Detecting early signs of dementia

This story first appeared in Healthy You - November 2025, The Gazette’s quarterly health publication.

Forgetting where you parked your car at the grocery store is a common lapse in memory that can happen at any age. Forgetting that you’ve gone to the grocery store at all an hour later is a red flag that you might be experiencing dementia.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in nine Americans 65 and older has dementia. More than 16,000 Iowans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

Dr. Georgina Aldridge, a neurologist with University of Iowa Health Care who specializes in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, says that while some forgetfulness is a normal part of aging, a decrease in cognitive function to the point that you can’t do your job or your day-to-day hobbies is not.

However, a red flag doesn’t mean that it’s Alzheimer’s. There are plenty of other things the neurologist will look for that could be causing these symptoms, she said, including vitamin B12 deficiencies, sleep apnea, seizures and medications.

“Even in people where it actually is Alzheimer’s, a lot of those things make it worse, so we can still help improve their outcomes by helping fix those different things,” Aldridge said.

Dementia doesn’t just affect memory. Depending on which part of the brain is affected, you might see progressively worsening changes to a person's ability to speak, their personality and behavior, and their motor skills.

Some signs to watch out for are:

The Alzheimer’s Association says that up to 40 percent of people with the disease also suffer from depression.

Julie Pameticky’s husband Scott was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at age 62. While there had been other troubling signs, the impetuous for getting help came after the Cedar Rapids couple had spent the day selling raffle tickets for a Mustang giveaway at their church. Scott didn’t remember selling tickets or the car five minutes after he’d driven it back to the church.

After a three-hour battery of tests and PET scan, a UI neurologist was able to show them Scott’s brain scan compared to a dementia patient’s brain scan, and “they looked almost exactly the same. That’s when I think he kind of started to accept it,” Julie said.

Most types of dementias are associated with clumps of different proteins that build up in the brain and interfere with communication between neurons. In Alzheimer’s disease, these clumps are called plaques and tangles. This leads to cell damage and death. Neurologists can see using brain imaging which parts of the brain have shrunk to identify which type of disease it is.

Standard of care treatments that have been around for a while can make up for some of the cells that have died — helping with memory and attention — but don’t slow the disease.

Aldridge says that in the past few years, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved new medications that teach your body how to attack one of the proteins that build up plaques in the brain.

“Everyone in the field was quite amazed when we found not only can we clear these plaques out of people, but also for the first time slow down the clinical disease,” she said.

With no cure for dementia, Aldridge encourages people to focus on the risk factors they can control. It’s important to continue to learn later in life and stay active. Stay engaged with hobbies that have a thinking component to them, or continue taking classes on topics you are interested in.

“I tell people, don’t do something you don’t enjoy. We’re not talking about doing Sudoku every single minute of the day if you don’t like Sudoku,” Aldridge said.

It’s also important to support the rest of the body, because the body supports the brain. Make sure conditions such as high blood pressure, sleep apnea and diabetes are controlled. If you have hearing loss, use hearing aids so your brain continues to get social inputs. In the same vein, have an updated glasses prescription so your brain is getting visual inputs.

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“Without these inputs, your brain has nothing to do and atrophies just like a muscle would,” Aldridge said.

Julie was able to keep Scott at home for more than nine years until he died in February from a stroke. She used the Life360 app on Scott’s phone to track him, and he wore a Gizmo watch that not only tracked where he was but was programmed to connect automatically when Julie called him.

When Scott’s condition became more progressed, Julie put up cameras in the house so she could keep an eye on him while she was at work teaching. She could even communicate with Scott through the cameras, reminding him when it was lunchtime and walking him through the steps to heat up his meal.

The Pameticky’s also took advantage of support groups like Conversations for Couples at the Chris & Suzy DeWolf Family Innovation Center for Aging & Dementia of Mercy in Cedar Rapids. The Innovation Center houses several components, from a Community Connections program that provides engaging activities and social interactions to a Family Caregivers Center that offers education and resources. It also includes the Mercy Center for Memory Health, which offers diagnostics, medication management and office visits.

Megan Wullner, operations manager of the Innovation Center, says the goal is to provide resources to benefit patients and caregivers.

“We’re trying to emphasize ways to stay at home as long as possible,” Wullner said.

Wullner says the Innovation Center is setting up a one-bedroom apartment full of tools that caregivers might find helpful in their own homes: appliances like stoves that can be controlled through an app if the patient forgets to turn it off, or Google Nest cameras that can talk back and forth. There’s even a robot, ElliQ, that will have conversations, play games and remind you to take your medicine.

The Innovation Center offers a respite three days a week for four hours each day where caregivers can drop off their loved one so they can run errands or have time to themselves. The center recently hosted a session about how to prevent family members with dementia from falling victim to fraud.

Julie, who now helps facilitate the Memory Café, will be teaching a six-week series starting in January on mid- to late-stage caregiving.

“We have a lot of great resources here in Cedar Rapids,” she said.