Dementia causes you to lose your mental ability severe enough to interfere with normal activities of daily living.
This condition is due to the gradual death of your brain cells.
Dementia is associated with loss of cognitive cells which again lead to impairments in memory, planning, reasoning and personality.
Dementia is not concerned to age. It is mainly caused by specific brain disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the well-known cause of dementia and it affects 50-60 percent of the patients with the disease. The second most common is multifract dementia and is sometimes called as vascular or post-stroke dementia.
This condition affects 5-8% of the people between the age of 65-74 and 20% of the people between 75-84%. About 5 million people in the US now have dementia.
Generally dementia is due to the degeneration in the cerebral cortex. Cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for actions, thoughts, memories and personality.
This condition results in memory loss, disturbances in your language, poor judgment, feeling restlessness, and impaired orientation ability. The signs of cognitive problems begin to appear about three years before dementia fully sets in. The earlier stages of dementia also affect the way your body processes blood sugar.
Dementia causes early weight loss in women:
According to new studies, a woman who gets dementia loses weight a decade or more before major symptoms appear. But, there is no change in the weight of the men whether they develop dementia. The woman will lose weight before 21-30 years before a diagnosis of dementia was irrelevant.
The woman who lose her weight more recently are at a greater risk of developing cognitive problems. There is no correct evidence which prove about why the women who develop dementia lose weight years earlier.
Generally older women eat less and in addition to this, dementia can cause a decreased sense of taste and smell that makes eating less interesting. When you can’t smell your food, it won’t have much taste, and hence you might be less inclined to eat it.
On an average, a woman with dementia lost 12 pounds less than those without the disease the year it was diagnosed.
Brain-healthy diet for dementia:
This diet includes lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, olive oil, and lean meat. Usage of olive oil other than saturated and trans fats is the best option. Consume meat in less quantities and one such diet which is helpful for you is the Mediterranean diet.
This diet is associated with a lower level of low-density lipoprotein oxidation – a change in LDL cholesterol. If there are no fatty acid deposits in your brain, it means no dementia.
Include small amounts of red wine in your diet. The consumption of red wine reduces the ability of blood clotting and also contains antioxidants. Consume red wine in moderation.
This diet greatly helps in reducing the symptoms of dementia.
