Dementia: 8 ways to distinguish the disease from natural age-related problems

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Dementia usually affects elderly people, and the symptoms of the disease can be considered natural changes that often come with aging.

Memory loss. One of the most common symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (the most common form of dementia) is forgetfulness recently learned information. Also, a person with dementia forgets important dates or events, repeats the same questions, talks about the same topic.

What happens in a typical age change: names or meetings are forgotten, but remembered later; mistakes in financial or household management are made accidentally and later realized.

Alzheimer's disease involves forgetting how to perform everyday or well-known tasks – for example, having trouble visiting a familiar place or keeping track of monthly bills.

Problems with planning or problem solving.Some people with dementia may experience changes in their ability to develop and follow a plan or work with numbers. For example, there are problems with following a familiar recipe; it takes much longer to do something than before; having trouble concentrating.

Confusion with time or place.A natural age-related problem is that a person is easily confused about the days of the week, but at the same time he does not lose the ability to determine the correct date or time. People with Alzheimer's disease cease to perceive it adequately. They may have trouble understanding something if it happens immediately. Sometimes they may forget where they are or how they got there.

Problems with perception of visual images and space.Aging makes a person more prone to vision problems, cataracts. In dementia, visual disturbances can also be a sign of the disease, but in her case they are accompanied by problems with balance, correct distance estimation, determining the color of objects or the contrast of colors.

Impaired speaking or writing. Typical age change – sometimes there are problems with finding the right word. People with Alzheimer's have trouble following or joining a conversation. They may stop in the middle of a conversation and not know how to continue; may be repeated. Vocabulary problems also arise: names of familiar objects are forgotten or words are used semantically incorrectly.

Losing things. As we age, it is normal to lose things from time to time, but healthy people try to remember their previous actions or take other actions to find them. With dementia, a person cannot go back in his memory, he is more likely to accuse others of stealing. His cases of losing things are often the result of objects falling into completely inappropriate places.

Awareness of consequences. When we start some actions, we are quite aware of their possible consequences, but in the case with dementia, this ability disappears, a person cannot calculate possible logical chains – this is especially noticeable in dealing with money.

Changes in mood and personality. As age increases, the usual way of life becomes increasingly important and any changes in it cause irritation. But the ability to control emotions is also preserved. People with Alzheimer's disease change as individuals – they can become suspicious, hostile, aggressive, alienated, anxious.