A captivated audience gets information about dementia
A report out of the USA states, “One in eight older Americans has Alzheimer’s “disease. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States of America. Over 15 million Americans provide unpaid care for a person with Alzheimer’s or other dementias. Payments for cares are estimated to be $200 billion in 2012.”
Dr. Daniel Davis is the son of Governor and Mrs. Adrian Davis. Governor introduced him at a small forum at Government House on March 28, 2013 where Mrs. Davis invited people to become members of Friends of Glendon Hospital. Dr. Davis said of himself, “I am actually training in both clinical medicine and in research elements, and my core direction in clinical practice and in research is on memory problems in aging,” introducing his talk on ‘dementia.’
The doctor spoke on the topic dementia, which is described as, “a loss of brain function that occurs with certain diseases. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is one form of dementia that gradually gets worse over time. It affects memory, thinking, and behavior.”
In introducing this topic which is said to be the sixth leading cause of death in the USA and forms part of diseases falling within the 10 leading causes of death in the world, Dr. Davis told his audience, “I want to talk about four main things, – what is Dementia, who gets dementia, what can you do about dementia, and what causes dementia…”
He said: “…it is a brain disease, not just normal aging that causes problems in more than one area of brain function to an extent that it is so severe that you can’t function in normal life without assistance from somebody else.” The Dr. cautioned, “…. people don’t just as I said wake up with dementia…”
Dr. Daniel Davis
Dementia in younger people is described as below age 65, while some forms of dementia can begin at age 45. One thing derived from the questions and answers that followed was that it would never be too young to work at not getting the dreaded disease dementia/Alzheimer.
[vsw id=”LY-zAu4KurI” source=”youtube” width=”300″ height=”250″ autoplay=”no”] “But actually not everything gets worst in aging, so there is a general slowing but somethings get better,” the doctor said. “In fact,” he continued, “we find also, that in older people’s judgment become usually allot better; and it may be that people are exercising their judgment faculties a bit more to compensate for the fact that they’re not so quick in other fields, but it’s not all dim and Dismal in terms of outlook.”
He also said that the key things in terms of what is dementia is that it’s a brain function with multiple problems severe enough to impact in your general day to day functions, it includes diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia…… “But these things can intermix and the differences between these subtypes is that it has slightly different presentations at the beginning. But, if you fast-forward five or six or seven or eight, ten years, they all pretty much look very similar when different areas of the brain become progressively more impaired so that’s what is dementia.”
Dr. Davis along with his wife and child Felix, were visiting Montserrat for the second time since his parents took up the governorship of Montserrat nearly two years ago.
