Everything You Want to Know about Alzheimer’s Dementia Treatment

• 25th Sep 2018

The loss of cognitive functioning is medically termed as dementia. As a result of this loss, your thinking, remembering and reasoning capabilities get affected. Gradually, it affects the routine activities in your daily life. It is also difficult for people with dementia to control their emotions. As an overall result, it may even change your personality drastically.

But the medical condition isn’t a single disorder. Rather, it is a collection of symptoms of one’s cognitive decline, which involves not only rational thinking but also memory and communication. An expert associated with Alzheimer's dementia treatment in a renowned London hospital says that there’re different stages of the disease with different symptoms and treatment options.

Different stages of dementia:

The disease can broadly be divided into 3 categories, mild, moderate and severe.

• Stage 1 or mild dementia: At this stage, some adverse changes in the brain have already started taking place. Even some mild symptoms of the disease, like memory loss becomes apparent. This stage is called pre-clinical Alzheimer and a patient can suffer from it for 20 years and beyond.
• Stage 2 or moderate dementia: At this stage, one suffers from mild memory issues, which is clinically called mild cognitive impairment or MCI.
• Stage 3 or severe dementia: This is the most severe form of the disease and it is also known as Alzheimer’s dementia. At this stage, the problem of declining memory is further complicated by problems related to an individual’s communication, personality, judgement and thinking skills. Patients suffering from severe dementia are no longer able to perform the activities of daily living or ADL, like bathing, dressing, toileting, preparing meals.

Symptoms:

Dementia shows different symptoms at different stages.

At the mild stage of the disease, the symptoms include:

• Apathy.
• Repeating ideas, stories and thoughts.
• Difficulty in following a storyline.
• Mild changes in personality.

At the moderate stage of the disease, a person:

• Becomes increasingly agitated.
• Goes through sleep disturbances.
• Becomes more dependent on others with ADLs.
• Undergoes significant personality change (usually, becomes more suspicious).

At the severe stage, a patient may:

• Find it difficult to accomplish simple tasks like sitting up on bed independently
• Lose the ability to communicate.
• Have a loose bladder control and urinate frequently without realising.
• Require full-time care and support.

Apart from the ones mentioned above, dementia has other symptoms as well. These include:

• Getting lost in a familiar area.
• Misplacing items that are later recovered from strange places (for example, finding the cell phone from inside the microwave oven).
• Unable to finish a familiar task (like balancing a chequebook).
• Using wrong or inappropriate words in a sentence.
• Sudden and unexplained mood changes.
• Asking the same question multiple times in a short period of time.
• Getting easily scared, irritated or suspicious.

Treatment and prevention:

Medication that helps reducing dementia symptoms is known as Cholinesterase inhibitors. These include Galantamine, Donepezil, Tacrine, Rivastigmine and others. In addition to these, doctors also prescribe Memantine drugs to such patients.

Once an individual is diagnosed with dementia, there’s no way to slow down the progression of the disease. The expert associated with Alzheimer's dementia treatment in London identifies the following as the risk factors for the disease:

• Alcohol abuse.
• High blood pressure and high cholesterol.
• Smoking.
• Pre-diabetes.

Maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle and regular exercise are recommended by doctors to avoid being a victim of this gruesome medical condition.