ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
Dementia is the term by which conventional medicine describes a neurological condition characterised by the decline of various cognitive functions. It may affect language, praxic-motor skills or short and/or long-term memory, and the social context in which we are placed has accustomed us to thinking of it as something that only affects people of an advanced age, generally over 65-70 years. The etymological dictionary explains to us that the term dementia is composed of a prefix de- , meaning 'estrangement from', and mind, which the same dictionary indicates as 'generator of ideas' (in reality the meaning is much broader, but for the use I have to make of it in this article it is more than enough).
When we use this term, we are therefore indicating a person who is not able to generate meaningful thoughts and who somehow lacks 'presence'. Allow me to make an observation, in light of what has just been reported. I would tend to rule out the correlation between old age and dementia in scientific terms, as the condition of 'non-presence' is a typical feature of Western man, as already described in countless articles in my column. I would like us to move away from the idea that this term is the vector of a negative or denigrating meaning and focus on everyday life.
Have you ever, for example, found yourself in front of the wardrobe without remembering what you were supposed to take? Or finding yourself in the car to go and buy something and not remembering what? Or someone proposing a trivial logic riddle to you and not being able to solve it? And if we want to broaden the spectrum of analysis even further, has it ever happened to anyone to do something really stupid, like parking your car in the handicapped spot or forgetting your house keys hanging on the door? Can we classify these examples as situations where presence is totally lacking? Try to reflect. When such events occur where are we? Are we really present?
Don't worry, we are not all demented. However, in some way, each of us manifests some kind of blackout. Some more, some less. We can blame it on tiredness, stress, too many things to think about, but that doesn't change the fact that these are conditions that can potentially affect everyone, bar none.
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