What is Dementia, learn symptoms, cause and treatment

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Flipboard
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
Representational Image
Representational Image

New Delhi : Quite often we see older people with strange behaviour, like imbalance in their emotions, personality change and other complexities which lead them to depend on others for basic daily activities. It is medical condition where person losses control over cognitive functioning such as thinking, remembering, reasoning and other behavioural abilities. This cognitive disorder is termed as Dementia. It is a common problem in people age 85 or as they live in their 90s. Alzheimer's is the most common type of dementia.

Symptoms of Dementia

Dementia is related to the core functioning of brain. The problem starts slowly and gets worsen with passing time. Eventually, it damage the brain to such an extent that the sufferer may die. While the symptoms of dementia vary from person to person, the most common signs are:

  • Memory loss
  • Communication and language problem
  • Disability to focus and pay attention
  • Failure of reasoning and judgement
  • Disorder in visual perception
  • Difficulty adapting to changes

The early signs of dementia may include short-term memory loss such as a person may fail to keep track on purse, paying bills, planning, preparing meals, travelling out and so on.

What causes dementia?

Dementia is a mental disorder which is caused due to damage in brain cells. The damaged area may interfere with the ability of brain cells to communicate normally, performing certain actions, thinking and feeling etc.

Experts say that the dementia symptoms become permanent in case of the following conditions:

  • Side effects of medication
  • Depression
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Thyroid problems
  • Vitamin deficiencies

Treatment of Dementia patients

It is hard to believe that till date, there is no dedicated test introduced to check if a person has dementia. Besides, doctors consider medical history, laboratory tests and day-to-day behavorial activities to study the case. Though experts can check the level of certainty, yet it becomes really challenging to diagnose the exact type of dementia. 

Therefore, the treatment differs according to the patients’ condition. In case of progressive dementia like Alzheimer's disease, there is no cure and no treatment that slows or stops its progression. But there are drug treatments that may temporarily reduce the symptoms. The four drugs approved by U.S health experts are donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine and tacrine. Besides, quality care may help improve cognitive functioning of the patients. Use of mnemonics and memory aids such as computerized recall devices may help.