Alright, let's talk about what dementia is. So dementia is an umbrella term for a group of symptoms that can be caused by many diseases. I realized that's pretty confusing. And that, in and of itself, probably doesn't make a lot of sense. Let's break it down. I like to describe the definition of dementia, the way that we describe cancer.

If you go to the doctor, and the doctor says that your loved one has cancer, your next question should be what type of cancer is it? Right? Same thing with dementia. If you find that a loved one has dementia, your next question should be what type of dementia is it? You wouldn't leave the doctor without finding out that information. So dementia is an umbrella term.

There's a bunch of different types of dementia over 70 I've actually heard over 100 I like to say over 70 Just to be safe. So here are some of the symptoms of dementia. Trouble with decision making reaction time delay. This is why it's really not safe for someone with dementia to be driving a car. Just because they can get from point A to point B. Without any issues doesn't mean they can get there technically safely.

If somebody stops short in front of them. mood changes, lack of filter, maybe someone you love with dementia just kind of says stuff. They maybe wouldn't have said before. Memory loss. Now, I want to mention, dementia is not just a memory problem. People think dementia Oh, that's a memory thing.

Not necessarily. There are a lot of different causes of dementia and not all of them impact your memory delusional thinking. So delusions are fixed false ideas. physical symptoms Like a gate change, trouble swallowing trouble getting around trouble feeding oneself, trouble speaking all of these symptoms, you may see confusion with time and place. That's one of the biggest ones that probably one of the biggest symptoms you'd see early on in someone's dementia, and many more. So these are just some of the symptoms you may see when a loved one has dementia.

Now let's look at again, you know, these are symptoms caused by many diseases. So let's look at some of the diseases that may cause dementia. All Time Alzheimer disease, I want to note that I'm calling it Alzheimer instead of Alzheimer's. That's more of kind of an affectation that has started recently. My publisher is Johns Hopkins University Press. I'm very proud to work with them.

And they're probably they're one of their biggest books is the 36 hour day one of their most well Read books and the 36 hour days written by Dr. Peter ravens. And Dr. Robbins suggests just saying all timer instead of all timers, because Dr. Alzheimer is the doctor. So when we're saying Alzheimers disease, we're making it sound like it's his. It's his disease and it's not he's just the one who discovered it. Anyway. Alzheimer disease is the most common cause of dementia, which I think again is why when people think of dementia, they think, Oh, it's Alzheimer's.

Well, not necessarily. The biggest symptom of Alzheimer's disease is short term memory loss and you know that if you love someone with Alzheimer's, vascular dementia, vascular dementia is another common cause of dementia and often overlaps with Alzheimer's disease. It is caused by strokes and cardiovascular issues. So if obesity, diabetes smoking are in someone's medical history. More likely to have vascular dementia. People with vascular dementia often have gait impairments.

So trouble walking, moving things like that. Lewy Body diseases just because we like to make things nice and confusing in geriatrics. There's a group of diseases called Lewy Body, also named for physician led Why? You'll notice that people with Lewy Body disease tend to hallucinate, so they actually see or hear things that aren't there. This is different from a delusion. A delusion is a fixed false idea hallucination is if someone's actually seeing or hearing something that's not there.

An REM sleep disorder, so they may have more sleep issues, fluctuations in impairment. So you may notice your loved one, not just throughout the week, but maybe even over the course of a day or two. Very different changes in their impairment level. Now, under Lewy Body diseases category, we've got dementia with Lewy bodies or dlb PDD, which is Parkinson's disease, dementia, or Parkinson's, which is not dementia. So you can have Parkinson's and not have dementia. You can have Parkinson's and then get dementia or you can have what's called dementia with Lewy bodies.

By the way, a Louis debat Lewy Body is an abnormal protein deposit in the brain. Another common cause of dementia and really, kind of the big four in terms of causes is FTD, or frontotemporal lobar. Dementia FTD tends to affect people are younger, and I write up here, I've kind of written up here like the big things you need to know about each one because we don't need to dive into the depths of information about these but I do want you to have a good gist of what we're talking About. So people with FTD tend to be younger, maybe even the age of like 40 to 65. And they tend not to have a filter at all. So your frontal and temporal lobes of your brain control your filter and your planning.

So this is why younger people, you know, teens just say and do things that you probably wouldn't do as an adult. They don't really have that frontal lobe fully developed yet. And for someone with FTD, their frontal and temporal lobes are damaged. So it's really causing this lack of filter. So sometimes they'll say and do things that are inappropriate, often sexually inappropriate comments, things like that. Some symptoms you may see they may have behavioral issues, movement issues and speech issues.

So it does not mean that they're bad people, it's that they cannot control the filter. Some of the things that are doing and saying so these are the four big causes of dementia. Let's talk briefly about some other ones. Like I mentioned, there's over 70 different causes of dementia. So there's a lot of stuff that wasn't on that last slide. Namely infections, TBI, these traumatic brain injury tumors, you may see some dementia symptoms, metabolic disorders, toxicity disorders, nutrition deficiency, degenerative disorders, psychiatric disorders, such as traumatic brain injury, so somebody falls off a ladder and cracks or head open.

Could be some dementia symptoms, their brain tumors could cause some dementia symptoms. Alcoholic related dementia now, you know, if you're going home today and having a glass of wine that is perfectly okay, right. I myself enjoy a nice glass of red wine on a regular basis but This is heavy, heavy, heavy drinking. So I actually have had a couple residents while working in assisted living who have alcoholics related dementia. This is typically a vitamin B 12 deficiency. And this is caused by heavy drinking for years.

This isn't like a glass of wine. This is like a couple bottles of whiskey a day for 30 years. Okay. Huntington's Disease falls under that degenerative conditions. It is a neurological condition and it runs in families and mental health issues. I think more and more we're going to be seeing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, really challenging mental health issues.

Having some dementia symptoms later in life, potentially brought on by you know, use of long term use of antipsychotics can't really say at this juncture, what isn't dementia I want to mention this MCI or mild cognitive impairment is not dementia, it can sometimes be a pre dementia, and sometimes it's just its own thing. So, these are people who can, you know, essentially live their lives as normal, you know, they can drive, they can make plans, they, they just may have trouble, you know, remembering to send out the Christmas cards on time or they notice that their thinking is a little bit slower. Okay? This may revert back to normal, it may continue into dementia, it may stay stable. delirium is not dementia, delirium is a sudden onset of confusion. You know about this, if you've ever seen anyone with a urinary tract infection, or if you've ever come back from the hospital, even you yourself, maybe you don't have any cognitive impairments normally, but you come back from the hospital and you feel a little wacky, right?

So that's some delirium with a sudden onset of confusion. It should go away. However, we do need to treat it if you notice that someone is more confused suddenly, even if they have dementia. And then finally sundowning. So sundowning is a syndrome related to dementia. And it just means people get tired in the afternoon or evening.

That's pretty much all it is not its own dementia. It's just a syndrome that comes along with it sometimes. And then of course, like I said, UTI urinary tract infections really mess up older people, particularly people with cognitive impairment to begin with. And I just want to mention briefly, what does dementia decline look like? We talked about some symptoms, and we're going to talk about staging a little bit later. But I want to mention some of the declines you're gonna see you're gonna see declines in speech personality movement, eating toileting, bathing person's internal clock, right?

So these diseases under this little umbrella impact, a lot of maybe you know almost all facets of one's life.