Anyways, I would love to hear more about dementia (I listened to your dementia lecture on the podcast already). One reason I think it would be interesting to listen to is because my spouses grandparent has some form of dementia. We don’t know what type and I’m not sure that we ever will. His family is very “old school” and “traditional”. They don’t talk about these things ..and if they do it’s super secretive. Unfortunately the grandparents spouse isn’t handling the dementia well. Yells, gets annoyed, won’t talk about it, doesn’t assist enough etc. Recently my spouses parents realized the dementia was worse that they realized. And finally everyone concluded that the grandparent clearly has some form dementia. They don’t know official info about the diagnosis because the grandparents want to pretend it’s not happening.

I’d love to hear some dementia advice for families. How to deal with it. Basic education. What to look for in their family member etc.

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So let me first address the fact that the way dementia has been talked about has changed a lot over time. If I see an older adult right now and their parent probably had a history of dementia, they were likely not diagnosed with anything specific. They were just called senile. A lot of times people and even medical professionals will write off dementia as just being old. One thing that I need to make super clear from the start here is that dementia means that someone has difficulties beyond what is expected for their age.

There are normal changes that happen with aging. You tend to think a bit slower due to blood vessel changes in your brain. You also start to have some minor wordfinding difficulties where the word you are looking for is just out of your grasp, but it typically comes back after a minute. In a normally functioning older adult, these changes should not cause a severe disruption in their life. It’s an annoyance, or even something humorous for the family, but a normally functioning older person should still remain mostly independent for quite a while if they don’t have other significant medical issues.

Many people don’t really understand the terminology surrounding dementia. The frustrating thing for me is that even medical professionals often get this wrong. It’s really not too complicated. So let’s break it down.

So what sort of things can cause dementia?

When looking at dementia conditions, we want to break it down into a few different categories.

Dementia conditions obviously can cause impairment in

thinking abilities that can interfere with life, but they can also cause behavioral issues such as depression and isolation or inappropriate behavior.

Let’s take a few examples

Those are just a few examples. Even within those, there are still subdivisions. There are different types of frontotemporal dementia and there are other parkinsonian conditions like PSP that have different effects. This is why it’s so important to get evaluated and do your do diligence. They all have different effects. They all have different outlooks and progression. Some of them are treatable and some are not. Dementia is not normal aging and it’s not all the same thing. Don’t group it into one catch all alzheimer’s category.

How do you get a diagnosis or start figuring this stuff out?

So let’s talk about some difficult issues with dementia. It is inevitably tough – both for the person who is suffering from dementia and for their loved ones.

Resources that are available: