“Dementia is not a natural part of growing old”
Dementia is a syndrome, typically involving loss of memory, mood changes and problems with thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement.
The Glasgow Declaration calls for the creation of a European Dementia Strategy, as well as strategies in every European country. EPF supports Alzheimer Europe’s (AE) initiative that aims to achieve real change for people living with dementia in Europe.
Read the full article from the European Patients Forum.
Doctor Dementia and the Dementia Adventure 
It is part of aging if one doesn’t look after her or his own health in earlier age. Especially the health of the mind.
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Thanks for the comment, Controversial Cook! You have been a thought-provoking reader 🙂 This article doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why dementia is not a part of normal aging. To summarize, dementia is a syndrome (a group of symptoms). Dementia is not a normal part of aging because not all people who grow old will develop dementia and some young people also develop dementia. Dementia means that something has gone wrong in the brain, so it is not a normal, or expected, part of brain functioning.
You are right to highlight that one needs to look after their health to prevent diseases in older age, and a healthy lifestyle is the best that one can do to prevent dementia (and other lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases). However, not everyone who has a healthy lifestyle will be free from dementia and some who have unhealthy lifestyles never develop dementia.
Some cognitive changes are a part of aging, because the brain takes longer to work over time, so reaction times, balance, and memory recall do slow down. This is considered normal aging. Dementia is much more than slight cognitive changes, and it is progressive in nature, indicating a diseased brain. Age is highly correlated with dementia, but it is not the cause of it, which is why dementia is not “normal aging.”
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Thanks very true. It would be interesting to know if dementia was so widespread in older times when the environment was cleaner and food was all organic. Anyway lately I’ve been taking curcumin not because of dementia that I’ven’t but for an arthritis of the neck that I got from practicing too much sport in the past and it’s working!. Apparently it seems to do something also against Alzheimer and dementia. Regards Piero.
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Thanks for the conversation 😉
I agree, it would be interesting to have looked into their brains as well. They didn’t live as long as people do now, and were more likely to die from infections, communicable diseases, and injuries than of causes related to old age, so it is likely that dementia was not as prevalent back then – but it would be interesting to know of cases of young-onset dementia throughout history! The first documented case of Alzheimer’s disease, back in 1906 was young-onset as Auguste Deter was only 56 at the time of her death.
I hope the curcumin continues to help – I also take it for joint pain and inflammation 🙂 If you want to know more about the link between curcumin/turmeric and dementia, check out my post on that: https://doctordementia.com/2015/04/02/research-curry-spice-can-help-the-brain-repair-itself/
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Thanks for the link.
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