You鈥檝e likely heard of them before.聽Their most distinctive feature is a severe and progressive decline in memory, reasoning, and other primary cognitive abilities.聽Their diagnoses get easily mistaken for one another, and the two terms are often used interchangeably.
Are dementia and 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚聽the same thing? The short answer is no, they are not.聽Although tightly intertwined, they are remarkably different.
How so? Well, this may come as a surprise.聽础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 is a disease. Dementia is not.聽Technically, dementia is a聽syndrome聽or a collection of symptoms associated with a specific disorder.聽In other words, it鈥檚 not the cause, it鈥檚 the effect.聽Think of it as the tip of the iceberg, the most apparent signal of some underlying conditions that need addressing.聽础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 is one of them.
It鈥檚 probably the most well-known and common one. In fact, according to the , it accounts for about 60-80% of recorded cases.聽And yet, it鈥檚 only one of the many possible causes.聽Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Huntington鈥檚聽disease, Parkinson鈥檚 disease, HIV, traumatic brain injury, vascular cognitive impairment, frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia, along with several others, all can set it off.
That is, not everyone diagnosed with dementia has 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚. The root cause might be something else.
Let鈥檚 dig a bit deeper.
WATCH: 黑料网 Are 7 Words To Describe The Silent Generation?
黑料网 is dementia, exactly?
While its current diagnostic name is “major neurocognitive disorder,” the umbrella term dementia is still universally used鈥攎ostly in the lay language鈥攖o describe a wide array of symptoms resulting from a variety of brain pathologies and injuries.聽Loss of memory together with impairment in thinking, reasoning, learning, and language skills; intense mood swings;聽behavioral and emotional issues; and difficulties carrying out simple daily tasks all fall under its rubric.
If you are wondering what the symptoms look like in action, Shakespeare鈥檚 King Lear (1606), one of the greatest tragedies in English literature, can give you quite an in-depth and faithful portrait.聽The 80-year-old King of Britain could have suffered from Lewy Body dementia, .聽The signs are woven throughout the play: from irrational thinking, paranoia, and hallucinations, to sudden mood changes, and eventually, the inability to recognize people he knows.
King Lear鈥檚 “madness,”聽dementia, gets its name from two Latin words joined together: de, meaning “away from,” and mens, mentis, meaning “mind, reason, intellect.”聽It鈥檚 usually translated as “being out of one’s mind.”
There are much better words out there than calling someone crazy. Read about the alternatives.
First recorded in The Etymologies, an encyclopedia compiled around ad 600 by the archbishop of Seville, Saint Isidore (ad 560鈥�636), the term dementia聽referred to all kinds of mental and neurological diseases.
That said, the concept of dementia has been around since early civilizations, long before it was named.聽Greek and Roman thinkers and philosophers regarded it as a natural and inevitable consequence of aging鈥攚hich it is not, by the way. Neither is 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚.
The Middle Ages twisted dementia into a punishment from God for sins committed, and soon after into a supernatural phenomenon, evidence of demon-possession, or involvement with witchcraft. Oftentimes, those who fell victim to the witch-hunt were simply suffering from some kind of brain condition, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, or senile dementia.聽Today, the word still carries lots of fear and social stigma, somewhat like a modern-day Scarlet Letter.
Within the medical community, to describe dementia, such as cognitive and neurocognitive impairment.聽Along the same lines, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) now classifies聽dementia 补蝉听major neurocognitive disorder,聽which is its current clinical term.
Even if the word dementia might not be going away soon, its days seem to be numbered.
黑料网 is 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 disease?
Alzheimer’s disease was named after German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer, who in 1906 reported to the academic world the peculiar case of a 聽51-year-old woman who died of pneumonia after suffering from an “unusual mental illness.”聽She became the first patient with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative and irreversible disorder of the brain that can develop in mid-to-late adulthood, with no cure or known cause, as yet.
础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 slowly steals the mind of its victims, robbing them of their story, their memories, and at last, their lives.聽The onset of dementia typically occurs in the final stage. That鈥檚 when impaired memory, speech, and judgment; confusion and disorientation;聽personality changes; or emotional instability start to show up, worsening over time.
On a physical level, the hallmarks of 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 are two microscopic structures known as plaques, clusters of beta-amyloid proteins found between neurons, and tangles, twisted threads of tau proteins found inside them (inside neurons).聽These tiny deposits, unique to the disease, were the German physician 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 groundbreaking discoveries. They gradually build up on the brain tissue, disrupting the way neurons work and communicate with each other, eventually resulting in the death of nerve cells and neural connections.
However, panic not.聽Let鈥檚 stress this point again. Neither 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 nor dementia are a normal part of aging.聽Being forgetful doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean that something is wrong.
Is this just a “senior moment” or something else?
Have you ever spent the whole morning looking for your keys? Or forgotten the reason for walking to another room? Rest assured, you are not alone.聽It happens to everyone and at any age. Countless factors could be to blame, including stress, poor sleep patterns, and even some medications.
Nevertheless, it tends to happen more often as you age. Why? Your brain grows older as you do.聽It鈥檚 called cognitive aging.聽Some areas of the brain shrink and its processing speed slows down, so memory lapses become more frequent and problem-solving and multitasking take more effort.
These kinds of age-related difficulties are far less intrusive than that associated with 础濒锄丑别颈尘别谤鈥檚 or other neurological pathologies.
Also, it doesn鈥檛 come together with other warning signs, like repeating questions or getting lost in familiar places, trouble handling money, paying bills, and completing habitual tasks, or sudden changes in mood and personality. These, instead, should all raise a red flag.
The good news is, your genetics, diet, and overall lifestyle all seem to play an important role not only in the age of your brain鈥攚hich doesn鈥檛 depend much on the number of years you have lived鈥攂ut also in the risk of developing diseases and disorders.
So, let鈥檚 live well, address any concerns, and keep our health in check. While research makes progress and changes the games.
