What is the correlation between sleep and dementia?
Is there a link? Is there firm science behind it? Not just the same old "we think it's linked"
What is the person is just tired from other reasons? like having to go to the bathroom and that's why elderly are sleeping more?
I realize health care has improved over the decades, but I feel detection, getting to root cause is still in back to the 1800's. I'm not impressed with modern doctors, they only give medicines for the symptoms. Doctors these days, the local ones never seem to know what's wrong, they take all the vitals, and then say "I think you might have this" or "I think we should try this first" It's never a firm, you're getting these symptoms because the root cause is "X" and we have to treat "X" to make you better.
Yes procedures have improved, cures have not!
We should be at a stage where a doctor connects one wire or gets one drop of blood and the computer read out gives you the list of conditions you you currently have in an instant and the ones you are going to have in the future, so they can be averted.
Currently it's only the "big talk" that has advanced.
Did anyone detected a hint of frustration?
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Provided no global geopolitical event does not get in the way. If they put AI to work, which can out do humans a billion fold we'll start seeing revolutionary changes in medicine. All that money funding wars should be going into things like AI to advance medicine instead. Bio-tech and AI is going to change things quickly, if they let it.
Medical treatment is always evolving . For example when I was in college to be a nurse it was thought that Crohn’s disease was caused by stress , anxiety , a mental health problem causing the symptoms . Only 20 years later when my own teenage son was diagnosed with it they had discovered it was an autoimmune disease .
The human body is complex and there is still alot of unknowns . For example they still don’t know what triggers a pregnant woman to go into labor .
They have made great strides in cancer and like already said immunizations and antibiotics saved so many children’s lives .
Aging people is a different story . The aging body is like an old car , it is just being propped up . To expect cures for what ails the aging body such as heart disease , dementia , kidney disease etc . Is asking for a miracle . My in laws were like that . They thought medicine would have them feeling like they were 40 forever and just drop dead one day .
As far as the doctors not being able to pin down exactly what’s wrong in the aging person……well , so many problems have similar symptoms . So it’s not always clear what is the cause . When an aging person has many chronic issues they also play off one another. Heart disease causes lung problems and Vice versa . Diabetes causes kidney disease , heart disease , strokes . High blood pressure , high cholesterol causes , heart disease. strokes, dementia , kidney disease . Etc .
The aging body is much more difficult to manage than a healthy young person that needs an antibiotic to cure strep throat .
All kinds of strange reasons were “ thought “ to cause certain diseases back in the old times until research was done , discoveries made , leading to effective cures and treatments . And people who still believed the crazy reasons and crazy ineffective cures had to be convinced that the “ modern cures “ weren’t witch craft .
The “ we think it’s linked” as you described is a normal part of discovery during learning about a disease . There will never be a cure for dementia because like heart disease it’s a problem of the body aging .
A friend of mine who was a doctor used to say that “ Doctor’s “ practice “ to try to get it right . They don’t know everything about how the human body works and are always learning “. He was an ER doctor and this was what he said about his frustration over patients expecting him to be able to always pin down exactly what was wrong .
Star Trek territory you mean? We have made so many huge strides in healthcare over the last century, consider that during the first world war people died of sepsis because antibiotics were only rudimentary science and children died every day from diseases easily prevented by vaccination, that may seem like ancient history to some but given that my parents were born in 1919/1920 it's all still part of living history.
As for the sleeping - being older is tiring, I'm only in my 60's and I already notice how much more effort it takes to do things that I once did effortlessly without even noticing. Plus it's a rare octogenarian who doesn't have at least one chronic health condition which puts a strain on the body.
or is it
"Is poor sleep quality correlated to developing dementia?"
They are 2 different things.
I think this should be moved to Discussions...
If people want that option to live longer it shouldn't be denied, it's like saying you can't have the medicine because it will extend your life.
If people are saying eating fruits and veg to living longer is natural way to live longer, but most raw foods is grown using man made fertilizer which can be considered unnatural. human have interfered with almost everything to make it unnatural. People in these various fields of work have gone to far down the road of science and technology already and they're not about to make any U-turns at this stage.
