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How To Cope With Problems With Eating in Alzheimers Disease & Dementia

October 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This video explores difficulties and solutions with eating which may occur in dementia. Your comments and suggestions would be appreciated! This is an excerpt from the DementiaEd DVD ‘Challenging behaviour in dementia’ which is available from the Dementia Services Development Centre, University of Stirling at their dementia resource shop www.dementiashop.co.uk (www.dementiashop.co.uk Also available is the DementiaEd DVD ‘Your’re the Expert: The Relationship Between Brain and Behaviour’
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Dementia symptoms and treatment

September 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Dementia symptoms and treatment

Dementia is also known as Senility. It is a group of symptoms at affect the brain. Patients of dementia might not be able to do the regular everyday activities like eating, getting dressed or problem solving. Their emotions are uncontrolled, personalities may change and in some cases they even hallucinate. Dementia can’t be treated however there are treatments and drugs available to cure the symptoms and slow down the disease.

Symptoms       

Memory loss is a common symptoms however it doesn’t confirms positive diagnosis of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease and stroke are also known to cause dementia. High blood pressure, strange behavior, personality disorders, brain infection or heart attacks are some of other symptoms.

Causes

Dementia can be caused due a number of reasons. The patient could have contracted dementia due to side effects of some medication or reactions. Thyroid malfunction can also lead to dementia. Hypoglycemia causes confusion and personality changes. Deficiency or access of Sodium or calcium can also trigger dementia symptoms. Pernicious anemia due to lack of Vitamin B12 also causes personality changes, irritability and depression. Hence proper nutrition is necessary to prevent such ailments. Brain membrane infections like meningitis and encephalitis, untreated syphilis, Lyme disease, leukemia and AIDS is also known to cause the disease. Poisoning due to lead, heavy metals or other poisonous substances may also cause dementia. Other reasons could be brain tumor, anoxia, hypoxia, heart attack, severe asthma, smoke or carbon mono oxide, high altitude exposure, strangulation or hyper anesthesia.

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Treatment and Medication

There is no treatment of the disease however the available medications greatly helps treating the symptoms and slow down the disease. Unfortunately the damage done by the disease is not reversible. The affected patients can greatly be benefited from cognitive training. Patients suffering from Dementia needs to be greatly taken care of. In case there is a medication that worsens the symptoms it should be stopped and changed after consulting a doctor. Possible medication for dementia symptoms are haloperidol, risperdal, olanzapine, fluoxetine, imipramine, citalopram, serotonin drugs, trazodone, buspiron and mehylphenidate. Other drugs that can be used to slow down the rate at which the indications of disease get worse are donepezil, Aricept, rivastigmine, galantamin and memantine.

Precautions

There is very little to prevent most of the causes that consequently lead to dementia. However other disorders like vascular dementia can greatly be prevented by quitting smoking, controlling hypertension, treating diabetes and eating low fat diet. Exercising regularly reduces the risk to a great extent

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