The risk of developing Alzheimer's or vascular dementia appears to be increased by many conditions that damage the heart and blood vessels. These include heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Work with your doctor to monitor your heart health and treat any problems that arise.
other long-term health problems – dementia tends to progress more quickly if the person is living with other conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure, particularly if these are not well-managed.
The biggest risk factor for dementia is ageing. This means as a person gets older, their risk of developing dementia increases a lot. For people aged between 65 and 69, around 2 in every 100 people have dementia. A person's risk then increases as they age, roughly doubling every five years.
Playing music, having objects to touch and interact with, and hand massage can all help people with dementia in the later stages. Playlist for Life is a music and dementia charity. It promotes how music with personal meaning can help people with dementia. You can find and listen to existing playlists, or make your own.
They include: Infections and immune disorders. Dementia-like symptoms can result from fever or other side effects of your body's attempt to fight off an infection. Multiple sclerosis and other conditions caused by the body's immune system attacking nerve cells also can cause dementia.
Being active, eating a better diet, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, keeping normal blood pressure, controlling cholesterol and having low blood sugar in middle age may all lower the chances of developing conditions such as Alzheimer's disease later in life, research suggests.
What causes restlessness in people living with dementia? They may be a symptom of the physical changes in the brain caused by dementia. A person may become agitated suddenly because of a change or specific cause, such as increased noise or not being able to do something they previously could.
Abstract. Introduction: The five-word test (5WT) is a serial verbal memory test with semantic cuing. It is proposed to rapidly evaluate memory of aging people and has previously shown its sensitivity and its specificity in identifying patients with AD.
The Mini-Cog test.
A third test, known as the Mini-Cog, takes 2 to 4 minutes to administer and involves asking patients to recall three words after drawing a picture of a clock. If a patient shows no difficulties recalling the words, it is inferred that he or she does not have dementia.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease causes a type of dementia that gets worse unusually fast. More common causes of dementia, such as Alzheimer's, dementia with Lewy bodies and frontotemporal dementia, typically progress more slowly.
Consuming too much sugar can cause delayed cognitive performance and even memory difficulties. It also weakens and destroys the blood vessels, resulting in a decline in mental capacity which can lead to dementia and Alzheimer's.
The current evidence indicates that while chronic stress may play a role in the development or progression of dementia, it does not necessarily cause dementia.
Although a person's own experience of living with dementia varies, as does their needs for care and support, common everyday challenges for people with dementia include washing, getting dressed, eating and bathing. Dementia is a progressive condition.
The 7 'A's of Dementia, or anosognosia, amnesia, aphasia, agnosia, apraxia, altered perception and apathy, represent changes that can happen in dementia patients because of damage to their brain(opens in a new tab).
Many people affected by dementia are concerned that they may inherit or pass on dementia. The majority of dementia is not inherited by children and grandchildren. In rarer types of dementia there may be a strong genetic link, but these are only a tiny proportion of overall cases of dementia.
The average life expectancy figures for the most common types of dementia are as follows: Alzheimer's disease – around eight to 10 years. Life expectancy is less if the person is diagnosed in their 80s or 90s. A few people with Alzheimer's live for longer, sometimes for 15 or even 20 years.
In the earlier stages, memory loss and confusion may be mild. The person with dementia may be aware of — and frustrated by — the changes taking place, such as difficulty recalling recent events, making decisions or processing what was said by others.
The mini–mental state examination (MMSE) or Folstein test is a 30-point questionnaire that is used extensively in clinical and research settings to measure cognitive impairment. It is commonly used in medicine and allied health to screen for dementia.