The National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month has begun. Even though the disease is growing rapidly, awareness about Alzheimer's disease among the general public leaves a lot to be desired. Many know that the disease comes with old age, and is associated with loss of memory. But not too many know that Alzheimer's is a form of age-related dementia, says geriatrician Dr Philip Poi.
By definition, dementia is a progressive loss of memory with age. But Alzheimer's is a more severe form of dementia as it hampers a victim's movements, speech and interaction with other people as well. “There are other types of dementia that can also cause memory loss but are due to various other factors such as vascular dementia where you have a course of minor or mini strokes that affect the working of the brain but don't affect the general ability of the person to walk, talk and do things,” Dr Poi says.
The most common type of dementia, Alzheimer's usually affects people above the age of 60 years. It begins as short-term memory loss that can be mistaken for forgetfulness or absent-mindedness. However, with time, the memory loss starts entering other domains, often leaving the victim disoriented and displaying erratic behavior.
Complete behavioral changes are also likely. Subsequently, the patient loses mobility and experience muscular degeneration, incontinence and becomes handicapped. Dementia also occurs due to other diseases like Parkinson's, Binswanger's disease (vascular dementia), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Huntington's disease, Pick's disease and even severe head injuries.
“There are subtle differences between the two or three main types of dementia. But the basic symptom of all the dementias is the loss of ability to retain memory that starts to affect the ability to function as a person in a social sense or an occupational sense,” Dr Poi explains. Among the areas affected by dementia are attention, memory, language, problem solving and logic.
Though not curable, Alzheimer's symptoms can be reduced through medicines. “There are drugs that are used to help the symptoms. If you have memory loss, we can help you. In this situation you treat the symptoms so that the patient can retain their quality of life and retain themselves in the community and they can function as one of the community,” Dr Poi says.
The key, however, is prevention. Some of the preventive measures include intellectual stimulation by way of crosswords, word games and others, physical exercise, low calorie diet rich in Omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish) and antioxidants (found in leafy vegetables and wine), and good heart health couple with healthy levels of blood cholesterol.
Meanwhile, November 14 will be National Memory Screening Day wherein Alzheimer's Foundation of America, in collaboration with other support and research groups associated with the disease, will offer free screening for Alzheimer's. Members of the general public can visit sites in their neighborhood to determine if their forgetfulness is a sign of worse things to come. “Being proactive is the best strategy when it comes to a person's memory.
Everyone needs to learn about lifestyle choices that go hand-in-hand with successful aging. And individuals whose screening indicates a potential problem need to find out about next steps. There is help available,” said Eric J Hall, the chief executive of Alzheimer's Foundation of America. The screening will be non invasive and will mainly have questions and memory assessment tests that will take a total of 10 minutes only.
For details of sites in your neighborhood, log on to http://www.nationalmemoryscreening.org.
