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Alzheimer’s disease is the biggest cause of dementia - but dementia is just the name for a number of symptoms of deteriorating brain function. Many different diseases cause dementia and it can impact you differently depending on what part of the brain it affects.

Additionally, dementia can also show in other ways than just memory loss - people can have issues interpreting visual stimuli (so it can sometimes help to get close to a dementia patient and in their direct field of vision when talking to them). Sometimes people lose all their inhibitions and develop odd or aggressive behaviour.

Thanks ChatGPT

Lol

Alzheimer’s is known to be related to a specific protein in the brain that affects a very certain area first, and has classic symptoms, like memory loss.

Another kind of dementia is caused by chronic high blood pressure and mini brain strokes, causing lots of little spots where the tissue has died. This could range from mild to severe and look different for everyone, but it’s called “multi-infarct” because the cause is known to be infarcts.

Other dementias could be from injury, or viral infections, or autoimmunity, such as MS. Other people have mild or slower advancing dementia, where the cause is not known. Imaging and blood tests could come back normal but we call it dementia because of cognitive or mood changes reported by family and seen on neuro cognitive testing.

Side note: neuro cognitive testing can tell us if a person’s deficits are in executive function, memory, multitasking, language, etc.

Is there a cure in sight that can help fight dementia?

There are a range of types of dementia, and they all look slightly different on scans of the brain (often MRI's) and might have different signs from blood or other tests that differentiates the types from each other.

The different types also effect people's function slightly differently, and both family history and just general life history can help with determining the type of dementia. For example, if someone is known to have had a history of alcohol excess they might be more likely to develop an alcohol related form of dementia so that might be the starting point for investigations.

Alzheimer's is the most common hence being the one most people are aware of.

The other main types are:

Frontotemporal dementia, which often develops slightly younger and can lead to quite significant personality changes and challenging behaviours (among other things).

Lewy Body dementia, which can often present quite similarly to Parkinson's disease.

Vascular dementia, which is often correlated with multiple strokes or other vascular (blood flow) changes to the brain. The functional impacts to a person can often depend on which part of the brain is most impacted.

Mixed dementia, which is essentially a combination of types.

But that isn't an exhaustive list and there are other less common types, and yes most of them have names.

Mi dad had dementia from NALFD (non alcoholic fatty liver disease) his brain was kind of "whole" (contrary to alzheimer) but his liver could not clean toxins from his blood so he got hepatic encephalopathy which caused brain damage. Its like having cirrhosis but not from alcohol but from years and years of abusing sugar.

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Dementia is a symptom of many different diseases. Alzheimer's is just one of the diseases that causes dementia.

Dementia is a symptom. It's like fever, or joint pain, though obviously much more serious.

There are many things that can cause fever or joint pain, and several things that can cause dementia. Alzheimer's is the most common cause, but not the only one.

Alzheimer's is just a specific type of dementia, but there are others. It's like a square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares.

Well, sort of like how all poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles.

Alzeihiemers is a TYPE of dementia, but there are other types too.

Dementia refers to a problem with thinking skills like remembering, paying attention, multi-tasking that is bad enough that it makes it hard to do everyday activities like having a conversation, preparing a meal, planning your day, or doing chores.

Dementia can be fixed (reversed) if it is caused by an infection (like syphilis) or a poisoning (like overdose of bismuth from taking too much pepto-bismal) but in most cases it is not.

The top three most common causes are

1. Alzheimer's disease
2. Vascular
3. Lewy body (which includes dementia with Lewy bodies or Parkinson's disease dementia)

The diagnosis of dementia is made by a clinician (such as doctor or nurse practitioner) by getting the whole story and completing the necessary tests (this may include testing by a neuropsychologist.) Doctors and other clinicians who diagnose and treat dementia regularly (for example neurologists, geriatric medicine specialists, or geriatric psychiatrists) will use a combination of the history, neurological exam, brain scans, blood tests, and the neuropsychological test results to diagnose the cause of dementia based on standard criteria.

We classify dementia by the patterns we see in affected brain tissue under the microscope. Amyloid plaques and tau tangles -> Alzheimer's. Lewy bodies -> Lewy body dementia. Pick bodies -> frontotemporal dementia. It's more complex but these are examples of elements that help make a tissue diagnosis.

Since most people don't undergo brain biopsies while alive, the best we can do in a living patient is make an educated guess based on symptoms, and sometimes supplement with specialized imaging and spinal fluid tests.

All rectangles are squares, but not all squares are rectangles.

Dementia is a condition that causes memory loss. Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia. Just like a square can have 100’s of different sizes, one being a rectangle. There are many types of dementia, just one of them is Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s is the rectangle.

The link between Alzheimer's and amyloid plaques has fallen out of favor the last decade or so. Tau tangles, for example, have been linked to Alzheimer's like symptoms. There have also been many cases where plaques are present without symptoms, and symptoms present without plaques as seen after autopsy.

That's interesting. I also know that some doctors/researchers have started calling Alzheimer's diabetes type 3. I wonder if there's a correlation between liver health (specifically NALFD or similar) and Alzheimer's.

