DEMENTIA

According to a study conducted in England, one in three people born in the United Kingdom in 2015 1. will suffer from dementia in their lifetime.

Dementia is a kind of mental illness during which the brain stops working properly because of illness, old age or injury. People who suffer from dementia have real problems remembering even basic things in their lives like where they live or who they are. In some conditions, people have memory loss, poor judgement skills and problems with language. Due to dementia, these people’s personality can change and they 2. may lose their ability to do many everyday tasks. An important charity claims that dementia 3. will affect 27 per cent of boys born in 2015 and 37 per cent of girls. This is a very serious case because it signals a health crisis that 4. will rise when the population gets older. Currently, there is no effective treatment to slow down or stop dementia. The charity says governments must spend more on research.

Dr. Matthew Norton who is an expert on dementia tries to explain how serious the problem 5. may become in the future: "As people are living longer, more and more people 6. will develop dementia in the future if we do not take action now. Dementia is one of our greatest medical challenges and if we really want to beat it, we must invest in research to find new treatments and preventions."

Globally, dementia affects around 36 million people. About 10 per cent of people develop the disease at some point in their lives, but this figure 7. will rise sharply as people live longer. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's.

This is when the brain loses cells, which reduces the brain's ability to function properly. Blood pressure, blood sugar, stress and genetics are only some of the factors that influence the illness.

Adapted from Breaking News English