Question: what happens to the body when you have dementia

Nadine Mirza answered on 5 Nov 2018:

Thanks for your question- I’m gonna try my best to answer it as informatively as I can.

So dementia is essentially damage to brain cells, which can be because of lots of different reasons- that’s why there’s different types of dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common and when it happens basically these plaques build up in your brain, essentially big lumpy gunks, that prevent your nerve cells from communicating to one another. Your nerve cells also start breaking down and so the brain has difficulty making new connections or triggering the old ones. In scans of people with Alzheimer’s you can see how the brain has more and more gaps.

Another common type of dementia is called Frontotemporal Dementia or FTD. In this parts of the brain shrink (this is called ‘atrophy). The front and side lobes of the brain (the ‘frontal’ and ‘temporal’) are the ones that atrophy and this effects things like behaviour because these are the parts responsible for it.

Another type is vascular dementia which is when dementia symptoms are caused by the brain not getting enough blood, which reduces it’s activity and ability to make connections. Vascular dementia usually happens because of diseases related to the blood and the organ responsible for distributing blood, the heart. Things like diabetes, heart attacks and such can lead to this.

A person with dementia could have one of the above, more than one of the above or another reason altogether: dementia caused by stroke or other form of brain damage, dementia from substance misuse. There’s lots of reasons and that’s why there are so many varying symptoms.

Because the brain is responsible for everything we are and everything we do, if it becomes severely damaged, the rest of the body will be impacted. When dementia is minor this is not so bad. But in severe cases, often it can result in an individual being unable to walk, or talk, or chew. When an individual can’t move because of these problems, they need to have someone to move their body for them because staying still for increased periods of time can cause it’s own set of problems: aches, infection, bed sores .etc.

I know this is quite a bit of information to take n! Do let me know if you have any more questions.
Or have a look at this link too: https://kids.alzheimersresearchuk.org/teens/