Lisa Skinner: Lisa, Hi everyone. Welcome back to the truth lies
and Alzheimer's show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. Today, I
want to talk about what a neurocognitive disorder really
is, and it might actually surprise some of you that it
does include other conditions besides Alzheimer's or some of
these other brain diseases that cause dementia. So
neurocognitive disorder? What does that mean? It's a general
term that describes decreased mental function due to a medical
disease other than a psychiatric illness. So it's not mental
illness. This is neurocognitive disorders. Now, neurocognitive
disorders are grouped into three subcategories, the first one is
delirium, like a false belief, believing something's there.
That's not like my grandmother believing that there were birds
living in her mattress and that they would come out at night and
peck at her face. That's an example of delirium or a false
belief. It's different from a hallucination, where, when she
was telling me, asking me if I saw the rats running around in
her house, she literally thought she saw rats. That's the
difference. That's a hallucination. The other
subcategory for a neurocognitive disorder is what's called mild
neurocognitive disorder, and the person may be experiencing some
decreased mental function, but able to stay independent and do
daily tasks. And the third subcategory is called major
neurocognitive disorder, which is decreased mental function and
loss of ability to perform your activities of daily living, your
daily tasks. This is also called Dementia, and for those of you
who are new to this program, let me just take a minute to explain
the difference between Alzheimer's disease or one of
the other 200 brain diseases that cause what we call
dementia. So Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal disease,
Lewy Body disease, these are all brain diseases that cause very
similar symptomology in people who have these brain diseases.
The other thing that a lot of people aren't aware of, that I
want to make sure that you understand, is that people can
actually suffer from more than one brain disease
simultaneously. A person can be experiencing Alzheimer's disease
and, let's say vascular dementia at exactly the same time, but
those two brain diseases could be damaging different parts of
the brain at the same time. Now, when we use the term dementia,
we're referring to the symptoms, the signs and the behaviors that
are caused from the damage being done to the brain from the brain
disease, dementia is not an actual disease. It's a broad
term used to basically refer to the signs symptoms and behaviors
that we see that are caused as a result of the damage being done
to the brain. So it's a generic term, but it refers to the signs
and the symptoms like we've all experienced this, sometimes we
can't tell the difference between a cold and the flu, but
we experience symptoms, so let's say we have the symptoms that
are include a fever, Body aches, sneezing all the time. Now, what
is this? Is this a cold, or is this the flu? Well, hopefully
our doctor can tell us the difference, but the symptoms
between colds and the flu often are overlapping and they are
similar completely different diseases. So that's a good kind
of analogy for understanding the difference between dementia and
the actual disease. Is it's referring to the symptoms that
we're experiencing now, some of the causes associated with
neurocognitive disorder include. Brain injuries caused by trauma.
Brain injuries are not actual diseases. They are caused by
traumatic events. Traumatic injuries, it could include
bleeding into the brain, which is also referred to as an
intracerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding into the space around
the brain. Sub arachnoid hemorrhage is what the medical
term is for bleeding into the space around the brain. Or it
could be a blood clot inside the skull, but it's outside the
brain, and it's covering which may cause pressure on the brain,
and that's referred to either a subdural hematoma or an epidural
hematoma, or it can be caused by a concussion. It also these
neurocognitive disorders can also be caused by a breathing
condition. Many of us would never have associated that with
neurocognitive impairment, and that would include having low
oxygen in your body, or hypoxia, is the medical term for it, or
high carbon dioxide levels in your body, that's the medical
term for that. Is called hypercapnia. There are also
cardiovascular disorders that can cause neurocognitive
disorders and that includes in that category, dementia due to
many strokes, also referred to as multi infarct dementia, heart
infections such as endocarditis or myocarditis, having a stroke
or having a mini stroke, also referred to as a TIA or a
transient in ischemic attack, those can be the direct Causes
of neurocognitive disorders. Then we have degenerative
disorders, and these are your actual brain diseases, and there
are about 200 known degenerative disorders, but let me just list
a few of the more commonly known ones, beginning with Alzheimer's
disease, also referred to as senile dementia, the Alzheimer's
type. Fruits Feld Jacob disease is another one that is a little
bit more common, diffuse Lewy Body disease. We're hearing more
and more and more about Lewy Body disease. Hunting disease is
a rare one, but we're hearing that term more often. My brother
in law was one of my eight family members who actually
passed away from Huntington's disease, normal pressure
Hydrocephalus is another degenerative disorder,
Parkinson's disease, that one's pretty well known and picks
disease. There are autoimmune diseases that cause neuro
cognitive disorders, and a lot of people don't make that
association. So you can experience neurocognitive
impairment from having multiple sclerosis or Ms. You can also
experience neurocognitive disorder by having an autoimmune
disease, such as autoimmune encephalitis, and then there's
dementia due to metabolic causes. And this might surprise
some of you, kidney diseases can lead to dementia, like symptoms,
liver diseases, thyroid diseases, either hyper
thyroidism or hypothyroidism. So either an underactive thyroid or
an overactive thyroid vitamin deficiencies, such as a
deficiency in vitamin B, 1b 12 or folate, can mimic the
symptoms of dementia,
the confusion, the behaviors, all the things that we see
caused by an Alzheimer's disease or one of these other
degenerative disorders. The difference is the dementia is
due to metabolic causes. Death can be treated and possibly
reversed. Where the degenerative disorders cannot, they're
progressive, they get worse, and they eventually lead to death.
