Dementia is among the leading ailments of the elderly in The Bahamas which often goes unnoticed.

Although there is not a specified number of the elderly population, it is projected that by 2025 there will be near 70,000 people aged 65 years and older living in the country. It is said that someone in the world develops dementia every three seconds.

According to Consulting Family Medicine Physician Dr. Indera Minus-Grimes, dementia is reportedly a leading ailment in the elderly community, which means that age is a high risk factor.

As with most illnesses, there are early warning signs and they typically begin over the age of 60.

Dr. Minus-Grimes says “memory loss is an early indicative factor. Certainly, it is the one that families notice first, the most; they pick that up pretty fast.

“Short term memory is usually the first part of the memory to be affected and remote or long term memory goes much, much later,” Dr. Minus-Grimes told The Journal.

She confirmed that long term memory does remain intact in the early stages of dementia.

Dementia is the loss of cognitive function.

Dr. Minus-Grimes said, “we do look at other higher brain functioning. Dementia is essentially a type of brain failure. There is loss functional brain neuron and as we age, we will lose neuron, that’s expected.

“The loss of neurons starts to affect our brain function and our normal functions of everyday. The interference and the daily activities is the more important feature of it all,” she informed The Journal.

According to Dr. Minus-Grimes, dementia has several stages starting from mild, to moderate, severe then advance.

“Older persons tend to have chronic, non-communicable diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure because as we age, we are at higher risk of developing these problems and of course dementia is included in that group of medical problems that can happen,” she said.

Experts say there are things you can do to better the health of your brain like, drinking raw fruit and vegetable juices, adding a Vitamin K supplement to your diet, reducing stress, committing to regular exercise, quitting smoking and making time for meditation along with better sleeping habits.