About Dementia, SIDS, Breast Cancer

Dementia is not really a specific disease. It is used to denote a group of symptoms that are cause by disorders of the brain. People with dementia undergo drastic changes in the personalities and cognitive abilities. They may find it difficult even to carry out normal activities like dressing up, eating or brushing their teeth. They may become unable to control their emotions or solve problems. Along with personality changes they may even see things that aren't there.

Dementia commonly occurs in Alzheimer's disease. Research shows that dementia is on the rise and the numbers are predicted to go up in future as well.
The best approach to tackle this is by preventative measures. Vascular disease, smoking, high blood pressure and smoking are contributing factors to dementia. These are factors that can be kept under control. Also, staying mentally fit and keeping the mind active either through a regular job or through a hobby could also be a highly useful and effective preventive measure.

SIDS
SIDS or Sudden Infants Death Syndrome denotes the infant suddenly dying in his sleep. The mothers whose babies die of SIDS are seen to have an increased risk of preterm delivery and other complications in later pregnancies. Studies conducted on mothers whose babies died of SIDS revealed that in future the women were more likely to deliver babies who were too small and have an increased chance of preterm delivery as well.

This could explain why some women have SIDS running in the family.
Breast Cancer
The traditional treatment methods of breast cancer painted a grim picture. Complete removal of breasts was often performed which led to severe physical and emotional trauma in patients. But now, the entire breast need not be removed, thanks to a procedure called lumpectomy where only the tumor is removed along with a small amount of surrounding tissue. The rest of the breast is saved and radiation therapy to the remaining breast tissue drastically improves the chances of long term survival. Though US guidelines insist on radiation on the remaining breast tissue after conserving therapy, this is not always done because of the side effects and because so far there has not been any solid evidence that radiation is beneficial.

This is good news indeed for breast cancer patients, they may no longer need to undergo the psychological trauma of having to live with having one or both of the breasts removed.