Living With Dementia

My Weekly’s favourite GP from TV and radio writes for you

Forgetting things, especially when you’re distracted, is normal and not a sign of dementia. But what can you do if a loved one is affected, or to protect yourself?

Our best estimate is that there are about 850,000 people with dementia living in the UK. We don’t know exactly – partly because many people with early dementia don’t have a formal diagnosis.

In Alzheimer’s disease, which affects about half a million people, “tangles” of protein get laid down in the brain, disrupting the connections between nerve cells.

The second most common kind of dementia, vascular dementia, is down to tiny clots in the blood vessels of the brain, which gradually lead to loss of blood supply. There are several other less common forms of dementia, all more common with age.