"If you ever saw a house filled with lights and someone turning those off one by one, then you knows what happened to her brain. The first signs were small and too easy to dismiss. She started losing words and could barely sustain a conversation. Slowly, as the spreading darkness of Alzheimer's took over, she forgot how to cook, tell the time on the clock, dial a phone and speak five out of six languages she knew. She also lost all the favorite tunes that she hummed around all her life. For the gusty mother"

Who worked tirelessly to bring up two children after the sudden death of her husband, snapping pea pods takes concentration - lots of it - now. There's no cure and no way to stop the lights from "turning off" in her brain .At least not yet.

Dementia is a slow burn that strips sufferers of memory, personality and eventually humanity. "It refers to the whole class of conditions characterized by the deterioration of cognitive skills of a person , in two spheres - say , memory and calculation or memory or language - bringing one's quality of life down significantly" explains neurologist Dr Manjiri , she added "Dementia is the effect"

For over 60 per cent, the cause if Alzheimer's Disease. A further 20% have vascular dementia, caused by mini - strokes which disrupt the blood supply to the brain - most common in people with heart disease ad high blood pressure. The remaining 35% have a range of causes, from hypothyroidism to vitamin B12 deficiency, explains the man who authored Goodbye To Dementia . "Some are reversible, but the most deadly variants linked to Alzheimer's or Parkinson’s are incurable"

No one really knows, why and how brain cells start dying. In Alzheimer’s the condition is thought to be caused by the build - up of protein deposits in the brain plaques and tangles - whose first symptom may be a difficulty in finding words.

A cure for dementia is still a distant dream .But there's some action behind the scenes that raises new hope. Silently and largely out of the sight , memory clinics are popping in the city after city across the countries.

The government is not gone out of its way to help these clinics. Yet, as some of the missing puzzles start falling in place in the dementia jigsaw puzzle, a new legitimacy is being forwarded for a clutch of people who have always discussed in hushed tones by family members and kept out of sight as an embarrassment.

Labels: Dementia, Memory Leaks, Pain Relief