Is it dementia or is it Alzheimer’s?
Last Updated: Feb 7 2025
KEY TAKEAWAY: Alzheimer’s Disease is a type of dementia, with other common types including vascular dementia, lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia.
Many people are familiar with the name “Alzheimer’s Disease”, and the Alzheimer Society. This has led to some confusion in people thinking Alzheimer’s is not the same thing as dementia.
In fact, Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia, with dementia being a general term for progressive changes to the brain (read more here).
In other words, you can think of “dementia” like the word “tree”.
There are many different types of trees - Maple tree, Willow tree, Oak tree, Magnolia tree, etc., and each has their own leaves, patterns, preferences, etc.
There are also many different types of dementia - Alzheimer’s, Vascular, Lewy Body, Frontotemporal, Alcohol-Related, Primary Progressive Aphasia, etc., and each has their own set of symptoms and treatments.
The 4 most common types of dementia.
Alzheimer’s dementia makes up about 60-70% of dementia cases, and begins with forgetfulness.
Lewy Body Dementia accounts for about 20-40% of cases and begins with hallucinations, stiff movements that look like Parkinson’s disease, and disrupted sleep.
Vascular dementia, often occurring at the same time as Alzheimer’s disease, accounts for roughly another 30% of cases.
Frontotemporal dementia is only about 5-10% of cases, and begins with personality changes like a lack of empathy, having little interest in activities, and poor judgement.
(You can see that the percentages don’t quite add up - which has to do with the challenge of diagnosing people correctly).
There are many other types of rare dementias, each of which has different first symptoms depending on where in the brain the disease begins, which we will explore in future articles.
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