Dementia – What Causes it?
One of the cruellest illnesses that exists is dementia. This progressive illness gradually takes away the memories of a person, and eventually ends up killing them. The person loses their cognitive thinking, as well as the memories and behavioural skills to name but a few things.
As an illness that attacks the brain, the first signs of dementia are often quite minor and things that are typically associated with normal aging – forgetting where things are such as keys or forgetting to lock the door are things that have probably happened to all of us once or twice. But when these instances start to increase in frequency it could be a sign of dementia.
Dementia is caused by the nerve cells in the brain dying – this means that they then lose the connection with other cells and they start to die too, causing a chain reaction where eventually the brains cells are all killed off.
There is sadly no cure for this distressing illness currently, but doctors and scientists continue to search for one. There are lots of people looking at the causes of dementia, as well as paid clinical trials being run to look into the illness more such as these by Trials 4 Us.
Despite what some people think, although our brain cells do decrease as we age, dementia is certainly not a normal part of aging, and it is a deeply distressing disease, not only for the patient themselves but also for their families who will see their decline.