what’s the difference between Alzheimer’s and Dementia?
In: Biology
Dementia is caused by many things and describes the symptoms. Alzheimer’s is a specific disease. Or put simply, Alzheimer’s causes (among other things) dementia but other things can cause it as well.
Dementia is a general term for loss of cognitive function as a result of injury, disability, aging, or other factors.
Alzheimer’s is a particular form of dementia (and the most common form) caused by specific types of deterioration of neurons, including the formation of plaques of beta amyloid protein between neurons and tangles of tau protein within neuron cells.
All Alzheimer’s patients are demented but not all demented patients have Alzheimer’s.
There are several different types of dementia such as Lewy-Body (often characterized by high levels of aggression), vascular dementia (often s/t strokes, alcoholism), CTE, Parkinson’s, FT, etc, etc, etc. Each can be rather nuanced in onset, progression, mortality, etc. In my experience, Lewy-Body is just awful. I’d often have loved ones come into my office with all sorts of bruises and scratches; convincing them it was safer for everyone to put the patient into a facility was always extremely difficult.
Your question is like saying what’s the difference between apples and fruit? Just like apples are a type of fruit, Alzheimers is one cause of dementia.
Dementia is a symptom, Alzheimer’s is a disease
A bit like psychosis is a symptom and schizophrenia is an illness/disease whatever you wanna call it
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Dementia is when someone’s brain is sick in a way that their brain forgets how to do its job, which is keeping you alive and who you are.
Alzheimer’s is one way the brain can forget how to brain.
There are many types of dementia, or many ways the brain can forget how to brain.
This is how I explained it to my kids when my uncle was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
It should be mentioned that Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, to the tune of 80% or so, so it unfortunately means people often use them incorrectly to mean the same thing
Hey, why you asking this question? It’s already been answered dozens of times.
Alzheimer’s is a cause of dementia. However, not all dementia is caused by Alzheimer’s. Dementia refers to a loss of or decline in cognitive function. So dementia is a for more general term and Alzheimer’s is a more specific term
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