A question that is frequently asked to me is 'What is the difference between dementia and alzheimers? Although the meaning of the words are much alike, it is not exactly the same. Dementia is a syndrome, a collection of possible symptoms a person has. For instance if you have 3 out of 9 symptoms, you could have Dementia. The variation of possible symptoms is huge and that is one reason why no person with dementia is alike.

The difference between dementia and alzheimer's is the fact that Alzheimer's is a disease. The disease targets your brain and will cause damage to the brain. The damage caused to the brain will be shown as memory loss, verbal speech problems, behavioural problems and other symptoms. These symptoms will over time qualify for a diagnosis of Dementia.

So what we can say is that Dementia is actually the parent of a whole group of different diseases that all cause symptoms that are much a like and therefore qualify for Dementia. Dementia itself is not a disease, it is a syndrome. We could compare this to a care that broke down. The car can brake down cause of different causes, a flat tire, broken engine, hydraulics etc. All these could qualify for a broken car. The broken car itself is than Dementia and the causes the car broke down is Alzheimers.

So what exactly is Alzheimer's disease? It is a microscopic deterioration of the brain. Some cells will clutter and cause plaques in the brain tissue. Because of these plaques, the brain will loose function. Your brain will not loose function with one or two of these plaques, you need a whole lot of them to qualify for Alzheimer's disease (AD). They will cut some brain tissue out and see through a microscope how many of these plaques are around. This is the only way until now how you can diagnose AD. Off course they don't cut a piece of our brain out to see if we have AD, they will only do this when we passed away. And that is the main reason why you can never know for sure if someone has AD before he is dead. If someone is diagnosed with AD, it will always be a possible Alzheimer disease.

Alzheimer disease is the most common form of Dementia. About 70% of all people with dementia have Alzheimer disease (AD). The symptoms of Alzheimer disease can vary from person to person but are most of the time much alike and very recognisable. AD starts with problems in memory. They start forgetting where they left their wallet or their keys and so on. People who have AD are most of the time not aware that they are sick. They are convinced that there is nothing wrong with them and that you are falsely accusing them if you say something about what he forgot or did wrong. They become suspicious about other persons who are trying to trick them. Suspicion is seen very often in AD and is very hard to cope with for caregivers.

Another symptom that is seen very often is loosing the concept of time and space. They can't remember what day it is, what time it is or where they exactly are. They could wake up in the middle of the night and ask when they could finally have some breakfast. They also start getting lost in places that have been familiar to them for a very long time like, the village, the mall and eventually their own home.

A result of loosing memory and concept of time is that they often go back in time with their memories. They could say it is 1995 again or even 1960 or 1940. They could even forget people they met the last few years and eventually they forget everyone they know.

Some other familliar symptoms could be afasia( speech impairment), agrafia (problems with calculating), agrafia (not able to write any more),apraxia (mix up certain orders of action that will result in not being able to do this action. For instance making coffee, put your clothes on etc) and behavioural problems.

I hope this article clarified the difference between dementia and alzheimers. If you want to know more about the subject i suggest you read some of my oher hubs.