We’ve all misplaced or forgotten a thing or two from time to time. The house keys. The date and time of your next doctor’s appointment. As we age, our brains tend to slow down and cause some temporary lapse in memory. But is that a cause for concern?
“Some people may have challenges finding a word, or shortly forget the name of a celebrity, friend or they may briefly forget why they came into a room. Those experiences are what we think of as typical cognitive mistakes, “A very common misconception is that those signs mean you’re inevitably on the way toward dementia, but dementia is not a normal part of aging and it’s not something we expect everyone to get.”
We know dementia affects more than 50 million people worldwide, with nearly 10 million new cases every year. Nearly one-third of all people over the age of 85 have some form of dementia, and your risk for developing dementia increases in number the older you get, especially if it runs in your biological family.
But dementia has a several different sort of causes, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and each of these carry a wide-range of symptoms that can affect your cognitive abilities, mental health and physical well-being.
With so many variables at play, how do you know if your temporary lapse in judgment, memory and decision-making aren’t signs of dementia?
“Dementia, broadly speaking, refers to a condition in which someone has had a important decline in their ability to think, and that change has resulted in a decline in their ability to function and take care of themselves.
Some of the most common early signs of dementia and what you should do if you’re worried about developing the condition.
What are the early signs of dementia?
There are different types of dementia, like Lewy body dementia and frontotemporal dementia, that each have many origins and their own set of unique symptoms. In most cases, people who develop dementia experience relatively similar symptoms early on that get worse over time.
These symptoms can not only have an impact on your ability to think and act vividly, but they can also have an impact on your physical health, mental and emotional health. In various cases, early signs of dementia are often paired with a difficulty handling changes in routine.
Getting lost in familiar places
Most of us have experience with misdirection where we find ourselves lost on the way to a new destination we’ve never been before. But dementia is much more severe than easily making a wrong turn.
When you have dementia, you may wander from time to time, or get confused in familiar surroundings. If you find yourself getting lost in familiar locations like your neighborhood, on your daily route to work or school, or even inside your home, that may be a cause the early signs of dementia.
“I think we tend to get most concerned when people are driving a mile down the road to a store and then they get lost coming home, when it should be presumably very simple.
Forgetting short-term conversations
Occasional forgetfulness and having trouble finding the correct word in a conversation is behavior we’re all familiar with. But if this happens more frequently and you find yourself forgetting conversations you had just minutes, or you have a hard time pulling up a name of someone close to you, that may be terrible.
“People can remember things from years ago with perfect clarity. They remember who they went to school with and what their teacher’s taught them and what they did while they were in the military or campus. But it tends to be frustrating because they can’t remember what they did yesterday or some months back.
Difficulty making decisions and keeping up with the changes
If you’re always doing things a certain way or always keeping to the same routine, noticing subtle changes in your behavior may be more complicated. But when changes inevitably arise and they throw you off course, that’s when signs of dementia may start to creep up.
“A common scenario is when someone has a change in their medication regimen,” illustrates Dr. Bonner-Jackson. “Now, they have to take this new medicine and it’s out of their routine. That may be where they start to forget that they need to take it.”
Other common scenarios include having trouble making a new recipe, learning new tasks or driving to new places.
“If someone is having trouble making decisions or seems easily confused by things that they normally would have been able to handle, that may be a concerning situation,” notes Dr. Bonner-Jackson.
Having a hard time doing simple math and handling money
If you’ve been previously good with numbers but have trouble doing common arithmetic while paying bills, counting your finances or coming up with a tip at a restaurant, these behaviors may have cause for concern. An inability to pay attention to even the smallest details or difficulty reasoning.
“If someone’s responsible for household bills, they may start to forget to pay them or they will pay them and then forget that they already paid and they’ll pay again, or they’ll make a mistake. “We certainly hear stories where someone makes an error in how much they’re paying, and they add an extra zero, and all of a sudden they owe a lot or they’ve paid a lot more money than they owe.”
Changes in behavior or mood
“We also often see changes in someone’s mood or behavior at the beginnings of dementia,” he adds “Someone may become less interested in things they recently enjoyed. They may be more socially withdrawn and not wanting to be around people as much. They may not find pleasure in things as much as they used to.
Slowing down
It’s natural to slow down a bit as we age, but it shouldn’t have too much of an impact on your ability or potential to get through the day.
“Some people notice that they feel a little less coordinated. Some people feel a bit more slowed down, like they’re thinking has slowed down and they may walk more slowly.
Other physical symptoms of dementia may also appear in the form of loss of hearing or vision.
“Hearing loss is a factor that can predispose someone to dementia,” he continues.
What to do if you suspect you have dementia
As you can see, there are many routes to dementia and many ways it can affect your daily life. The key to diagnosing dementia is to raise your concerns with your family doctor or a healthcare provider who can refer you to a neurologist for a full workup.
Before receiving a diagnosis, your healthcare team will likely perform a number of tests that include:
Testing your balance.
Brain imaging.
Cognitive screening.
Neuropsychological testing.
Bloodwork.
Taken together, these tests can help determine what, if anything, has changed inside of your brain.
“It’s a complex process that usually involves several different providers and a lot of different types of testing. It’s really about assembling all the different pieces and putting it all together to give us the clearest picture we can get.”
At minimum, for a diagnoses of dementia, someone has to demonstrate a disapproval in their cognitive thinking and a decline in their ability to take care of themselves. We’re learning more and more about dementia each day.
We know maintaining our physical and mental health are key to staving off dementia, and that includes exercising often, muscle relaxation, deep breathing exercise. Working to improve your concentration by reading, completing puzzles, and learning new languages and new skills can also be helpful in lessen the affects dementia.
Keeping your social circles strong and making sure you’re eating balance diet well and healthy can also have a vitsl, long-lasting impact, too..
“The first step would be to go to your doctor and get a referral to a neurologist or dementia assessment center and get a full workup to assess how you’re doing right now,” “That will rule out any other possible causes of thinking and behavioral changes.
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We’ve all misplaced or forgotten a thing or two from time to time. The house keys. The date and time of your next doctor’s appointment. As we age, our brains tend to slow down and cause some temporary lapse in memory. But is that a cause for concern?
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