Is It Dementia?

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Dementia is most popularly associated with memory loss, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and knowing the other symptoms can be important in catching it early

  • If you’ve ever found yourself wondering (about yourself or a loved one), “is it…” then today’s main feature can help reassure, or raise the alarm.

  • As ever, not a substitute for professional diagnosis! Usual disclaimer applies; we are just here to provide useful information, and resources if you want to go deeper.

• Losing weight (healthily!) can be a challenge. Keeping that weight off can be even harder.

  • Today’s sponsor, the Mayo Clinic Diet, is a medically-backed, globally-trusted method that focuses on changing your daily routine by adding and breaking habits that make a difference to your weight.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Doctor Explains The Do's And Don'ts Of Washing Your Vagina & Vulva (14:26)

Please don't wash your vagina; it is self-washing (and any attempt to wash it will just lower its self-washing effectiveness—at best). For the vulva however, there's more nuance:

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Select timestamps:

• 03:05 | Why Wash One & Not the Other

• 04:17 | Recommended Cleaning Methods

• 10:32 | FAQ

We do recommend you watch the whole thing if you have time though, as there is valuable advice in the other parts too!

Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖

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🍞 RECIPES WORTH SHARING

Tasty Golden Buckwheat Bread

This one’s from Vidhaata Chatterjee, on Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s website. It’s a way to enjoy bread while packing a nutritious punch, while avoiding wheat and other grains (fun fact: buckwheat is not a wheat, or even a grain; it’s technically a knotweed!)

_{For all those who asked for more text-based recipes… Enjoy!}

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🤔 MAIN FEATURE

Spot The Signs (Because None Of Us Are Immune)

Dementia affects increasingly many people, and unlike a lot of diseases, it disproportionately affects people in wealthy industrialized nations.

There are two main reasons for this:

• Longevity (in poorer countries, more people die of other things sooner; can’t get age-related cognitive decline if you don’t age)

• Lifestyle (in the age of convenience, it has never been easier to live an unhealthy lifestyle)

The former is obviously no bad thing for those of us lucky enough to be in wealthier countries (though even in such places, good healthcare access is of course sadly not a given for all).

The latter, however, is less systemic and more epidemic. But it does cut both ways:

• An unhealthy lifestyle is much easier here, yes

• A healthier lifestyle is much easier here, too!

This then comes down to two factors in turn:

• Information: knowing about dementia, what things lead to it, what to look out for, what to do

• Motivation: priorities, and how much attention we choose to give this matter

So, let’s get some information, and then give it our attention!

More than just memory

It’s easy to focus on memory loss, but the four key disabilities directly caused by dementia (each person may not get all four), can be remembered by the mnemonic: “AAAA!”

No, somebody didn’t just murder your writer. It’s:

• Amnesia: memory loss, in one or more of its many forms

  • e.g. short term memory loss, and/or inability to make new memories

• Aphasia: loss of ability to express oneself, and/or understand what is expressed

  • e.g. “More people have been to Berlin than I have”

  • Or even less communication-friendly, Broca’s (Expressive) Aphasia and Wernicke’s (Receptive) Aphasia

• Apraxia: loss of ability to do things, through no obvious physical disability

  • e.g. staring at the bathroom mirror wondering how to brush one’s teeth

• Agnosia: loss of ability to recognize things

  • e.g. prosopagnosia, also called face-blindness.

If any of those seem worryingly familiar, be aware that while yes, it could be a red flag, what’s most important is patterns of these things.

Another difference between having a momentary brainlapse and having dementia might be, for example, the difference between forgetting your keys, and forgetting what keys do or how to use one.

That said, some are neurological deficits that may show up quite unrelated to dementia, including most of those given as examples above. So if you have just one, then that’s probably worthy of note, but probably not dementia.

Subjective memory matters as much as objective

Objective memory tests are great indicators of potential cognitive decline (or improvement!), but even a subjective idea of having memory problems, that one’s memory is “not as good as it used to be”, can be an important indicator too:

Subjective memory may be marker for cognitive decline

And more recently:

If your memory feels like it's not what it once was, it could point to a future dementia risk

If you’d like an objective test of memory and other cognitive impairments, here’s the industry’s gold standard test (it’s free):

SAGE: A Test to Detect Signs of Alzheimer's and Dementia

(The Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam (SAGE) is designed to detect early signs of cognitive, memory or thinking impairments)

There are things that can look like dementia that aren’t

A person with dementia may be unable to recognize their partner, but hey, this writer knows that feeling very well too. So what sets things apart?

More than we have room for today, but here’s a good overview:

What are the early signs of dementia, and how does it differ from normal aging?

Want to read more?

You might like our previous article more specifically about reducing Alzheimer’s risk:

Reducing Alzheimer’s Risk Early!

Take care!

🧠 BRAINTEASER

Keep Your Brain Young With Today’s Brainteaser:

Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married, but George is not.

(we’ll give the answer tomorrow!)

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

How to Prevent Dementia: An Expert’s Guide to Long-Term Brain Health – by Dr. Richard Restak

We’ve written about this topic here, we know. But there’s a lot more we can do to be on guard against, and pre-emptively strengthen ourselves against, dementia.

The author, a neurologist, takes us on a detailed exploration of dementia in general, with a strong focus on Alzheimer’s in particular, as that accounts for more than half of all dementia cases.

But what if you can’t avoid it? It could be that with the wrong genes and some other factor(s) outside of your control, it will get you if something else doesn’t get you first.

Rather than scaremongering, Dr. Restak tackles this head-on too, and discusses how symptoms can be managed, to make the illness less anxiety-inducing, and look to maintain quality of life as much as possible.

The style of the book is… it reads a lot like an essay compilation. Good essays, then organized and arranged in a sensible order for reading, but distinct self-contained pieces. There are ten or eleven chapters (depending on how we count them), each divided into few or many sections. All this makes for:

• A very “read a bit now and a bit later and a bit the next day” book, if you like

• A feeling of a very quick pace, if you prefer to sit down and read it in one go

Either way, it’s a very informative read.

Bottom line: if you’d like to better understand the many-headed beast that is dementia, this book gives a far more comprehensive overview than we could here, and also explains the prophylactic interventions available.

Click here to check out How To Prevent Dementia, because prevention is a lot more fun than wishing for a cure!

Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team