We often wonder if when an older person begins to have memory loss they have senile dementia or another disease. The answer is that you probably have a disease, since dementia is not a specific disease, but a term that encompasses several diseases.
What is dementia?
Dementia is not a condition sine qua non in the elderly, although memory problems are common during aging. These problems with retaining information and creating new memories are generally progressive and increase with age. Although memory loss is the main symptom of dementia, there may be other causes that cause it.
Dementia is a decline in mental ability that severely interferes with quality of life. It affects the ability to reason and communicate and leads to memory loss.
We frequently use the term senile dementia to refer to that state of poor judgment and memory loss that occurs frequently in elderly people. However, the deterioration of mental functions is not a normal consequence of aging, but a pathology closely associated with it.
Old age is not always synonymous with dementia
A good number of people over 65 are “resistant” to the development of diseases related to cognitive failure. I know esteem that between 10 and 15% of elderly people do not develop any type of dementia, or symptoms, not even brain disease.
In addition, 30% of the elderly are “resilient” to these diseases. That is, they can develop some of the brain pathologies related to neurodegenerative diseases but do not show the characteristic symptoms associated with dementia.
These people could aging successfully due to the adoption of healthy lifestyle habits. For example, the Mediterranean diet, physical exercise and social activities could be related to a more favorable predisposition or greater cognitive reserve.
Several diseases are grouped within dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia (produced after a stroke), Parkinson’s disease, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Huntington’s disease and prion diseases. among other.
Dementia can also be a sign of other diseases such as head injuries or metabolic-type disorders, immune problems, nutritional deficiencies, or even brain tumors.
Dementia or Alzheimer’s?
Of all the dementias associated with aging, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for between 60 and 80 percent of cases. It is, therefore, the majority. It is characterized, like other dementias, by a progressive loss of intellectual, memory and learning capacity.
This disease was first described by the German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer in 1906 in a communication entitled About a specific disease of the cerebral cortex. In her, described the illness of one of his patients, Aguste Deter, who presented a rare form of dementia, with memory loss, disorientation and hallucinations.
Among the cognitive changes also problems appear in communication, lack of judgment, disorientation and lack of planning and organization. All of them affect the daily life of the person. Along with the appearance of these symptoms, changes in personality, agitation, depression and aggressive attitude can appear.
What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s?
During aging, the brain undergoes slight changes that are not considered pathological. Among them, there is a small cerebral atrophy due to the loss of some neurons and a reduction in the generation of new ones.
There are also alterations in the secretion of hormones and neurotransmitters (the signaling molecules of the brain) and changes in the circuitry. All this causes the loss of white matter (organic tissue, white in color, made up of nerve fibers and located inside the brain and on the periphery of the spinal cord). These changes subtle are not considered a disease, but a normal part of aging.
However, in states of dementia due to a neurodegenerative disease, brain mass can decrease up to 10% and a variety of proteins toxic to the cells of our brain begin to accumulate. These ultimately trigger the pathological state and give rise to the clinical symptoms seen in these diseases.
In Alzheimer’s disease there is an accumulation of the so-called beta amyloid protein and a phosphorylation (addition of a phosphate group to any other molecule) of the so-called tau protein.
These processes give rise to the formation of structures both outside and inside the neurons that end up killing them. They are the so-called amyloid plaques, in the first case, and neurofibrillary tangles, in the second. These are the structures that are identified as fundamental markers in the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
Impact on memory of neuronal death
The anatomical analysis of these patients shows a large reduction in brain regions associated with memory and learning, such as the cortex and the hippocampus, which leads to the inability to consolidate new information.
The accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain is a common event in many other dementias, such as alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s, and it occurs more frequently in the elderly.
This high concentration of substances harmful to neurons causes inflammation of the brain and, altogether, a harmful environment for neurons that eventually die. For this reason, dementias lead to neuronal death, leading to cognitive failures, usually memory.
This is the reason why a large percentage of older people suffer from some type of dementia during aging. But it must be remembered that it is a disease, not a normal consequence of aging, such as wrinkles or gray hair.
Ines Moreno González, Professor and Ramón y Cajal Researcher in Neurodegenerative Diseases, CIBERNED, IBIMA, Malaga University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx