It isn't a specific disease, but several diseases can cause dementia. Though dementia generally involves memory loss, memory loss has different causes. Having memory loss alone doesn't mean you have dementia, although it's often one of the early signs of the condition.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of a progressive dementia in older adults, but there are a number of other causes of dementia. Depending on the cause, some dementia symptoms might be reversible. See a doctor if you or a loved one has memory problems or other dementia symptoms. Some treatable medical conditions can cause dementia symptoms, so it's important to determine the cause. Dementia is caused by damage to or loss of nerve cells and their connections in the brain.
Depending on the area of the brain that's damaged, dementia can affect people differently and cause different symptoms. Dementias are often grouped by what they have in common, such as the protein or proteins deposited in the brain or the part of the brain that's affected. Some diseases look like dementias, such as those caused by a reaction to medications or vitamin deficiencies, and they might improve with treatment.
Although not all causes of Alzheimer's disease are known, experts do know that a small percentage are related to mutations of three genes, which can be passed down from parent to child. While several genes are probably involved in Alzheimer's disease, one important gene that increases risk is apolipoprotein E4 APOE.
Alzheimer's disease patients have plaques and tangles in their brains. Plaques are clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid, and tangles are fibrous tangles made up of tau protein.
It's thought that these clumps damage healthy neurons and the fibers connecting them. Vascular dementia. This type of dementia is caused by damage to the vessels that supply blood to your brain. Blood vessel problems can cause strokes or affect the brain in other ways, such as by damaging the fibers in the white matter of the brain.
The most common signs of vascular dementia include difficulties with problem-solving, slowed thinking, and loss of focus and organization.
These tend to be more noticeable than memory loss. Lewy body dementia. Lewy bodies are abnormal balloonlike clumps of protein that have been found in the brains of people with Lewy body dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
This is one of the more common types of progressive dementia. Common signs and symptoms include acting out one's dreams in sleep, seeing things that aren't there visual hallucinations , and problems with focus and attention. Other signs include uncoordinated or slow movement, tremors, and rigidity parkinsonism. Traumatic brain injury TBI. This condition is most often caused by repetitive head trauma.
Boxers, football players or soldiers might develop TBI. Depending on the part of the brain that's injured, this condition can cause dementia signs and symptoms such as depression, explosiveness, memory loss and impaired speech. TBI may also cause parkinsonism. Symptoms might not appear until years after the trauma. All we did was correct those problems -- low thyroid function , mercury toxicity , inflammation , and deficiencies in vitamins B6 and D, folate, coenzyme Q10, and omega-3 fats -- and improved her diet overall.
I encouraged her to exercise, because exercise can help improve cognitive function and prevent dementia. Six months later, she had the extensive memory tests repeated. To put this in perspective, mental decline happens progressively, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but NEVER gets better -- according to our traditional medical thinking. But just like we once thought that heart disease and artery-clogging plaques couldn't be reversed and now have proof that this does happen , I believe dementia can be reversed if caught early enough by attending to all the factors that affect brain function - diet, exercise, stress, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, hormonal imbalances, inflammation, and more.
It is really quite simple. Like everything I describe in UltraWellness, you get rid of the bad stuff, put in the good stuff, and the body heals. It's common sense, but we are so far from that in the way we treat chronic illness with conventional medicine. So if you know someone with memory loss, look at all the keys to UltraWellness extremely aggressively to find what imbalances are present and how to fix them.
Remember, there will be no one treatment that works for everyone, because everyone is different. But here are some things to think about if you or a loved one are experiencing memory loss or dementia. Doctors who practice Functional Medicine and follow the principles I talk about in UltraWellness can help you find these problems. Once you identify the underlying causes of the imbalance, here are a few things that can help your mind get a tune-up:. Balance your blood sugar with a whole foods, low glycemic diet 2.
Exercise daily -- even a minute walk can help 3. Deeply relax daily with yoga, meditation, biofeedback, or just deep breathing 4. Take a multivitamin and mineral supplement 5. Take an omega-3 fat supplement 6. Take extra vitamin B6, B12, and folate 7. Take vitamin D 8. Treat thyroid or low sex hormones 9. Get rid of mercury through a medical detoxification program. This is just a start, but it can go a long way to giving your brain the chance to heal and recover if you have memory problems.
Even if you aren't suffering from cognitive decline, you should take these steps because they can help you prevent the aging of your brain and obtain lifelong health.
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The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Glutathione s-transferase polymorphism, metallothionein expression, and mercury levels among students in Austria.
Science of the Total Environment. Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentals. Manjari Tripathi and Deepti Vibha. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Address for correspondence: Dr. E-mail: moc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract In recent years, more attention has been given to the early diagnostic evaluation of patients with dementia which is essential to identify patients with cognitive symptoms who may have treatable conditions.
Keywords: Dementia, reversible, treatable. Development of multiple cognitive deficits manifested by both: 1. Memory impairment impaired ability to learn new information or to recall previously learned information 2. One or more of the following cognitive disturbances: - aphasia language disturbances - apraxia impaired ability to carry out motor activities despite intact motor function - agnosia failure to recognize or identify objects despite intact sensory function - disturbance in executive functioning i.
Open in a separate window. There are several clearly reversible causes of dementia that are remembered by the mnemonic DEMENTIA: Drugs any drug with anticholinergic activity , emotional- depression, metabolic hypothyroid , eyes and ears declining, normal pressure hydrocephalus tumor or other space-occupying lesion, infection syphilis, AIDS , anemia vitamin B12 or folate deficiency.
Table 3 Causes of potentially reversible cognitive impairment or dementia. Metabolic and toxic causes Several endocrinal disorders and vitamin deficiencies can masquerade as dementia and need to be investigated, especially in young and rapidly progressive dementias. Drugs and unusual causes Steroid-induced cognitive effects have long been conflated with the more affective behavioral manifestations of the steroid psychosis syndrome.
Nonorganic psychiatric causes of rapidly progressive dementia Pseudodementia, resulting from depression, occurs in patients who have a past history of major depression. Vascular etiologies Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura can cause microangiopathic thromboses producing global cerebral ischemia, resulting in an encephalopathy.
To rule out vascular causes- Hypercoagulability testing; coagulation profile Echocardiogram; carotid ultrasound Cerebral angiogram, meningeal biopsy. To rule out toxic and metabolic causes - 24 h urine heavy metal for lead, arsenic, and mercury, bismuth, aluminum, lithium Serum Vitamins B12 and E, homocysteine, methylmalonic acid Serum copper and ceruloplasmin; 24h urine copper Exposure history. Joshi S, Morley JE. Cognitive impairment.
Med Clin N Am. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. DSM IV. Clarfield AM. The reversible dementias: Do they reverse? Ann Intern Med. A quantitative review. J Neurol. The decreasing prevalence of reversible dementias: an updated meta-analysis. Arch Intern Med. Treatable and reversible dementias: An update. J Neurol Sci. Srikanth S, Nagaraja AV. A prospective study of reversible dementias: Frequency, causes, clinical profile and results of treatment.
Neurol India. Brew BJ. AIDS dementia complex. Neurol Clin. Anderson M.
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