KNOWLEDGE BASE
DIMENTIA
What is dementia?
Dementia is loss of mental functions such as memory, thinking and reasoning severe enough to interfere with persons daily functioning. Symptoms include forgetting events, names, conversations, changes in personality and mood. In later stages patient is severely disoriented,confused, has poor judgement, communication is affected and ability to focus reduces, simple day to day activities like walking also become difficult.
Alzheimers disease is most common type of dementia.
What are the causes of dementia?
The most common cause of dementia is degenerative (age related) changes in the brain such as loss of brain cells, reduced ability of brain cells to communicate with each other.
Other causes include :
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Toxic Reactions (like alcohol/drug abuse)
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Nutritional deficiencies
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Disorders of the brain such as brain tumors, stroke, infections of brain etc
Who can get Dementia?
Dementia is usually a late life disease, about 5-8% of people above age of 65years are likely to have dementia, this incidence rate increases to about 50% in people above 80 years of age.
HOW DOES TEAM HELP :
TEAM being a Physiotherapy setup, usually has a role in restoring physical movements in Dementia patients.
These patients tend to forget their movements and their muscles become rigid . Slowly there is loss of muscle mass and then the patients become bedridden.
Maintainence of motor functions and trying to achieve functional goals with repetition is the man key of treatment that we follow at TEAM.
Along with treatment, ‘Memory Clinics’ are available to help the patients with dementia and their families cope with this problem.
In TEAM, we guide the patients to such setup where they are then helped for certain brain exercises which may help increase their memory.
Dementia is a progressive condition where the key goal is to keep patient as functional and independent as possible.