difference between dementia and alzheimers
84A question that is frequently asked to me is 'What is the difference between dementia and alzheimers? Although the meaning of the words are much alike, it is not exactly the same. Dementia is a syndrome, a collection of possible symptoms a person has. For instance if you have 3 out of 9 symptoms, you could have Dementia. The variation of possible symptoms is huge and that is one reason why no person with dementia is alike.
The difference between dementia and alzheimer's is the fact that Alzheimer's is a disease. The disease targets your brain and will cause damage to the brain. The damage caused to the brain will be shown as memory loss, verbal speech problems, behavioural problems and other symptoms. These symptoms will over time qualify for a diagnosis of Dementia.
Dementia and Alzheimers
What is Alzheimers?
So what we can say is that Dementia is actually the parent of a whole group of different diseases that all cause symptoms that are much a like and therefore qualify for Dementia. Dementia itself is not a disease, it is a syndrome. We could compare this to a care that broke down. The car can break down cause of different causes, a flat tire, broken engine, hydraulics etc. All these could qualify for a broken car. The broken car itself is than Dementia and the causes the car broke down is Alzheimers.
So what exactly is Alzheimer's disease? It is a microscopic deterioration of the brain. Some cells will clutter and cause plaques in the brain tissue. Because of these plaques, the brain will loose function. Your brain will not loose function with one or two of these plaques, you need a whole lot of them to qualify for Alzheimer's disease (AD). They will cut some brain tissue out and see through a microscope how many of these plaques are around. This is the only way until now how you can diagnose AD. Off course they don't cut a piece of our brain out to see if we have AD, they will only do this when we passed away. And that is the main reason why you can never know for sure if someone has AD before he is dead. If someone is diagnosed with AD, it will always be a possible Alzheimer disease.
Symptoms of Alzheimer disease
Alzheimer disease is the most common form of Dementia. About 70% of all people with dementia have Alzheimer disease (AD). The symptoms of Alzheimer disease can vary from person to person but are most of the time much alike and very recognizable. AD starts with problems in memory. They start forgetting where they left their wallet or their keys and so on. People who have AD are most of the time not aware that they are sick. They are convinced that there is nothing wrong with them and that you are falsely accusing them if you say something about what he forgot or did wrong. They become suspicious about other persons who are trying to trick them. Suspicion is seen very often in AD and is very hard to cope with for caregivers.
Another symptom that is seen very often is losing the concept of time and space. They can't remember what day it is, what time it is or where they exactly are. They could wake up in the middle of the night and ask when they could finally have some breakfast. They also start getting lost in places that have been familiar to them for a very long time like, the village, the mall and eventually their own home.
A result of loosing memory and concept of time is that they often go back in time with their memories. They could say it is 1995 again or even 1960 or 1940. They could even forget people they met the last few years and eventually they forget everyone they know.
Some other familiar symptoms could be afasia( speech impairment), agrafia (problems with calculating), agrafia (not able to write any more),apraxia (mix up certain orders of action that will result in not being able to do this action. For instance making coffee, put your clothes on etc) and behavioral problems.
I hope this article clarified the difference between dementia and Alzheimers. If you want to know more about the subject i suggest you read some of my other hubs.
My other hubs about Dementia
- Health For World
Everything you need and want to know about health. Articles about your health. - Symptoms of Dementia
When we start getting older, we will notice that out brain isnt working as fast as in the time we were 18. We start forgetting small things like were you put your wallet or the name of someone you just... - Types of Dementia
This hub will inform you about the different kind of dementa that are known. You can select any hubs down here to get more information about a certain type of dementia. If you are not familiar to any one of... - Coping with Dementia
Dementia is probably one of the most misunderstood diseases. It is hard to cope with people who have dementia as they change in behaviour and in intellect. feelings of frustration are not uncommon under...
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Thanks for sharing the information
thank you for the interesting analysis. i have been a caregiver for 9 years.how can we help the caregiver?i know of only one way.
informative hub. Will link to my story about a grumpy old man
I feel this article is very poorly written. There are numerous misspellings and wrong words. It makes me mistrust the information.
As a doctor, this is the most common question I get. Thanks for making it understandable to the general public. I will remember this artile when I post to my hub and speak about Alzheimer's.
Good job.
I am a care giver, I have had 10 years working with people with difference types of dementia and this article sums it up says it in plain English explaining the difference between Alzheimer’s and dementia the clearest article I have come a cross so far it explains it very well as for Cindy’s comment makes her miss trust, miss trust herself as this article explains it in black and white and very easy to understand Alzheimer’s is the disease and dementia is a syndrome?
Respectfully spoken, there are some English errors:
behavioral - not behavioural
Car breaks down - not car brakes down (brakes are what you push to make the car stop)
brain will lose function - not loose function (a woman on the streets is called a loose woman) (or we have loose nuts and bolts)
of course - not off course (if we get lost, it could be because we got off course)
losing the concept of time - not loosing the concept
We lose our memory - not loose our memory
other hubs - not oher hubs
isn't - not isnt
where you put your wallet - not were you put your wallet
(where is my sweater) (were you at the party?)
In one place, dementia was misspelled asmenta
These are comments very humbly and respectfully given. Your article is wonderful. Thanks.
Jeanne
Can't trust the information given here. Too many grammatical and spelling errors.
Memory care of all sorts is often difficult to distinguish because of the various classifications and stages. I enjoyed the article and am glad to see someone informing others of the differences so they may better choose options of care for their loves ones. Take a look at this page as you might find this to be an additional resource to your article. http://www.assurety.org/alzheimers-dementia-care.p
Thanks again for an informative post.
I also agree with others who have commented. You really, really need to correct the spelling and grammatical errors. They just stand out like a neon sign.
My wife has been diagnosed with acute Demensia. With what is going on and the medications she is on it sounds more like Alzheimers. New stove, no cooking, new washing maching, no washing, new tv, never return to the room the tv is in. Unable to remember things we talked about five minutes earlier. Unable to eat out and order from the menu. It is a daily change that happens and now she is forgetting who I am. Does that not sound more like Alzheimers?
Jeanne,
Always someone to correct you. They took the time to post this article. Maybe it is impolite to do spell and language checks.
THANK YOU VERY HELPFUL DO NOT WORRY ABOUT UNGRATEFUL COMMENTS ABOUT THE SPELLING THOSE PEOPLE YOU COULD NEVER PLEASE GOOD JOB THANK YOU!!!
To the people complaining about spelling and grammar: I bet you anything that the person writing this article can do many things well that you can't. Not every one is gifted in the same areas. So they can't spell well, they sure did a great job in explaining the issue here. Aren't you glad that your faults aren't held up for the whole world to see??
Re: spelling
Behavioural can be spelled with the "u" (British/Canadian spelling) and without (U.S.)
for real are you all doing spell check or looking at the article itself. I enjoyed the article very educating, I would not have known the difference between the two and enjoyed the read. To Me I loved loved loved your comment if our imperfections were held up for all to see how would we feel!!!!!!! just get the info and Jeanne you sound bored as if you have nothing else to do but read the whole article looking for misspelled words!!!!!
lonely 2 years ago
I have been suffing the net trying to find the difference between dementia and alzheimer and this article is the clearest I have gotten to it. I am hapy that I ran upon it due to my father possibly having alzheimers. We are waiting for the appointment now for his ct and mri scan.