There are many different types of dementia. It’s important to understand which one your loved one has and how you can help them to manage it.
Dementia is not one specific condition but is a general term used for loss of memory and other mental abilities that is severe enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common type of dementia, and the one most people have heard of, but there are many other types.
Not all dementias are alike although they share some common elements. Your loved one’s treatments will depend on the type of dementia they have. One of the first steps as a dementia caregiver will be to find out which type of dementia your loved one has so that you can better understand their symptoms and how the disease might progress.
Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s is thought to make up about 70% of all cases of dementia and over 5 million Americans have a diagnosis for dementia. The symptoms of Alzheimer’s will often start mild but will get progressively worse over a number of years. It is worth noting that there is often general confusion or misunderstanding about Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Some believe it to be different but really Alzheimer is one of the many types of Dementia disease types.
People with Alzheimer’s Disease might have some of the following symptoms:
- Being confused about the time and place.
- Lose track of objects or conversations.
- Experience mood or personality changes.
- Begin having problems speaking or writing.
What causes Alzheimer’s disease?
Proteins build up in the brain and start to form abnormal structures called plaques. This causes the connections between the cells in the brain to weaken and eventually the nerve cells die and brain tissue is lost.
People with Alazhemier’s also have less neurotransmitters (the chemicals that send signals between brain cells) this causes difficulty passing messages in the brain. Some medications can help to increase the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain and this will alleviate some of the symptoms.
Vascular Dementia
Vascular dementia is caused when diseased blood vessels result in a reduced flow of blood to the brain. Blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain and when the blood supply is limited the brain becomes damaged and cells and tissue in the brian can die.
Vascular dementia can often occur after a stroke. Either a major stroke or sometimes in the smaller strokes, which can happen without someone realizing. The exact symptoms of vascular dementia will depend on which part of the brain was affected by the stroke. However, vascular dementia is different from Alzheimer’s in that the early symptoms are often connected to difficulty planning, organizing and making decisions or expressing poor judgment.
Other symptoms to watch out for are:
- Difficulty with speaking or listening
- Having trouble remembering familiar sights and sounds
- Memory loss that beings to cause problems with everyday life
- Confusion and agitation
- Changes in mood.
- Difficulty walking or falls.
Dementia With Lewy Bodies (DLB)
Lewy bodies are microscopic protein deposits that form in the brain and are named after FH Lewy, the German doctor who first identified them.
The Lewy bodies can cause a range of symptoms, some of which are shared with Alzheimer’s disease and some with Parkinson’s disease. As a result, DLB is often wrongly diagnosed.
Some symptoms of Dementia with Lewy Bodies include:
- Having difficulty paying attention
- Trouble making decision and thinking clearly
- Memory loss
- Tiredness throughout the day
- Difficulty walking, general slowness
- Seeing things that aren’t there or visual hallucinations
What causes dementia with Lewy bodies?
We do not know the reason that Lewy bodies develop in the brain or how they contribute to the symptoms of dementia but there are some important things that we do know.
- Lewy bodies can cause different symptoms depending on which part of the brain they form in.
- The presence of Lewy bodies reduces the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain disrupting the connection between nerve cells.
- Lewy bodies can develop in the brain for a long time before a person shows any symptoms and DLB can progress over a period of many years.
The presence of Lewy bodies in the brain doesn’t mean that they are the only reason for a person’s dementia. Many people with Lewy bodies also have a build up of the plaques in the brain that cause Alzheimer’s disease, this is more common in older people and can speed up the progression of dementia.
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
Frontotemporal Dementia, often referred to with the acronym FTD, occurs when the cells in the brain that control planning, judgment, emotions, speech, and movement become damaged.
Common symptoms for people with FTD include:
- Behavior and personality changes
- Lack of inhibition in a social situations
- Problems finding the right words
- Balance problems, shakiness and muscle spasms
Parkinson’s Disease Dementia
People who suffer from Parkinson’s disease can develop dementia about 50% to 80% of the time. The symptoms of dementia will start to develop about 10 years after the initial onset of Parkinson’s.
Parkinson’s Disease Dementia is similar to Dementia With Lewy Bodies (DLB). The symptoms are similar and both types of dementia result in the presence of Lewy bodies in the brain.
People with Parkinson’s can have problems with:
- Thinking
- Moving around
- Mood changes
Huntington’s Disease
Huntington’s disease is a genetic condition that is based down through family members and causes dementia. Huntington’s causes a slow and progressive deterioration in a person’s memory, thinking and movement. If a person’s parent has the gene that causes Huntington’s disease, they will have about a 1 in 2 chance of inheriting the condition.
Early symptoms of Huntington’s are similar to dementia and include problems with thinking and perception.
Someone with Huntingdons may have problems recognising other people’s emotions and will have difficulty concentrating, planning and remembering things. In the later stages of the disease the person could have substantial difficulty with moving, speaking and eating and will require a lot of personal care and support.
The memory issues in Huntington’s are different to those commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. People with Huntington’s have a good memory of recent events and can continue to recognize people and places till very late in the disease, however, they will often forget how to do things (commonly known as ‘procedural memory’).
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is a rare condition where proteins in the brain, called prions, cause the normal proteins to start folding into abnormal shapes. The effects can be sudden and develop quickly.
We don’t currently understand what causes prions to build up but it is not thought to be either inherited or something that can be transmitted from person to person. People with CJD can see the symptoms of dementia develop very quickly.
Early symptoms of CJD include memory loss, mood changes and apathy and these will usually develop quickly so tat a person becomes unsteady and might start to slow or slur their words. Other symptoms include: shakiness or jerky movements, incontinence (loss of bladder control) and loss of the ability to move and speak.
CJD is diagnosed by analysis of the spinal cord fluid extracted using a lumbar puncture, where a thin needle is inserted into the lower back.
The general public became more aware of CJD, when one of its variants was established to be caused by eating meat from cows that suffered from Mad Cow Disease, officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).
Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus
Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) is caused by a buildup of fluid in the brain. Symptoms can include difficulty walking and concentrating as well as mood and behavior changes. NPH is most commonly found in people over the age of 60.
NPH can causes the following symptoms:
- Difficulty focusing on a task, or switching between tasks or activities
- Challenges planning and organizing activities
- Problems with memory, particularly of recent events
- Incontinence (loss of bladder control)
- Difficult walking, often presented as shuffling
- Confusion and issues responding to complicated questions
While the symptoms of NPH are similar to that of other dementia they will often progress much more quickly. NPH can be difficult to diagnose and the symptoms are often mistakenly identified as caused by other more common conditions. The exact causes are usually unknown but NPH can develop after a head injury such as a brain hemorrhage (brain bleed) or severe meningitis (an infection in the tissue that surrounds the brain).
The symptoms of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus can be treated using a technique that drains the excess fluid from the brain. A thin tube is inserted into the space in the brain where the fluid has built up and the fluid is allowed to drain off into another part of the body where it is absorbed back into the blood.
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome is caused by a shortage of vitamin B-1 (thiamine). Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome is most common in people who have been heavy drinkers. This type of dementia will often present as issues affecting memory. Usually the thinking and problem-solving skills are not affected.
Mixed Dementia
When someone has a diagnosis of mixed dementia it means they have a combination of different types of dementia. Mixed dementia is more common in older people. The most common combination is Alzheimer’s disease with vascular dementia, however, despite the vascular conditions being common in older people a diagnosis of mixed dementia is still rare.
The symptoms of mixed dementia will depend on the types of dementia a person has. It is common for a person to have a greater amount of one type of dementia than another.