Is Pick's disease considered a type of dementia?

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Pick’s disease is frontotemporal Dementia

My mum has parkinsons and has both visual and auditory hallucinations, plus she is super paranoid all the time.
She has the odd hour or so of clarity, but lately she's been stopping mid sentence because she cant remember words or what she's talking about.
Ive read this is late stage parkinsons but the doctors wont den or confirm this.

Dementia is a group of diseases that effect your memory Alzheimer’s is a disease within the group of dementia it’s like cancer there’s different kinds all called cancer but not every kind of cancer is lung cancer

Think of dementia as a big umbrella symptom. Alzheimer's is just one cause/kind of dementia. Some forms of dementia, like Alzheimer's or Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia, are caused by faulty proteins in neurons (nerve cells). Other forms of dementia, particularly ones that affect younger people and children (yup, children can have dementia and it's horrible), can be caused by genetic errors in how cells work and metabolize certain substances. Brain injuries like strokes, particularly lots and lots of "mini-strokes", can cause dementia too. Some infectious diseases, like syphilis and HIV/AIDS, can also cause dementia. Then there's also prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, where a type of misfolded protein makes healthy/normal proteins in the brain get all twisted up, causing progressive and rapid brain damage.

So dementia itself is not a disease, but a symptom or result of a disease or injury affecting the brain.

you had that backwards - squares are a specific type of rectangle where all the sides are equal. And so Alzheimer's would be the "square" in your analogy

That’s why I said “related” and not “caused by,” since we don’t know the exact causal mechanism. But beta amyloid PET imaging is used to make Alzheimer’s diagnoses because levels do correspond to severity, for the most part. I work in neurology research.

Edit: also the article you’re referencing really only proved one lab was completely corrupt and shady. There are DOZENS of other b amyloid labs (and subtypes) and quite literally HUNDREDS of preclinical studies whose b amyloid work is supported, which is why clinical trials keep going that direction. Unfortunately they fail. There isn’t some big conspiracy to NOT cure AD. The Science article claiming otherwise was really really sensationalist. But I agree we don’t have a handle on it right now, and other therapeutics are needed.

Thank you; I lost someone to Pick"s and don't really know much about it.

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My mum has early onset dementia and she has a mix of Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s. If I remember correctly as a basis, dementia tends to effect logic and problem solving whereas the Alzheimer’s portion affects memory and personality. This could just be down to the types she has though

Look up “Parkinson’s disease dementia” and “cognitive impairment with Parkinson’s disease.” Here is a good resource to learn the basics: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia/parkinson-s-disease-dementia

Bring it up with her doctor, there may be medications and therapies she can try or a clinical trial she can enroll in!

Dementia is actually a symptom defined by lessened cognitive ability.

Alzhiemer's is a disease that causes dementia.

Some definitions also describe dementia as a family of diseases including Alzhiemer's, but it's more accurate to call dementia a symptom

Ill explain to you like your five instead of writing the whole bible: dementia is a type of Alzheimer. Its like saying: if canada is a country in North America, then why isnt North America a country in canada?

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Dementia means someone is unable to complete important everyday tasks, like chores or bathing or eating, on their own.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. It involves the toxic accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain over time, which leads to the widespread death of brain cells, compromising memory and other cognitive abilities.

Alzheimer’s disease can lead to dementia, but there are other disease processes that can cause someone to become functionally dependent on others (like Parkinson’s disease).

While it can be apparent when someone has progressed to the stage of dementia and needs substantial support, it is not always clear what is happening in the brain to cause dementia. This is because many neurodegenerative diseases share the same symptoms (like memory loss), and we cannot easily see what is going on inside a living brain. However, we are getting better at doing just that through novel neuroimaging approaches, such as florbetapir PET scans for detecting Alzheimer’s pathology during life, and other medical advances.

Source: am working in neurodegenerative research

To make a diagnostic of alzheimer you must first exclude all other causes and all reversible causes of dementia (hypothyroidism, depression, hydrocephalus)

Once you've excluded all other causes, it must necessarily be that cause, no?

It’s not that easy, but it’s how we do it.

Dementia is the broad classification of "memory problems people get that aren't consistent with normal aging." In essence, its the umbrella that covers all the memory problems associated with aging but that aren't just you getting old, they're worse in some form or fashion.

Alzheimer's is a specific cause of dementia, and also the most common one. Alzheimer's dementia has a pattern that doctors can look for and can extrapolate out the timeline for the rest of the disease.

Different forms of dementia have different patterns and different timelines. Some are faster or slower. Some come with personality changes, others hallucinations, others muscle control issues. What type of dementia you have is important in determining what symptoms you will have and how long you are likely to live. Depending on what type it is, you diagnose these with brain scans, blood work, or simply asking the patient and their family what symptoms they're experiencing.

Dementia is the symptom, Alzheimers is the disease. Alzheimers is the chronic degeneration of brain matter. As the brain slowly falls apart, symptoms of Dementia begin to occur.

Dementia is loss of memory and personality changes from Alzheimers and other sources.