dementia

[sentrix]

i have someone close to me who thinks and this is the key word is suffering from this debilitating illness.

mris in this country are a dime a dozen.

a bunch of things are into play here. isolation, no money/treatments as there are none, ignorance.

a brilliant mind. i can’t believe it. are there any tests on this?

a life of booze trucks and bags of drugs doesn’t help.

[Whitney_Harper]

I think dementia is very complicated, and a person could also be suffering from a B-12 deficiency among other things. I’ve heard that turmeric is a good thing for dementia, but it has to be taken with black pepper for the full benefit.

[CookingWithGas]

Dementia is a set of symptoms, and a neurologist can perform behavioral tests to evaluate for dementia, but not necessarily identify a cause. Alzheimer’s diagnosis, for example, requires analysis of brain tissue so cannot be performed on a live patient. Some forms of dementia can be treated to arrest or slow deterioration but I do not know if there are cases where reversal is possible.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Right, I agree with CookingWithGas, having dealt with two elderly parents with various forms and stages of demetia. Most tests are behavioral, rather than MRIs and the like. If the demetia is a result of a stroke, then I presume (IAN a doc) that an MRI would show the stroke.

[deltasigma]

@CookingWithGas

Dementia is a set of symptoms, and a neurologist can perform behavioral tests to evaluate for dementia, but not necessarily identify a cause. Alzheimer’s diagnosis, for example, requires analysis of brain tissue so cannot be performed on a live patient. Some forms of dementia can be treated to arrest or slow deterioration but I do not know if there are cases where reversal is possible.

Actually a new imaging drug has just been approved that preferentially binds to beta amyloid for use in PET scans.

[md2000]

I’ve always thought that conditions that attack randomly - Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, etc. - probably are related to some sort of viral attack - I’d toss Type I diabetes, arthritis, some heart conditions (clots forming on inflamed arteries) etc. into this mix; like herpes, returning polio infections, dementia from syphilis, and such… Diseases that strike randomly or hit one person but not another, can often be attributed to viral infections that lie dormant and break out with no obvious trigger.

[deltasigma]

Alzheimer’s probably isn’t random and may turn out to be a sleep disorder. It looks as if sleep is critical to clearing the brain of wastes. During sleep, channels in the brain managed by glia (glymphatic system) expand to allow the free flow of CSF (cerebrospinal fluid).

The scientists also reported that the glymphatic system can help remove a toxic protein called beta-amyloid from brain tissue. Beta-amyloid is renowned for accumulating in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Other research has shown that brain levels of beta-amyloid decrease during sleep. In their new study, the team tested the idea that sleep might affect beta-amyloid clearance by regulating the glymphatic system. The work was funded by NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
The researchers first injected dye into the cerebrospinal fluid of mice and monitored electrical brain activity as they tracked the dye flow through the animals’ brains. As reported in the October 18, 2013, edition of Science, the dye barely flowed when the mice were awake. In contrast, when the mice were unconscious—asleep or anesthetized—it flowed rapidly.

[sentrix]

thanks for the replies all.

one of the biggest killers in america this debilitating brain illness. reading more and more on it.

[Grey]

I’ll assume you mean Alzheimer’s disease.

From the CDC report on Causes of Death in 2012 Alzheimer’s disease came in at #6 with 3.4% of all deaths being attributed to it. (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf)

I’m a little surprised it’s so high.

[sentrix]

yes. can’t be diagnosed until death. on the rise.