Dementia & Incontinence

This article was part of our series for World Continence Week 2024.

As the previous post on the mental burden of incontinence illustrated, incontinence can both be the cause of other issues and also be caused or worsened by them. Today’s article focusses on one of the most insidious illnesses existing: dementia.

First things first, what is dementia? Dementia is a catch-all term for a number of illnesses with similar effects, namely the loss of cognitive function. This means that it degenerates a person’s memory, logic, understanding, and reasoning. Dementia becomes much more common as it a person ages, which means as our life expectancies increase and our populations age it will only become more common in the future.

The onset of dementia usually with an increasing inability to remember recent events, conversations, where objects were put, and general confusion. Normal tasks become more difficult, and it becomes harder to solve problems, find the right words, follow conversations, and find the right way even to familiar places. The two most common forms of dementia are Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, causing a progressive decline in cognitive (mental) and motor (physical) skill/ability. This can eventually lead to the brain sending wrong signals to the rest of the body or losing the ability to send some signals at all.

Vascular dementia results from restricted blood flow to the brain, which in turn causes the abovementioned changes in memory, thinking, or behaviour. This is often caused by strokes or high blood pressure impacting the blood flow.

What Does This Mean For You?

The presence of dementia means that different kinds of incontinence can occur (for a refresher on the types of incontinence, see our article on the topic): If you can’t remember where the toilet is – or what a toilet is used for – how will you go to the toilet when needed? Or in a more progressed case, if you can’t identify what the feeling or urge means, how will you even know that you have to go to the toilet?

However, it is important to exactly identify the effect here: often, this means Alzheimer’s only causes Functional Incontinence, which means help such as memory aids and clear signs for the toilet can help a person remain continent for much longer by reminding them where the toilet is and how to use it.