Dementia and Alzheimer's Disease

Today, I received an email from a reader telling me about how her father was misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's when in fact he was suffering from a brain tumor. Bob DeMarco Alzheimer's Reading Room Editor Many people assume that if an older person becomes forgetful and can no longer deal with some of the basic activities of daily living, he or she must be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This is often the case, but not always. I often receive emails from someone telling me their loved one was misdiagnosed by a personal care physician. I write repeatedly about the importance of getting a specialist involved ... Read Full Story

By Christian Goodman While emerging research has taught us much about the effects of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias on the brain, what causes Alzheimer's is an altogether different story. In a nutshell, the brain cells aren't getting enough oxygen. But why is this happening? Dementia and Alzheimer's are often used interchangeably but Alzheimer's disease is really a progressive disease who's effects lead to dementia. The symptoms of the syndrome known as Dementia include, memory problems, difficulty speaking, orientation disturbances and problems with judgment. While Alzheimer's is the most common type of dementia, Parkinson's disease, head trauma, and strokes can also cause dementia. Most ... Read Full Story

Seniors in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, with mild to moderate memory loss, are writing Weblogs to help them make sense of their daily lives. And the activity, they say, is slowing the onset of their symptoms. "Many people, once they're diagnosed with AD, simply give up on life," said Alice Young, a 75-year-old former psychotherapist who divides her time each year between Florida and Minnesota. "And those are the people who go down more quickly." Bob DeMarco Alzheimer's Reading Room Editor I wrote a few articles recently about how using Google search activates regions of the brain associated with memory and is ... Read Full Story

By Robert Sanders Part of the problem in finding drugs which may be effective for dementia is that our ideas about what constitutes dementia have been undergoing radical change in recent years. It had been traditional to distinguish between Alzheimer's dementia, or senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type (SDAT) and multi-infarct dementia (MID), which is theoretically caused by small strokes which insidiously pick off brain tissue to the point where an individual's cognitive function is compromised. It was originally thought that MID accounted for 60%+ of the dementias. Accordingly, early attempts to treat the dementias concentrated on the multi-infarct dementias. The initial hypothesis was ... Read Full Story

Part of the problem in finding drugs which may be effective for dementia is that our ideas about what constitutes dementia have been undergoing radical change in recent years. It had been traditional to distinguish between Alzheimer’s dementia, or senile dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (SDAT) and multi-infarct dementia (MID), which is theoretically caused by small strokes which insidiously pick off brain tissue to the point where an individual’s cognitive function is compromised. It was originally thought that MID accounted for 60%+ of the dementias. Accordingly, early attempts to treat the dementias concentrated on the multi-infarct dementias. The initial hypothesis was that these multiple ... Read Full Story