Dementia vs Alzheimer’s
Comparing dementia vs Alzheimer’s often results in common assumptions that the two are closely related when, in fact, they are more different neurologically than they are alike. While Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by specific conditions regarding neuronal displacement, dementia is generated by health issues which affect various parts of the brain, and with more of an emphasis on blood flow rather than neurons.
Dementia vs Alzheimer’s can be difficult to diagnose mainly because both the two disorders exhibit memory dysfunction as an initial symptom. This type of memory loss involves more severe moments of forgetfulness than just simply forgetting where you parked your car in a large mall parking lot. Victims of dementia and Alzheimer’s will tend to forget such basic things as the names of their children, how old they are or even where they have lived for the past ten years.
Another dementia vs Alzheimer’s distinction is the age at which these diseases strike individuals. People as young as 40 have been diagnosed with the onset of Alzheimer’s. However, dementia generally does not strike someone until they have reached their middle to late 70′s, unless it has been caused prematurely. This type of early dementia can be instigated by other factors, such as alcoholism and history of stroke.
Definition of Dementia
Dementia actually denotes a group of symptoms initiated by impaired brain functions. Early symptoms of dementia are:
- forgetting the names of familiar objects
- frequently misplacing items or putting them in odd places
- personality changes
- poor judgment
- inability to speak legibly (words in wrong order)
- experiencing delusions, agitation or hallucinations
Dementia can affect people either slowly or rapidly, depending on the health and genetic history of the individual. Those suffering from severe dementia will need someone to help him bathe, eat and dress, and usually have to be sent to a nursing home. A professional diagnosis of dementia can be done by a doctor, who will also perform other tests to determine whether an underlying condition is contributing to worsening dementia symptoms. These tests include:
- thyroid
- medication allergies
- vitamin deficiency
- anemia
- brain tumor
- nonspecific infection
- chronic depression
Definition of Alzheimer’s
When diagnosing a case of dementia vs Alzheimer’s, one central factor a doctor examines is the presence of amyloid plaques, or “tangles” within and outside neurons. These “tangles” are a definitive sign of the presence of Alzheimer’s rather than dementia and can be detected using a brain scan such as an fMRI. People with dementia do not have these plaques within their brain, but will show actual lesions or constricted blood flow to frontal areas of the brain. It is these thick plaques evident in Alzheimer’s patients that disturb the flow of electrochemical messages sent by neuronal activity which can cause such symptoms as:
- deficits with short-term memory rather than long-term memory
- dressing inappropriately for the weather
- inability to think abstractly
- getting lost in familiar places
- rapid mood swings (not attributable to bipolar disorder)
- rambling and incoherent speech
- tremors
- feeling cold all the time
Some Dementia vs Alzheimer’s symptoms can overlap, but this is due to both diseases affecting the cognitive health of the brain. In addition, continuing research in Alzheimer’s is revealing significant evidence for this disease to have a genetic component since it has the ability to affect those who are still considered middle-aged. Dementia-affected individuals are almost always older than 70, and are suffering naturally aging processes which occur in the brain as we get older such as decreased myelin production, restricted blood flow and limited plasticity.
www.newsweek.com/2010/06/…/this-is-your-brain-aging.html
www.newscientist.com/…/mg20227023.100-the-five-ages-of-the-brain-old-age.html -
www.alz.org › Alzheimer’s Disease