Dementia through the lens of epidemiology

This is an example of the strange idea that there is "normal aging" that is fine because it is normal and is somehow completely different from whatever parts of aging that we call age-related disease and have decided are not "normal aging". Semantics, all of it.

All of this is "normal aging". Dementia is "normal aging." Normal aging is terrible and creates a varying distribution of disease states in people. Those disease states are the end of a random walk of primary aging (i.e. unavoidable molecular damage caused by the normal operation of metabolism) and secondary aging (i.e. being fat, smoking, etc, things that add extra molecular damage or extra consequences that are similar to the consequences of the unavoidable molecular damage), and everyone ends up somewhere different in that state space. All completely normal.

The only way to prevent and cure the parts of normal aging that we have defined to be age-related disease is to fix the causes of aging, because age-related diseases ARE aging. It is all the consequence of exactly the same processes at root. The three current views of what those causes are:

SENS: http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research

Hallmarks of Aging: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039

Seven Pillars: http://buckinstitute.org/CellCommentary

One of my passengers pointed out that old people have a tendency to drink a lot of alcohol. Future passengers confirmed this again and again... One woman told of how old people get away from the care facility (for lunch with family, etc) she worked at and came back smashed.

Edit: many people have a problematic relationship with alcohol. I know some people who aren't at all truthful with their doctors about their alcohol use. Any effort to figure out dementia needs to figure out how alcohol fits into the patients' conditions.