Do you forget things often?
Do you have trouble remembering names?
The chance is, you are showing the early sign of dementia. Till 2020, around 50 million people worldwide are suffering from dementia. Although anyone at any age can develop dementia, older adults over 65 years old are the most common age group diagnosed with it.
This article will briefly discuss dementia, the problems dementia patients face, and how light therapy can help. Stay tuned for detailed information.
What is Dementia?
Dementia is not a specific disease. A collection of conditions responsible for affecting the ability to remember is commonly referred to as dementia. It can start with minimal symptoms like forgetting an address or name of an individual. Eventually, this problem can grow and disrupt the everyday functioning of the patient.
Dementia is caused by decaying brain cells. These cells store valuable information about the day-to-day life of an individual. Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Parkinson’s disease are some of the common causes of dementia. Some individuals can develop dementia through a stroke.
Multiple sclerosis, Huntington’s disease, leukoencephalopathies are some of the rarer causes of dementia, and the condition can be quite severe in these cases. Some people can also inherit dementia through genetics.
How Do You Know You Have Dementia?
As dementia can be caused by a wide range of reasons, the symptoms can vary a lot. The most prominent of these symptoms are memory loss, losing attention, and losing track of conversations. A person with dementia may also have problems with judging, reasoning, and problem-solving. In some cases, changes in vision at an early age can be a sign of dementia.
Other common symptoms of dementia may be getting lost in familiar places, struggling to remember the names of common objects, struggling to complete tasks without help, etc. Some may forget the names of their loved ones or even forget significant memories.
Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia
Detecting the type of dementia can be quite difficult. The health care provider will need to perform tests on different abilities like problem-solving, attention, memory, and other cognitive capacities. Also, physical exams like blood tests, CT scans, MRI are performed to detect underlying causes.
Alzheimer’s diseases are one of the common causes of dementia and are found in almost 60 to 80 percent of cases. Some critical changes in the brain are directly responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. Most patients with this disease start showing symptoms by forgetting events or a conversation that happened a few hours before. Eventually, the patient may develop walking or talking difficulties in serious cases or completely change their personality.
For detecting Alzheimer’s, family history is quite important. Having a relative with Alzheimer’s increases the risk of developing this condition by up to thirty percent.
Almost 10% of the patients with dementia can be diagnosed with vascular dementia. In these cases, the patients develop memory loss due to inadequate blood flow in the brain. Strokes, heart issues, blockage in the veins mainly cause this type of dementia.
The symptoms generally depend upon the severity of the damage and the impact on the brain. The disease will progress in a stepwise fashion. The worse the condition, the more patients experience strokes or mini-strokes.
The underlying conditions highly depend on treating dementia. However, many of these variations still don’t have any particular medications. A healthy lifestyle can be very helpful in keeping the symptoms at bay.
Exercising, healthy eating, proper maintenance of chronic diseases can go a long way to block dementia from occurring. As the mentioned activities help in proper blood flowing, the brain doesn’t face the insufficiency of the blood. Therefore, damage in brain cells can be effectively avoided.
How Can Light Therapy Help?
Light therapy is one of the modern means of therapy. It boosts the immunity of our body and helps in the healthy growth of cells. The process is totally natural and costs just a few minutes of your time.
When light shines upon your body, it energizes the cells. Thus the cells are re-energized and can perform the tasks efficiently.
The brain cells don’t multiply naturally. With the increasing age, they can become quite fragile. With the help of light therapy, they regain their past abilities and can provide the person performing the usual tasks to their best abilities.
As light therapy boosts the immunity of the body, any clotting due to cholesterol or other harmful compounds can be avoided. As a result, the blood circulation doesn’t get interrupted, and the mind and body can stay healthy for a longer time.
Light therapy helps in restoring the circadian rhythm of the body. It ensures the well-being of health, relieves a person from stress, and ensures a good night’s sleep. Both of these are highly helpful in maintaining dementia symptoms.
Many studies have shown positive outcomes for light therapy on dementia patients. As a result, there is a growing interest in light therapy to help dementia patients.
Dementia can claim a huge toll not only on the life of the patients but also on the closer ones of that individual. Proper diagnosis at the earliest sign can ensure proper care and managing the severity.
Light therapy has a proven positive impact on the care and treatment of dementia patients. As no other method has this much impact, one should definitely give light therapy a try.
