Detailed: Dementia Overview, its causes and symptoms.

Dementia, the brain disease giant is a collective term used to describe the problems that people with various underlying brain disorders or damage can have with their memory, language and thinking. Alzheimer's disease is the best known and most common disorder under the umbrella of dementia.
What is dementia?
Dementia is not a single disease in itself, but a general term to describe symptoms such as impairments to memory, communication and thinking.
While the likelihood of having dementia increases with age, it is not a normal part of aging. Before we had today's understanding of specific disorders, "going senile" used to be a common phrase for dementia ("senility"), which misunderstood it as a standard part of getting old.
Light cognitive impairments, by contrast, such as poorer short-term memory, can happen as a normal part of aging (we slowly start to lose brain cells as we age beyond our 20s. This is known as age-related cognitive decline, not dementia, because it does not cause the person or the people around them any problems.
Dementia describes two or more types of symptom that are severe enough to affect daily activities.
But as well as progressive brain cell death like that seen in Alzheimer's disease, dementia can be caused by a head injury, a stroke or a brain tumor, among other causes.
Some of the causes are simpler to understandin terms of how they affect the brain and lead to dementia:
- Vascular dementia: this results from brain cell death caused by conditions such as cerebrovascular disease, for example stroke.
This prevents normal blood flow, depriving brain cells of oxygen.
- Injury: post-traumatic dementia is directly related to brain cell death caused by injury.
- Some types of traumatic brain injury: particularly if repetitive, such as received bysports players - have been linked to certaindementias appearing later in life. Evidence is weak, however, that a single brain injury willraise the likelihood of having a degenerativedementia such as Alzheimer's disease.
Dementia can also be caused by:
- Prion diseases: from certain types ofprotein, as in CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakobdisease) and GSS(Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome).
- HIV infection: when the problem is simplytermed HIV-associated dementia. How thevirus damages brain cells is not certain.
- Reversible factors: some dementias can betreated by reversing the effects ofunderlying causes, including medicationinteractions, depression, vitamindeficiencies (for example, thiamine/B1,leading to Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome,which is most often caused by alcoholmisuse), and thyroid abnormalities.
Symptoms
The symptoms of dementia experienced bypatients, or noticed by people close to them,are exactly the same signs that healthcareprofessionals look for. Therefore, detailedinformation on these is given in the nextsection about tests and diagnosis.
A person with dementia may show any of thefollowing problems, mostly due to memoryloss - some of which they may notice (orbecome frustrated with) themselves, whileothers may only be picked up by carers orhealthcare workers as a cause for concern.
The signs used to compile this list arepublished by the American Academy of FamilyPhysicians (AAFP) in the journal AmericanFamily Physician
- Recent memory loss: a sign of this mightbe asking the same question repeatedly,forgetting about already asking it.
- Difficulty completing familiar tasks: forexample, making a drink or cooking a meal,but forgetting and leaving it.
- Problems communicating: difficulty withlanguage by forgetting simple words orusing the wrong ones.
- Disorientation: with time and place, gettinglost on a previously familiar street close tohome, for example, and forgetting how theygot there or would get home again.
- Poor judgment: the AAFP says: "Even awell person might get distracted and forgetto watch a child for a little while. Peoplewith dementia, however, might forget allabout the child and just leave the house forthe day."
- Problems with abstract thinking: forexample, dealing with money.
- Misplacing things: including putting themin the wrong places and forgetting aboutdoing this.
- Mood changes: unlike those we all have,swinging quickly through a set of moods.
- Personality changes: becoming irritable,suspicious or fearful, for example.
- Loss of initiative: showing less interest instarting something or going somewhere.

Be sure to see your doctor if you have any of the above symptoms.
Source: MNT/Tbthealth
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What an untreated Hypertension(High BP) can lead to.

