What is dementia?

Dementia may be described as a group of symptoms that severely affect one thinking, memory and social abilities to the extent where they interfere with your daily life. It is a syndrome that is typically progressive in nature. It causes deterioration in cognitive function beyond what is expected from normal ageing.

Dementia affects one’s memory, orientation, thinking, calculation, comprehension, language, learning capacity and judgement. It does not affect one’s consciousness, but it does deteriorate one motivation, social behaviour and emotional control. Dementia often results from a variety of injuries or diseases that affect the brain, such as stroke or Alzheimer’s disease.

What are the signs of dementia?

Dementia affects people differently and the symptoms depend on the type of dementia. The signs of dementia are expressed in three stages:

Early stage: The onset of early stage dementia is gradual and is often overlooked. Common symptoms include losing track of time, becoming lost in familiar places and forgetfulness.

Middle stage: The signs of dementia become clearer as the disease progresses to the middle stage. These include forgetting people’s names and recent events, increasing difficulty in communication, becoming lost at home, behaviour changes and needing assistance with personal care.

Late stage: This stage of dementia often leads to inactivity and total dependence. It manifests itself through obvious physical symptoms as well as psychological ones. These include becoming unaware of location and time, having difficulty recognizing close friends and relatives, having difficulty walking, behaviour changes which sometimes escalates to aggression and an increased need for assisted self-care.

Alzheimer’s dementia is the commonest dementia. Though we have no medications to reverse the process of memory loss, but medications are available to slow the disease. An early diagnosis will help in the better management of the patient and slow the deterioration. Talk to doctor today for more details on dementia.

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