Due to this, they have proposed the creation of a new diagnosis called mild behavioral impairment.
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‘Early symptoms of dementia are often missed, and because behavioural changes can be common in mid-life they can often put down to mid-life crisis, depression or the anxious well.
Now, “when it comes to early detection, memory symptoms don’t have the corner on the market anymore”, he said.
-Does the person view herself/himself as a burden to family?
Has the person recently developed trouble regulating smoking, alcohol, drug intake or gambling, or started shoplifting?
Has the person started talking openly about very personal or private matters not usually discussed in public?
Methods of holding off the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders involving dementia and cognitive decline are slowly being identified, with mental and physical activity claiming roles in majority.
Does the person report or act as if seeing things or hearing voices?
“These new data add to a growing body of research that suggests more stimulating lifestyles, including more complex work environments with other people, are associated with better cognitive outcomes in later life”, said Maria C. Carrillo, Alzheimer’s Association chief science officer, in a written statement.
“People often think [Alzheimer’s] is all about memory loss”, Ismail said.
But it creeps up, quietly ravaging the brain a decade or two before the first symptoms become noticeable. Early memory problems called “mild cognitive impairment”, or MCI, can raise the risk of later developing dementia, and worsening memory often is the trigger for potential patients or their loved ones to seek medical help.
Other pieces of research presented at the conference found that brain-training exercises could protect against dementia, that poor diet was related to declining brain activity and that people who had received higher education were more resilient to cognitive decline. The symptoms must mark a change from prior behaviour and have lasted at least six months. They include apathy, anxiety about once routine events, loss of impulse control, flaunting social norms, loss of interest in food. Normally patient, he began snapping at co-workers and rolling down his window to yell at other drivers, “things I’d never done before”, Belleville said. Speed training topped the other techniques in reducing the incidence of at-fault vehicle crashes and forestalling declines in health, and was the only intervention to protect against symptoms of depression.
Menopause can cause mood swings, depression and anxiety, so it is easy to see how doctors might misdiagnose patients who actually have early-onset dementia. But at minimum they can help “people develop reserve or resilience in the face of whatever brain changes are happening that would lead to dementia”, he says. That research, which looked at spots of white matter on the brain scans of 284 people in late middle age, was conducted by the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
Divided into three groups, one group was assigned to take memory improvement exercises; the second group underwent drills for reasoning; and the third group took computer-based training for their speed of processing.
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The new analysis also found that the participants who had 11 or more sessions in speed training had 48 percent reduced dementia risk in the span of the 10-year study. The figure was lower – 8 per cent – for people who got some extra booster training.