We all know High BP right?. If you don't let me remind you on a statement you have probably heard from a friend, colleague or wherever.
Example; You are shouting on top of your voice. Maybe calling someone loudly, then someone silently echoes"better don't give Hypertension" . You remember now. If that doesn't remind you, then I bet we didn't grow up the same way. But I can bet you heard of it.
Well, High blood pressure (hypertension) can quietly damage your body for years before symptoms develop. Left uncontrolled, you may wind up with a disability, a poor quality of life or even a fatal heart attack. Fortunately, with treatment and lifestyle changes, you can control your high blood pressure to reduce your risk of life-threatening complications.
Here's a look at the complications high blood pressure can cause when it's not effectively controlled.
Damage to your arteries
Healthy arteries are flexible, strong and elastic. Their inner lining is smooth so that blood flows freely, supplying vital organs and tissues with adequate nutrients and oxygen. If you have high blood pressure, the increased pressure of blood flowing through your arteries gradually can cause a variety of problems,
including:
Artery damage and narrowing. High blood pressure can damage the cells of your arteries' inner lining. That launches a cascade of events that make artery walls thick and stiff, a disease called arteriosclerosis (ahr-teer-e-o-skluh-ROE- sis), or hardening of the arteries. Fats from
your diet enter your bloodstream, pass through the damaged cells and collect to start atherosclerosis (ath-ur-o-skluh-ROE-sis). These changes can affect arteries throughout your body, blocking blood flow to your heart, kidneys, brain, arms and legs.
The damage can cause many problems, including chest pain (angina), heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, stroke, blocked
arteries in your legs or arms (peripheral artery disease), eye damage, and aneurysms.
Aneurysm. Over time, the constant pressure of blood moving through a weakened artery can cause a section of its wall to enlarge and form a bulge (aneurysm). An aneurysm
(AN-yoo-riz-um) can potentially rupture and cause life-threatening internal bleeding. Aneurysms can form in any artery throughout your body, but they're most common in the aorta, your body's largest
artery.
Damage to your heart
Your heart pumps blood to your entire body.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure can damage your heart in a number of ways, such as:
Coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease affects the arteries that supply blood to your heart muscle. Arteries narrowed by coronary artery disease don't
allow blood to flow freely through your arteries. When blood can't flow freely to your heart, you can experience chest pain, a heart attack or irregular heart rhythms
(arrhythmias).
Enlarged left heart. High blood pressure forces your heart to work harder than necessary in order to pump blood to the rest of your body. This causes the left ventricle to thicken or stiffen (left ventricular hypertrophy). These changes
limit the ventricle's ability to pump blood to your body. This condition increases your risk of heart attack, heart failure and sudden cardiac death.
Heart failure. Over time, the strain on your heart caused by high blood pressure can cause your heart muscle to weaken and work less efficiently. Eventually, your
overwhelmed heart simply begins to wear out and fail. Damage from heart attacks adds to this problem.
Damage to your brain
Just like your heart, your brain depends on a nourishing blood supply to work properly and survive. But high blood pressure can cause
several problems, including:
Transient ischemic attack (TIA). Sometimes called a ministroke, a transient ischemic (is-KEE-mik) attack is a brief, temporary disruption of blood supply to your brain.
It's often caused by atherosclerosis or a blood clot — both of which can arise from high blood pressure. A transient ischemic attack is often a warning that you're at risk. of a full-blown stroke.
Stroke. A stroke occurs when part of your brain is deprived of oxygen and nutrients, causing brain cells to die. Uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to stroke by damaging and weakening your brain's blood vessels, causing them to narrow,
rupture or leak. High blood pressure can also cause blood clots to form in the arteries leading to your brain, blocking blood flow and potentially causing a stroke.
Dementia. Dementia is a brain disease resulting in problems with thinking, speaking, reasoning, memory, vision and movement. There are a number of causes of
dementia. One cause, vascular dementia, can result from narrowing and blockage of the arteries that supply blood to the brain.
It can also result from strokes caused by an interruption of blood flow to the brain. In either case, high blood pressure may be the culprit.
Mild cognitive impairment. Mild cognitive impairment is a transition stage between the changes in understanding and memory that come with aging and the more-serious problems caused by Alzheimer's disease.
Like dementia, it can result from blocked blood flow to the brain when high blood pressure damages arteries.
Damage to your kidneys
Your kidneys filter excess fluid and waste from your blood — a process that depends on healthy blood vessels. High blood pressure can injure both the blood vessels in and
leading to your kidneys, causing several types of kidney disease (nephropathy). Having diabetes in addition to high blood pressure
can worsen the damage.
Kidney failure. High blood pressure is one of the most common causes of kidney failure. That's because it can damage both the large arteries leading to your kidneys and the tiny blood vessels (glomeruli) within the kidneys. Damage to either makes
it so your kidneys can't effectively filter waste from your blood. As a result, dangerous levels of fluid and waste can accumulate. You might ultimately require dialysis or kidney transplantation.
Kidney scarring (glomerulosclerosis).
Glomerulosclerosis (gloe-mer-u-loe-skluh- ROE-sis) is a type of kidney damage caused by scarring of the glomeruli (gloe-MER-u- li). The glomeruli are tiny clusters of blood
vessels within your kidneys that filter fluid and waste from your blood.
Glomerulosclerosis can leave your kidneys unable to filter waste effectively, leading to kidney failure.
Kidney artery aneurysm. An aneurysm is a bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. When it occurs in an artery leading to the kidney, it's known as a kidney (renal) artery aneurysm. One potential cause is atherosclerosis, which weakens and damages the artery wall. Over time, high blood pressure in a weakened artery can cause a section to enlarge and form a bulge — the aneurysm. Aneurysms can rupture and cause life-threatening internal bleeding.

The curious: What Alzheimer means.

*Nods. Apparently Alzheimer's or Alzheimer is the most occurred brain disease. If you watched movies, documentaries etc, you would have come across this word as it is a very popular disease.

Enough of story...
Here is the definition:
Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. A general term for memory loss and other intellectual abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life.
Alzheimer's disease accounts for 50 to 80 percent of dementia cases.
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