Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia are frequently used interchangeably. But the two medical conditions are not the same thing. When dementia is the diagnosis, this means it was given to a person who doesn’t have the same cognitive skills that he or she used to have.
Because he can’t think as clearly as he used to be able to, this can affect his day-to-day life. He may no longer be able to perform certain tasks that used to be no problem for him.
People used to simply say that older people were senile instead of using the word dementia and everyone understood this to mean that the person was getting older and their mind wasn’t as sharp.
Dementia does not have one cause alone. There can be numerous reasons that a person develops this condition. Some forms of dementia, such as medicine induced dementia can be treated and the symptoms will go away.
Other forms of dementia involve things like the brain not getting enough oxygen due to a primary disease. If the disease is successfully treated, this type of dementia is also reversed.
It would take a doctor’s diagnosis to accurately confirm if a person had become senile or if the dementia was the result of something else.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a disease and not a symptom like dementia is. It’s also not considered a condition. However, having Alzheimer’s Disease can cause dementia – and this is what confuses people with the two.
One of the big differences in someone who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and someone who is diagnosed with dementia is what the doctors can see on medical tests.
When someone has Alzheimer’s, the brain scans are vastly different from someone who has dementia. There are protein deposits on the brain of someone who has Alzheimer’s Disease.
On the brain scan, the structure of the brain will show some signs of shrinkage. The brain volume of someone without Alzheimer’s will not show this shrinkage. The brain cells on the scan of someone with Alzheimer’s will also show less activity than someone without the disease.
Half of all dementia cases are diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. This is a progressive disease that currently has no cure. Symptoms will show up by forgetting things, people, time and getting lost.
The person with the disease may appear confused, agitated and angry. He or she may ask the same question repeatedly. As the disease progresses, the patient can become aggressive due to the changes in the brain.