Then there's drug and alcohol related conditions that can lead
to neurocognitive disorders or impairment, and that would
include alcohol withdrawal, state intoxication from drug or
alcohol use medicine, effects such as corticosteroids,
sedative hypnotics, anti histamines and antidepressants.
There's also Wernicke Korsakoff syndrome, which is a long term
effect of deficiency of thiamine or vitamin b1 and then
withdrawal from medications such as sedative hypnotics or
corticos steroids can also contribute to neurocognitive
disorders, also included would be a sudden onset or long term
infection like a urinary tract infection, is a good example
blood poisoning, and that's what happens with urinary tract
infections. It can get into the blood called septicemia, and
just bring on dementia, like symptoms pretty quickly, but
Alzheimer's disease and the other neurodegenerative
syndromes or diseases don't bring on the symptoms quickly
like that, but a urinary tract infection that gets into the
blood system can but it's treatable with antibiotics. A
brain infection such as encephalitis, meningitis is
another one that's infection of the lining of the brain and the
spinal cord that can bring on dementia like symptoms. Another
one is called a prion infection, and an example is mad cow
disease. And then late stage syphilis also mimics
neurocognitive disorders and Lyme disease, too. Talked about
that recently on a on another episode, additionally
complications of cancer and cancer treatment with
chemotherapy and radiation therapy to the brain can also
lead to neurocognitive disorders and The related symptomology
other conditions that may mimic neurocognitive disorder include
depression, neurosis and psychosis. Some of the symptoms
that can differ based on the disease, but in general,
neurocognitive disorder causes agitation, confusion, long term
loss of brain function, which includes mild cognitive
impairment and or dementia and severe short term loss of brain
function or delirium. There are tests that may include blood
test, neuropsychological testing, an EEG, a head CT scan,
a head MRI and or a lumbar puncture, which is taking fluid
out of the spinal cap. It's called the Spinal Tap. Treatment
depends on the underlying condition. Many conditions are
treated mainly with rehabilitation and supportive
care to help the person with activities lost due to areas
where brain function is affected. Medications may be
needed to reduce aggressive behaviors that can occur with
some of these conditions. The Outlook or prognosis for some of
these conditions are that some are short term and reversible,
but unfortunately, many of these are long term and get worse over
time, and they are not curable. Some of the possible
complications are that people with neurocognitive disorder
often lose the ability to interact with others or function
on their own without needing help with some or all. Their
activities of daily living. So it's recommended that you should
contact your health care provider if you've already been
diagnosed with neurocognitive disorder and you are uncertain
about the exact type of disorder that's causing the symptoms that
definitely needs to be assessed immediately. You are showing
symptoms of a condition that I just mentioned. You have been
diagnosed with neurocognitive disorder, and your symptoms are
starting to worsen. Alternative names are organic mental
disorder or organic brain syndrome. So hopefully you found
some of this, not only informative and valuable, but
surprising that so many things out there can mirror and do
mirror the same or similar symptomology behavior, signs
that we see with Alzheimer's disease and other brain
diseases. I wanted to bring this to your attention, because the
symptomology that we experience with Alzheimer's disease doesn't
always mean it's going to end up as full blown dementia, that
it's possible there's an under another underlying root cause
that can be treated, can be reversed, can be cured. So be
aware of that, because if somebody in your family, or
somebody that you know all of a sudden starts showing these
symptoms, that you're thinking, oh my gosh, this. This looks
like it might be something like Alzheimer's disease, not always
the case. Take that person, have that person go for a full
assessment with your primary care physician, because it just
might be something that is treatable and reversible and
curable, and it's not going to be a long term, progressive
situation like we see with brain diseases. So that's what I
wanted to bring for you today to this episode of the truth, lies
and Alzheimer's again. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host, and I will
be back next week with another new episode of the truth, lies
and Alzheimer's disease, bringing you more helpful, more
valuable, more usable, information that'll hopefully
help you live better, happier lives until next time. Have a
good rest of your week. Thanks for being here with us today,
and we'll see you next week. Bye, bye.