Dementia is no longer a "disease of the elderly"
- Dr. Nati Blum
- Published in Mako
- No comments
It can also come in midlife, when careers are at their peak, children are still at home, and plans for the future are many. But alongside the difficulty of dementia and Alzheimer's, many families also have to deal with shame, concealment, and friends who don't always know how to respond.
I experience the price that an entire family pays and also know how much early diagnosis, sharing, and getting help can change the path.
For years we have become accustomed to thinking of dementia as a "disease of the elderly." A grandfather who no longer remembers, a grandmother who is confused, an aunt who no longer behaves as she did the day before yesterday. But in 2026 we already know that the reality is much more complex.
Young-onset dementia is defined as symptoms beginning before age 65, and can appear in the 50s or even earlier. The World Health Organization estimates that young-onset dementia accounts for between 4% and 6% of cases. In Israel, too, thousands of people are known to have been diagnosed at young ages, as we recently published in the EMDA Association.
At age 50, the disease encounters a family in a completely different place in life: work, mortgage, children, relationship, elderly parents, and sometimes a person who is at the peak of his career.
It's one person's illness that changes the lives of an entire family.
A diagnosis of dementia doesn't stay in the doctor's office. It comes home. With all the family members.
Gradually, the spouse also becomes a caregiver. The children begin to care for the parent. Responsibility for finances, driving, medications, appointments, and errands changes. Things that were once taken for granted become tasks, and above all, the gradual loss of life as the family knew it looms.
There are diseases that those around them understand immediately. When a person is undergoing oncological treatments, for example, the very existence of the disease is often more obvious to those around them. In dementia, especially in the early stages, the person can look exactly as they always have.
He may talk, dress, laugh, and sit with us in a cafe while at the same time having difficulty finding a word, forgetting an appointment, losing his bearings, or having difficulty with a task he once performed easily.
And this gap sometimes gives rise to painful reactions: "But he looks great," "I forget too," "It must be pressure."
Then comes the shame and with it the hiding.
I meet families who don't tell. Not to friends, not to neighbors, sometimes not even to extended family.
On the one hand, they can be understood, dementia is still shrouded in stigma even in 2026, and the EMDA Association aims to continue to change this. There is a fear that friends will distance themselves, that they will speak to the person as if they don't understand, that they will stop inviting them, or that from now on they will only see the disease.
But hiding has a price.
When you don't tell, the friend doesn't understand why you stopped coming. The former colleague doesn't know why the person keeps repeating the same story. Family members make excuses, reduce meetings, and slowly the social circle may shrink.
Then a double struggle arises: both the disease itself and the effort to hide it.
You don't have to tell everyone. You can't be left alone with this.
Sharing does not mean posting the diagnosis on social media. Privacy is the right of every person, even more so of a sick person, but it is worth creating a small circle of people who know: a brother or sister, a close friend, a neighbor, the adult children. Explain what is happening and what can help.
Sometimes it's enough to say: "There is cognitive decline. If he repeats a question, don't correct him angrily." Or: "Don't stop inviting us. We may not always come, but we still want to be part of it."
Friends don't always walk away because they don't care. Sometimes they just don't know what to do or what or whether to say.
Don't say "it's just age"
Perhaps the most important message today is not to ignore a persistent change in memory, language, orientation, behavior, or the ability to perform familiar actions.
Early diagnosis makes it possible to understand the source of the change, rule out other conditions, plan for the future, and tailor treatment and support. And in this day and age, it has an additional significance: There are new treatments for early Alzheimer's that can, in suitable patients, slow the progression of the disease - not cure it, but buy valuable time.
And what can be done now?
There is no magic formula, but there are things that play an important role in maintaining brain health, function, and quality of life: regular physical activity according to ability, a healthy and balanced diet, including a Mediterranean diet, cognitive activity such as reading, brain games, learning, crossword puzzles, and hobbies, maintaining social connections and avoiding isolation, treating blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, vision or hearing difficulties, and other risk factors, and especially a familiar routine, meaningful activity, and continuing to live within the family and community as much as possible. The updated WHO guidelines from 2026 emphasize physical activity, a healthy diet, cognitive and social activity, and risk factor management as part of the effort to reduce the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
You don't need to know how to do it yourself.
One of the most important sentences I want to say to families is: Don't wait for a crisis to ask for help.
The EMDA Association is the address for families dealing with dementia and Alzheimer's in Israel. You can turn to them for information, guidance, support, and tools for coping - even at the beginning of the journey, when everything is still confusing and unclear.
Because dementia changes lives, but it doesn't have to erase them. The person you loved before the diagnosis is there after it too. They are still a partner, a mother, a father, a friend or a girlfriend. They need care - but no less than that, respect, companionship, meaning and love.
And his family needs exactly the same thing.
In 2026, it is time for us to stop whispering the word dementia/Alzheimer's. The sooner we talk about it, the sooner we recognize it, and the sooner we seek help, the more we can provide the sick person and their family with not only better care, but also a more humane way to navigate this complex journey that includes the patient at the forefront, but also many other people, whom we must not forget.
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Dr. Nati Blum, the columnist, is the CEO of the EMDA Association and holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Sacramento, USA.