Dementia is a decline in mental
ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. Dementia is not a specific
disease, it is a term to categorize a wide range of symptoms. Examples include:
Alzheimer's disease, Vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, etc. Symptoms of
dementia have to include at least the loss of two of the following mental
functions: memory, communication and language, ability to focus and pay
attention, reasoning and judgment, and visual perception. Some dementias are reversible with treatment,
such as those caused by a reaction to medication, and some are not. Those that
are irreversible tend to be progressive, meaning that they worsen over time. Causes
of dementia involve the damage of brain cells, however the area of the brain
affected has different impacts on each person. This is why there are different
symptoms, as different parts of the brain control different things. To diagnose
irreversible dementia, testing is often performed by doctors. However, it is
harder to determine what type of dementia as the symptoms of different types of
dementias can overlap. To diagnose reversible dementia, blood testing and
imaging are often done to find the deficiencies of the patient. The stages of
dementia are grouped into the mild, moderate, and severe categories. However,
there is no way to predict how fast or slow someone's condition will progress,
every patient has a different progression of their disease.
As of right now, treatment for
Alzheimer's disease and other dementias are limited. There are medications to
improve the symptoms of Alzheimer's, but there is no treatment that has been
able to completely reverse the process of Alzheimer's disease (However you
should check out post #73 to see a tangible solution which may be introduced to
the general public to undo the effects of Alzheimers). Currently there is also
no way to completely prevent the development of dementia, however there are
different activities that may decrease the risk, including: being bilingual,
maintaining optimal health, staying physically active, avoiding drugs,
preventing head injuries, etc. Dementia will also not directly kill someone, however
dementia will weaken a person so their ability to cope with infection and other
problems will decrease. In many cases death will be hastened by dementia.
PoS
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