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases of the brain which are not yet properly understood in their entirety. However, there is enough correlation to at least suggest that we can decrease our chances of developing some of the causes of dementia or at least delay the disease’s progress to some extent.
Activities such as regular social interactions, regular physical exercise, a nutritious diet, methodical brain stimulations can indeed help. Concussions (TBI) and vascular damage caused by arterial fat, on the other hand, can be prevented with the help of common sense and a fitter lifestyle respectively.
Originally posted 2022-10-21 22:52:25.
