How long can you live with dementia?

Dementia means that the patient's brain begins to gradually atrophy and cognitive function becomes impaired. The disease may last for about 5 to 10 years, and it is a slow degeneration that changes every year. Elderly people with dementia find it difficult to distinguish some things and have various disorders. Dementia will not affect life expectancy, but it will reduce the intelligence of the elderly.

The most common early symptoms are:

1. Memory impairment manifests itself as the inability to learn new knowledge and the inability to repeat the names of three objects in a short period of time. Long-term memory will also gradually become impaired, and the person will not be able to clearly describe his or her own personal experiences, date of birth, or even the names of his or her relatives.

2 Although people with disorientation can recognize their own home, they often go out without knowing how to return and may get lost in familiar environments.

3. Personality changes: Patients may become conservative, stubborn, extreme, perverse and selfish, and some may even urinate and defecate in public.

As the disease progresses to the middle and late stages, aphasia (inability to communicate with language), apraxia (inability to use the limbs to complete designated movements), acalculia (inability to remember), and decreased judgment and generalization abilities will gradually appear. Eventually, the intelligence will decline severely, and movement disorders such as muscle spasms or flexion quadriplegia will appear. Incontinence may occur, and death is often caused by complications such as pneumonia.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that this disease is a syndrome of "fundamental deficiency and superficial excess" and "mixed deficiency and excess". The so-called original deficiency refers to the fact that the fundamental cause of this disease is that the functions of the internal organs gradually decline with age, leading to imbalance of yin and yang, emptiness of essence and marrow, and lack of nourishment to the brain. The so-called superficial condition is due to the dysfunction of the internal organs in the elderly, the disorder of the circulation of qi, blood and body fluids, which can easily lead to the accumulation of pathogenic factors such as qi, blood, phlegm, heat and toxins, blocking the brain meridians, causing the brain orifices to lose nourishment and the spirit to become ineffective. The interaction of these pathological products can aggravate the deficiency of internal organs, eventually forming a vicious cycle from deficiency to excess and then from excess to deficiency.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that this disease is closely related to dysfunction of the heart, liver, spleen, kidney and other internal organs. According to the characteristics of its pathogenesis, the basic treatment principle is to strengthen the body and eliminate evil, treat both the symptoms and the root causes, focus on tonifying the deficiency and strengthening the body, replenishing the marrow and nourishing the brain, supplemented by relieving depression and expelling phlegm, promoting blood circulation and opening the orifices, calming the liver and purging fire, etc. At the same time, it can be combined with acupuncture, massage, psychotherapy, rehabilitation functional training and other comprehensive methods of treatment.

As the global population ages, I believe the impact of this disease will become increasingly serious in the coming decades. I hope that experts in Chinese and Western medicine can work together to reduce the pain and inconvenience caused by the disease, improve the quality of life, and help the elderly spend their twilight years in peace.