Dementia Can Affect Anyone

There are many different types of health problems that you will need to be aware of as you age. One of the more common diseases that affect many people later on in life is dementia. This debilitating disease sneaks up on elders and can completely render their minds useless if not treated properly.

Dementia will affect a person’s ability to remember things and associate objects with meaning. People with this disease may have troubles recalling things, planning their schedule, communicating with people, and just going about their normal daily lives. It often triggers bouts of delusion and paranoia.

Although much more common in people over 60 years of age, early onsets of dementia can affect young people as well. Certain learning disabilities, brain diseases, and/or head trauma can cause someone to start to experience dementia like symptoms.

People that have a family history of relatives with dementia are at much more risk than those without a history of the disease. But there are few things you can do to treat it and even prevent it from happening in the first place.

If you think you might have dementia, see a doctor immediately and never assume you can treat it yourself without professional help. Dementia will affect your ability to think properly.
Doctors may prescribe some form of medicine to treat their dementia patients, depending on the level of severity. Besides drugs, there are many forms of treatment that you can use to try and cope with this disease.

Mental exercises will work to help retrain the brain to establish new connections and new ways to learn how to do old tasks. Certain brain training games can help the patient to remember things easier again and can even help them wake up parts of the brain that were once affected by dementia.

Psychologists may also work with a dementia patient to help them overcome some of their difficulties as well. Cognitive behavior therapy is a well-known treatment that is used on many patients with resounding success, but will depend on the diagnosis of each patient. This type of therapy forces the patient to draw connections to their behavior as a form of their illness.

In order to best prevent dementia from ever occurring in the first place, it would be smart to make sure that you are always challenging yourself mentally and taking care of your body by eating right and exercising. Dementia is not something you want to risk getting, so be sure to take care of yourself early and often.