Ahead of Alzheimer’s is vital when it comes to stopping its advance. Some of the most important clues are in language

Alzheimer’s is one of several disorders causing dementia in the third age. It is also the most frequent: in Spain it is estimated that in 2019 there were about 800,000 people suffer from the disease, according to data Spanish Society of Neurology. Globally Estimates They suggest that more than 30 million people live with it.

One of the challenges with which patients, family and health professionals have to face is Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Of a Early diagnosis It depends a lot on our reaction capacity to face the symptoms of this disease for now incurable.

We have advanced a lot in the diagnosis of this disorder. So much that one of Our main tools Diagnosis is discard, that is, rule out that cognitive deterioration detected in one person is caused by other forms of dementia, such as Parkinson’s. Fortunately, it is not the only tool at our disposal.

Another diagnosis pillar are capacities. Specialists can resort to evidence that allows them Evaluate our cognitive abilities And our memory. In this context, interviews can also be conducted to the relatives who help evaluate the patient.

The images by scanner, both magnetic resonances, as computerized tomographies or by positron emission, can also give clues. On the one hand they can help in the work of discarding other pathologies, but also They can help To detect the presence of amyloid plates linked to the disease.

Until relatively a short time, the confirmation of Alzheimer’s diagnosis could only be done after the patient’s death, examining his brain. Conremps diagnostic techniques can already offer us a comparable degree of certainty. Partly thanks to the last of the tools available to experts, biomarkers.

Collecting clues

The diagnosis of this disease can only be performed by experts in the field, but sometimes it is important to be attentive to the clues They tell us that in family or relative may be developing the disease. Tracks that can notify us that the time has come to request help from health professionals.

In a Recent article in The conversationSarah Curtis, a language expert at Nottingham Trent, listed some perceptible clues through Speech changes of the people who are developing this disease.

The first of these indications is the appearance of pauses and doubts in speech, accompanied by a certain vagueness when expressing. That is, the person may have difficulty finding the word you want to use and just trying to overcome this obstacle by resorting to trunk words as “thing” or describing the object vaguely.

Another early indication of Alzheimer’s is in confusion when using words. These confusion can be almost imperceptible at the beginning since they can start with words that allude to more general categories, such as using “animal” instead of “dog.” They are more noticeable if the substitution is for another concept in the semantic field, such as using “cat”.

Another track listed by Curtis It is the passage of facts to words. People with Alzheimer may have difficulties when completing certain activities, which will result in this person talking about the activity, the emotions that arouses them or even expressing doubts or longing regarding their ability to complete the action.

Memory loss can be primed with the lexical variety of the person suffering from Alzheimer’s. That is why this disease can begin by manifesting with An increasingly reduced vocabulary and a greater tendency to repeat words.

The fifth and last of the indications mentioned by Curtis on his list, has to do with precision when choosing the words. A person who develops Alzheimer’s can have difficulty listing diverse words in the same category, such as different animals, food or words that begin with a specific letter. This is why the tests used in their diagnosis often ask people who perform this type of enumerations.

Many people can read some of these indications and think “this happens to me too.” And it is that confusion of this type are normal. It is common for us to be tongue in countless contexts. That is why it is important to attend to changes in speech and not simply to the existence of confusion or difficulties.

Alzheimer’s is a disease that does not appear out of nowhere but is gradually aggravated and is generally not detectable in its early stages. That is why it is often of vital importance attend to your first symptoms. Even more if we consider that some of the treatments are only effective delaying the disease in these early stages.

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Image | Jiun-Je Lin