Welcome to the 8th in our 17-part series on dementia. About 50 million people suffer from dementia worldwide. It is a debilitating disease, but it may be preventable. So I’ve set out to learn as much as I can and bring you along with me. In part 3 I went through the many types of dementia, and we’re going to have separate episodes on the most common of these. This is the 5th and final of that series-within-a-series, and it’s about Mixed Dementia.
Mixed Dementia. It is also sometimes known clinically as “dementia – multifactoral”. As the name suggests, people with this type suffer from more than one type or cause of dementia. The most common is Alzheimer’s and Vascular. Frontotemporal (FTD) may be a component, and sometimes mixed dementia can combine Alzheimer’s, vascular, and lewy body dementia all 3 at once.
Autopsy studies show that most people with dementia aged 80 or older probably had mixed dementia. Many researchers are emphasizing that mixed dementia is clinically important because the combination of two dementia conditions may speed up the progression of dementia or have a compound, greater impact on the brain.
Prevention is really just trying to reduce the risk factors of dementia. And since mixed dementia could include any of the types we mentioned, this would be a good guide for prevention of dementia in general.
Current research suggests that diet, alcohol abuse, exercise, cardiovascular disease, cholesterol levels, incidences of mild cognitive impairment, diabetes, and smoking are all contributors to the development of dementia.
The page on mixed demtnaia at dementia.org says that Positive lifestyle changes, especially during middle age, can be integral to dementia prevention. I think that’s a pretty key statement — ESPECIALLY DURING MIDDLE AGE….
Here are some preventative measures:
Quitting smoking
Restricting alcohol and recreational drug use
Mentally stimulating activities, such as memory exercises or learning a new language
Eating healthy
Maintaining a regular exercise routine
Staying socially active
Getting quality sleep
Managing stress well
Managing health problems such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure
I can imagine that mixed dementia makes a tough diagnosis even tougher. It seems that most of the time patients are diagnosed with only one type, and only after death is it determined that multiple types of dementia were involved. Same goes for treatment and prevention.
But having finished our study of the 5 most common dementias, it seems to me that vascular dementia is probably the most preventable of the five. And there’s a synergy with preventing the number one cause of death, CVD. So my takeaway, before doing anything else, is to make I’m taking care of my heart and circulatory system.
Next time we’re going to talk more about prevention, in what may be my favorite episode of this series. Stay tuned and stay toned!
References:
Outsmart Dementia. (2020). The latest tools for controlling cognitive health — preventing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Morton Grove, IL: Publications International, Ltd.
https://www.alzheimercalgary.ca/learn/types-of-dementia/mixed-dementia#:~:text=Mixed%20dementia%20is%20a%20condition,changes%20associated%20with%20vascular%20dementia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia
https://www.dementia.org/mixed-dementia