Cognitive deterioration is common when reaching a certain age. Some alert signals can help warn this deterioration in older adults, to treat it in time.
Cognitive or cognitive deterioration consists in the alteration and decrease of basic mental abilities such as: memory, language and reasoning, says Christian Ruiz Murillo, a geriatrics specialist. In some cases this deterioration can be mild, moderate or severe, to the point of greatly affecting the daily activities of the person and their development.
Among the most common symptoms and manifestations is the alteration and decrease in memory, orientation, calculation, language (verbal and written), reasoning and visual recognition.
“We must be objective that, as in most neurodegenerative diseases, at the time of symptoms, the disease is in an advanced state, so that an early medical assessment would be recommended when there is a family history of dementia, when the person studies with states of loss of memory, disorientation, confusing or changing words, but above all not to blame that this symptomatology is, in between, normal for the age. Ruiz
According to the specialist, these are the easiest alert signals to identify, which could indicate that there is a cognitive impairment in older adults:
- Alteration or decrease in memory, orientation, calculation
- Language effects (verbal and written)
- Difficulties of reasoning and visual recognition
- Behavior alterations
- Delusional ideas, for example, say they want to steal their things
- Visual, auditory and even mixed hallucinations
The expert points out that the presence of any of these previously mentioned signs or symptoms should make us suspect a cognitive impairment and it is in that case when a medical assessment becomes necessary to corroborate or rule out whether it is a cognitive impairment.
Also to verify whether it is the presence of any other symptomatology such as an acute confusional state.
Recommendations to avoid cognitive deterioration
Ruiz says that it is important that, given the slightest doubt of deterioration, a doctor who can perform an assessment and diagnoses to have adequate control of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, hypothyroidism, among others, should be used.
To the extent that these types of diseases are controlled in adequate values according to age, the risk of cognitive impairment is reduced.
In addition, it is important to take into account that if within the family there is a person with a diagnosis of cognitive impairment, medicines and attention are performed in order to delay the evolution of the disease, because the day not today there is no cure for this disease. On the contrary, if it continues to progress, it would quickly become a dementia.