whats the difference between

[crisgal]

dementia and alzheimers?Thank you

[B00]

One's a bugger to spell correctly.

sorry- being flippant, hope you get a decent reply soon :-)

[boxtops]

This is quite a good explanation, crisgal http://ezinearticles....d-Dementia?&id=164803

[mazie]

BOO is correct ...Nothing apart from the spelling

[mazie]

They both tear you apart !

[Buenchico]

Dementia is simply a condition, irrespective of its cause. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as "insanity consisting in loss of intellectual power, due to brain disease or injury".

Alzheimer's is a disease which causes dementia but there can be other, unrelated, causes such as a physical brain injury. (The fraudulent businessman, Ernest Saunders, suffered from dementia while in prison and was released early because of it. However, because the cause of the dementia was [allegedly] the excessive prescribing of tranquillizers by the prison authorities, rather than Alzheimer's Disease, he made a remarkably swift recovery after his release).

Chris

[jno]

I think dementia is one of the symptoms of Alzheimer's.

[askyourgran]

Alzheimers is a cruel disease, to watch someone you love previously a strong vital and healthy person slowly losing their faculties is heartbreaking. I have supported this Charity this year.

[welshlibranr]

I agree gran, I have worked with many dementia patients over the years, and it's so very sad to watch the progression!............it's a very cruel disease, not only for the sufferer, but for their family too!...........

[Sqad]

jno is correct..........dementia is a symptom (a generalised word) and Altzheimers is a specific disease.

There are many causes of dementia, just Google them for a bit of bedtime reading.
You and me would soon slip into one of those categories..;-)

[Wak]

I can appreciate how a person would feel seeing a close family relative slowly slipping into a strange mental state but how does it affect the patient?
Are they aware of what is happening to them? Do they realise that they are slowly becoming more distant and more forgetful as the time passes or are they just as happy and content in their own minds as they always have been?
It's not like having a very painful condition which gradually becomes more and more painful and unbearable, is it? Or is it???

[RATTER15]

Wak, every dementia sufferer is very different, I work in a dementia unit and we have 35 residents, each one is totally different in their symptoms and the way they behave.
Some want to strip naked all the time, some still have very high moral standards, one or two can be very violent while others are very quiet and loving, some are very distressed while other are blissfully unaware.

Generally speaking most of the residents are happy and the home is a very happy place to work, I would not work anywhere else.

[RATTER15]

Alzheimer's is just one type of dementia.

[crisgal]

i would say it can be as bad for the people around the patient.
When my nan was in a nursing home, he went to see her every day. She thought he was my granded though, and would moan about her son not going to see her. He would tell her every day that he was her son, but she never believed him. It upset him so much. We told him that as he WAS goiing to see her daily, that he shouldn't worry. But he was very very sad, that she died believing that her son had abandoned her.

[boxtops]

I saw a very moving presentation at a nursing conference a couple of weeks ago from Barbara Pointon (she was in the Malcolm and Barbara programme on the TV a while back, about her husband who had Alzheimer's) - she explained that one of the misunderstood elements of Alzheimer's is that the patient really believes that they are in past years, and it helps to humour them. Your nan probably didn't recognise her son in the older man who visited her, in her mind her son was probably still a teenager or younger. Barbara told us that if they want to go "home" from the care home, they mean their infant childhood home, they have regressed and don't recognise the here and now at all. (I hope Ratter can confirm what I am saying, I am a layman but work with nurses as part of my job.)
Barbara is now spreading as much information as possible to all healthcare workers about this cruel condition - if you can, take a look at the programme, there's a link to it on here at the bottom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Pointon
As you say, so hard for the carers - but as Barbara says, if you can at all get your head inside the patient's head, you can start in a small way to understand how they think they are viewing the world.

[crisgal]

yes, i remember the programme, boxtops. How lovely that she is doing something to help others.
I suppose there was nothing my dad could have done then. It was so sad.

[Wak]

Thanks for the explanation, Ratter15. It seems to be a distressing complaint which affects everyone involved, patient, family and carer alike.
My son-in-law's mother is in a home with Dementia and now doesn't recognise either her son or his wife. As you say, very upsetting for the people concerned.
Wak.