Deans' stroke musings: This Subtle Dementia Symptom Sends Early Warning

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, May 26, 2017

This Subtle Dementia Symptom Sends Early Warning

Your doctor should be using this to baseline your cognition since you are likely to get dementia. If s/he doesn't baseline you at all, my opinion would be incompetency on their part.
1. A documented 33% dementia chance post-stroke from an Australian study? May 2012.
2. Then this study came out and seems to have a range from 17-66%. December 2013.
3. A 20% chance in this research. July 2013.

This Subtle Dementia Symptom Sends Early Warning

Dementia breaks down the brain’s ability to perform complex tasks, like this one.

Being unable to understand sarcasm is an early warning sign of dementia, research finds.
Deterioration in key parts of the brain in neuro-degenerative diseases causes people to have problems spotting insincere communication.
Detecting lies and sarcasm is a relatively complex cognitive task.
It requires being able to simulate the other person’s mind and inferring what they must mean.
Those with dementia also find it hard to spot lies.
Dr Katherine Rankin, who led the study, said:

“These patients cannot detect lies.
This fact can help them be diagnosed earlier.”

Scientists are always looking for ways of spotting dementia earlier, as this is the key to better treatment.
The study involved 175 people, some of whom had neurodegenerative diseases.
They were shown videos of people talking, who were sometimes sarcastic or told lies.
People with frontotemporal dementia found it particularly difficult to spot the lies and sarcasm.
This could provide a useful early warning sign.
Dr Rankin said:

“If somebody has strange behavior and they stop understanding things like sarcasm and lies, they should see a specialist who can make sure this is not the start of one of these diseases.”

Other early warning symptoms of dementia include a change in sense of humour:

“Changes in sense of humour could be an early sign of dementia, a new study finds.
A shift to preferring slapstick humour — like Mr Bean — over satirical or absurdist comedy, such as Monty Python, could be an early sign of Alzheimer’s.
Friends and relatives of those with dementia reported seeing changes around nine years before the more typical memory problems.”

Another even more surprising sign of dementia is being unable to smell peanut butter.
The study was published in the journal Cortex (Shany-Ur et al., 2012).