Rephrased question: Is a change in sleeping habits, i.e. sleeping more, waking up later during the day a sign, symptom of dementia? without any other type of sleep disruption.
It's a question and a discussion. Where should it be moved. Needhelpwithmom.. has also previously mentioned it makes little difference if it's in Discussions, discussions fizzle out really quickly on this forum.
I prefer no rigid boundaries of where things are kept, just open talk, how it should be.
Research takes a long time. When your talking Dementia your talking about the brain which we are still trying to find out how it works. Everyone's Dementia journey is different. Some brought it on themselves. Over use of alchohol. Smoking. Not taking care of themselves. Heredity which Alzhemier's is. So Drs are still guessing. There are basic stuff but the brain is complex.
Sleep studies are part of my specialty. However for patients with dementia, even if they were prescribed a sleep apnea machine they would pull it off withing 5 minutes because their brains are broken and they cannot comprehend what it is needed for.
I only discovered what Sleep Apnea is today, because you mentioned it. I didn't know about this disorder, but they say it causes sleep disruption and you're right this could be another reason for sleeping longer as well as needing to go to the toilet during the night. As you mentioned I'll do some reading and research.
Some times I feel what's the point there's 100s of conditions people can get during old age, many get before old age, but most would agree more health problems of all types start creeping in one by one, slowly taking away something we once took for granted. Is that all there is to it, life? born, grow up, probably have a partner, probably have children, grow old, get various health problems and then die, and many thinking there's something more afterwards.
Sometimes I think what is life for, all these 8 billion plus people doing the same things, where's it all heading? why are we here? what does it mean to living? if it's for joy why is there so much pain?
Don't forget yesterday's sci-fi is today's reality.
It might be a bit like Star Trek, but sci-fi sets the targets, the goals to achieve. No one knew Artificial Intelligence (AI) was going to take off so quickly but it has, still very early stages but, AI was considered Star Trekky not long ago.
The talk (hype) about the Medical breakthroughs far outweigh the reality and this is where my frustration come in. News report: Doctor's in US have discovered such and such, but will be 20 years before it is useful to anyone. Why not just inform us when it's actually useful to humans from day one of the announcement, not give people the hope and then say it will be 20 years before it becomes useful.
I stand by my views, advancement is way too slow and talk is hyped up too much. The quicker they get AI on to it the better, this is one good use for AI. million times faster than humans. Liz Homes may have fooled people with your claims about blood testing, but there will be a time when one drop of blood tells you all, or even without the drop of blood, just a 30 second full body scan. It's around this decade we should already have these things.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-07-09/artificial-intelligence-medicine-diagnosis
I want to see certain areas advance a million fold from where it is today and medicine is one of them.
I want to see reversal of all conditions, decalcification of Aortic Value with only medicine. Reversal of any cognitive impairment with medicine, Reversal of aging itself down to a certain selected adult age, for instance 25 years old.
Also money is a factor . Don’t know if this is true or not , but have heard that the common cold can be eradicated by vaccine ( like polio in this country ) . Have read two different reasons why it hasn’t been .
The first being that drug companies won’t allow it do to the amount of money they make on cold medicines .
The second ( and I read this long before Covid happened ) , that there was a fear it would open the door to a much more deadly virus . The theory being that plentiful less dangerous viruses help crowd out other new mutants .
I think doctors are also frustrated and think research could be faster . They have little control over that . It comes down to big Pharma , and funding for research , insurance companies , government entities etc .
That being said , I still think it’s impressive how far medicine has come in the past 100 years compared to centuries of no progress .
And honestly, after experiencing how nasty people are even on a forum like this...who wants to spend more time with an world filled with THOSE people? Yech.
I kept joking with Venting...about reaching 99.99% of the people yet.
especially this part of the post: "If the person is in the later stages of dementia and they have gradually started sleeping more and more, it is likely to be due to the dementia progressing. "
So looking like if different stages are early, middle and late. If in early or middle stages the long sleep into the day could be related to something else, however in early or middle stages, it might still be a sign that gradually longer sleep is tied to early stage dementia at first, then middle stage, sleeping even longer, and in late stage sleeping even longer. It's definitely something to be watchful as a caregiver.
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