10 warning signs to trigger dementia

10 warning signs to trigger dementia

With age, many body functions begin to deteriorate. Some of these functions are physiological and psychological. But how do we know if this decline is related to old age, natural weakness or the onset of dementia?

What is dementia?
Dementia is a syndrome characterized by a group of 72 diseases, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Dementia is a progressive decrease in cognitive abilities due to an organic disease affecting the brain. Symptoms of dementia, varying degrees of memory impairment, loss of ability to exist (knowledge of location and directions), changes in behavior and personality of the affected person. These mental and behavioral changes can affect the patient's daily performance.

The difficulty in distinguishing dementia lies in the fact that some of the symptoms appearing in dementia also appear with aging. Often, when a person has dementia symptoms, they tend to associate these symptoms with aging. Aging is not a disease (just as pregnancy and childbirth are not diseases), but a physiological state. However, it is important to know the signs indicating the onset of dementia in order to seize the opportunity and look for available treatments in the early stages of the disease.

10 warning signs

The International Society for Alzheimer's Disease has identified ten warning signs indicating the onset of dementia:

1-Decreased performance and memory capabilities:
Which is detrimental to everyday tasks. It's a sign of Alzheimer's disease. This is short-term memory, where the person can not remember who they met yesterday, and why she entered a room in her house, for example.

2-Difficult planning activities and low problem-solving skills:
Patients with Alzheimer's disease have great difficulty managing numbers or programs. Especially the monitoring of bank accounts, payment of payments due, and even difficulties in planning operations or functions at several stages, such as the preparation of food according to a specific recipe.

3-Difficulties in doing chores and cleaning Jobs or hobbies:
These patients encounter difficulties in performing tasks they performed in the past, such as going to a known place, knowing the rules of the game in a game they are used to, social and family relationships, or time they have always loved to practice.

4-Confusion about time, status or location:
Most patients with Alzheimer's disease tend to lose the sense of time, their relevance to history, the separation of the year and the time elapsed. They also find it difficult to understand what is happening at a different time in the present, where they are or how they have arrived.

5-Difficulty of visual analysis and presence somewhere:
Vision problems are one of the signs of the disease in some people with Alzheimer's disease. They have difficulty reading, assessing dimensions or identifying colors. They also face perception difficulties. For example, they can walk in front of a mirror and do not understand that the personality that appears in women is a reflection of it.

6-Difficulty in pronunciation or writing:
People with Alzheimer's or dementia have difficulty organizing a conversation. They can stop in the middle of the sentence without knowing how to follow it. Or, find it difficult to reformulate certain terms or phrases (we speak of "perseverance"). It can be difficult to find the required words and choose the appropriate name for the thing or person.

7-Place the items in an unusual place, then lose the ability to find them:
Patients with Alzheimer's disease tend to hide objects, especially precious objects such as jewelry or money. When they have trouble finding it, they tend to blame their neighbors for theft (family members or husbands), which the envoys consider to be absurd ideas from these patients. There are also absurd thoughts about the husband's betrayal. Over time, these accusations multiply.

8-Low capacity of judgment (ability to evaluate and estimate) and performance:
Alzheimer's disease is characterized by poor performance, especially in financial management. Their ability to perform other tasks, such as choosing the right clothes, wearing clothes and taking a shower, is also deteriorating.
9-Leave work, abandon friends and hobbies:
Decreased brain performance affects daily tasks and the patient experiences mental and physical changes, which are also experienced by patients with dementia and can lead to internalization and disintegration. The patient moves away from his family, reduces his social relations to a point of total rupture and puts an end to his leisure and his concerns.

10-Mood changes and personality changes:
The mood of the person with dementia or Alzheimer's can change and the personality of the person can change and become more confused and skeptical. In addition, it is possible to suffer from depression, fear or anxiety. Her sympathy and interest in others may be less and her nervousness at home, at work or vice versa may be easy to arouse. Moreover, these changes may appear far from the places where the patient feels comfortable.