Alcoholic dementia: Definition, symptoms, treatment

The life expectancy of someone with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome tends to be shorter than the average individual. This may be due to the condition itself, but it is also influenced by the fact that most people who develop this condition have used alcohol heavily, creating additional health problems. Studies show that about 50% of people with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome only live eight years after reaching this stage. If the person is still addicted to alcohol, treatment for the addiction is the first step, and many forms of help are available. This means it’s challenging to learn new information and remember things already learned.

• Your doctor may recommend nutrition and other medications to treat any specific symptoms.
• But in some cases, your care team may prescribe medication like rivastigmine or memantine, which are typically used for managing Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.
• The Recovery Village aims to improve the quality of life for people struggling with substance use or mental health disorder with fact-based content about the nature of behavioral health conditions, treatment options and their related outcomes.
• Some people with ARBD will only have small changes to their thinking and memory, known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
• An even greater amount of evidence concerning the link between dementia and alcohol consumption might be gathered by using further databases and including publications in languages other than English for a more thorough systematic review.

Who gets ARBD?

The NHS recommends not drinking more than 14 units of alcohol each week. This should ideally be spread over three or more days because ‘binge-drinking’ is particularly harmful to the brain. If a person regularly drinks much more than the recommended limit of alcohol, it can damage their brain. It causes their memory and ability to think clearly to get worse over time, especially if the person drinks too much over many years. Your answers will help them determine whether malnutrition or chronic alcohol misuse may have caused vitamin B1 deficiency.

Should Someone with Alzheimer’s or Dementia Drink Alcohol?

Anyone with an alcohol use disorder should seek professional medical help to prevent further complications while working toward addiction recovery. The one clear way to prevent or treat alcohol-related dementia is to stop drinking as soon as possible. By removing the causative factor, the progression of  alcohol-related dementia can be stopped. If the specific case of dementia is reversible, stopping alcohol use will be necessary for recovery to occur. Unlike many forms of dementia, alcohol-related dementia may be reversible depending on the circumstances.

Midlife alcohol consumption

People with severe alcohol use disorder also tend to have nutritional deficiencies from a poor diet and irregular eating habits. Alcohol-related dementia can cause problems can alcoholism cause dementia with memory, learning, judgment, and other cognitive skills. Lifestyle changes, such as eating a balanced diet and stopping the use of alcohol, generally help.

• Over time, drinking too much alcohol can cause brain cells to die and a person’s brain tissue to shrink.
• It is essential to identify modifiable risk factors as understanding these could help prevent or delay the onset of dementia.
• Most people with alcohol-related ‘dementia’ will need to stay in hospital for this.
• If you’re taking any medication, be sure to read the package label and insert carefully—and/or talk to your doctor—to see if you should abstain from drinking alcohol altogether.

Wernicke Korsakoff Syndrome

You and your community can take steps to improve everyone’s health and quality of life. “Mind exercises, mind games, and memory games are definitely not harmful,” he says. While they won’t necessarily prevent cognitive decline, Powers says that they can help to “retrain” the brain. The study participants also did a standard set of tests to measure concentration, thinking speed, and planning and carrying out tasks. That included a picture-word interference task, which had participants see pictures of everyday objects like a broom while hearing an audio clip of a word that was related (like “mop”) or that sounds similar (“groom”).

• They will also need to take high-dose thiamine (vitamin B1) tablets and eat a healthy, balanced diet, and have counselling or ‘talking therapies’.
• The causes of young-onset dementia, also known as early-onset dementia, are different from those in older people.
• The symptoms of alcohol-related dementia and age-related dementia are fairly similar.
• Clifford Segil, DO, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, agrees.