Dementia is a syndrome whose main feature is a decline in cognitive performance. It affects memory, behavior, orientation, comprehension, learning, language, the ability to perform regular activities and the general ability to function as a normal, thinking adult. There is sometimes a lack of emotional control, which can affect the ability to interact with the world. It is not a normal part of aging but is a disease that mainly strikes older people.
Many people believe Alzheimer’s disease is synonymous with dementia, but while it’s one of the diseases that can cause it, it is far from the only form. While Alzheimer’s accounts for roughly 70 percent of dementia cases, there is also vascular dementia, Lewy Body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, which affects the frontal lobe of the brain, normal pressure hydrocephalus, and Parkinson’s disease with dementia. There are clinical and pathological differences in each of these, and there can be mixes of the disorders, with multiple variations in each patient.
There is no cure or treatment for any of them. But there are things you can do to improve your odds of not acquiring any significant portion of them.
The World Health Organization estimates that 47.5 million people around the world have dementia, with about one in seven Americans afflicted. There are an estimated 7.7 million new cases each year in the world, and it is the major cause of disability among the elderly. Thus, it is a burden not only on the afflicted, but also on their support groups – families, friends and other caregivers. More than half the afflicted (an estimated 58 percent) live in low- to middle-income locations. The number of people who have the disease is estimated to reach 75.6 million by 2030.