Written By: Tavishi Dogra | Updated : February 18, 2023 1:32 PM IST
Dr Poonam Chandrashekhar Awatare, Consultant - Neurology, Manipal Hospitals, Varthur, characterizes dementia as a cognitive decline in more than one component like memory, language, and executive functions of sufficient severity capable of interfering with daily activities.
Dementia is not a particular illness but rather a syndrome used to represent the state of a person's mental functioning. It involves the degradation of mental ability from a higher level severe enough to affect day-to-day activities. Two or more specific symptoms, such as volatile memory, diminishing cognitive abilities and language skills, lack of coordination between the brain and other organs, unpredictable mood, and other behavioural changes, infer the person has dementia.
When the areas of your brain responsible for cognitive abilities get affected by infections or any disease, it may lead to dementia. Alzheimer's disease is by far the most typical example of dementia. However, there are several other known causes as well, including vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal dementia, mixed dementia, and dementia caused by Parkinson's disease, along with conditions that resemble dementia attributable to treatable conditions like thyroid disorders and medication side effects.
Learn everything about dementia symptoms, risk factors and prevention by Dr Shivali Ahlawat, Lab Director Oncquest Laboratories Ltd.
Common symptoms of dementia include forgetting recent events or information (antecedent memory loss), poor judgement, confusion, difficulty in reasoning, planning, and handling complex tasks, repeating remarks or questions frequently, misplacing everyday objects or putting them in odd places, failing to recognise the season, year, or months, struggling with the correct choice of words, and displaying a change in mood, behaviour, or interests. However, the symptoms of dementia are reversible, and many of these are curable.
Although age is the most substantial known risk factor for dementia (defined as onset before the age of 65 years) can sometimes also occur. We can reduce our risk of cognitive decline and dementia by staying physically active, avoiding smoking and alcohol, eating a healthy diet, and maintaining healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar levels and body weight.
