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When hearing stories about mental health, you may hear the terms Alzheimer’s and Dementia used seemingly interchangeably, but what is the difference between the two?
Dr. Cameron Goetz and Nurse Practitioner Ann Rojas of the Memory Clinic at Froedtert Holy Family Behavioral Health in Manitowoc were on WOMT’s Be My Guest program this week, where they answered that exact question.
Rojas explained that Alzheimer’s is actually a type of Dementia, which comes in many different forms.
“There’s more than just dementia. Like there’s vascular dementia, there’s frontotemporal dementia, there’s Alzheimer’s, there’s different types of dementia,” she explained. “They present differently in an evaluation.”
Much like other medical conditions, Rojas explained that the type of dementia a patient has isn’t always black and white.
“Sometimes people have what we think is a combination of more than one type of dementia,” Rojas noted. “People can have like signs of vascular dementia and also signs of an Alzheimer’s dementia.”
Dr. Goetz said the best thing for everyone to do is to work on maintaining the health of their brain, specifically by focusing on the three pillars of brain health.
He said those pillars are “Number one, stimulating your brain. Number two, keeping your body active. And number three, keeping your body healthy.”
You can learn more about maintaining brain health and other mental health related topics by listening to the full program at SeehaferPodcasts.com.
