brain disease
I thought it was just a yellow dot… A warning sign of ‘dementia’?
Reporter Lee Ara
Entered 2024/04/27 13:00
If yellow spots appear on the whites of your eyes, you should suspect drusen, which is caused by a lack of blood flow to the eye, and it is highly likely that you have dementia./Photo = Clip Art Korea
◇Yellow spots above the whites of the eyes
If you have yellow spots above the whites of your eyes, it may be a warning sign of dementia. The yellow dots are believed to be created by a substance called ‘drusen’. Drusen is a waste product that accumulates in the retinal pigment epithelium due to poor blood flow, and usually appears as yellow spots in the eyes. If blood flow to the eye is not supplied, it means that blood flow to the brain is also reduced, which means there is a high possibility of dementia. There are also research results related to this. In 2018, a research team at Queen’s University in the UK observed the eyes of 117 elderly people aged 60 to 92, and found that 25.4% of those with yellow spots had Alzheimer’s dementia. This can be seen as a big difference compared to only 4.2% of healthy people. When the elderly people who participated in the experiment were re-examined two years later, it was found that the yellow dots in Alzheimer’s dementia patients became wider and their number also increased compared to healthy people.
◇Diagonal wrinkles on the earlobe
Wrinkles on the earlobes can also signal the risk of dementia. A joint study between Kyung Hee University Hospital and Samsung Medical Center showed that earlobe wrinkles are closely related to brain aging. If you have wrinkles on your earlobes, your risk of dementia is twice as high. Diagonal wrinkles on the earlobe are a phenomenon that occurs when small blood vessels become weak. This can also be caused by cerebral white degeneration (a phenomenon in which the cerebral cortex turns white) or ischemic disease. These diseases appear when substances that cause dementia accumulate in the brain blood vessels.
◇Increasing sleep talking
Sleep talking in itself is not a disease. However, if the condition becomes more severe, it is diagnosed as REM sleep behavior disorder. In particular, research has shown that REM sleep behavior disorder can lead to dementia or Parkinson’s disease. As a result of a team led by Professor Jeong Ki-young of the Department of Neurology at Seoul National University Hospital, which conducted electroencephalography before and after sleep on 20 patients with REM sleep behavior disorder and 10 normal people, the EEG of people with abnormalities in the cerebral network even without any special cognitive impairment was found to be in the early stages of dementia and Parkinson’s disease. It appeared to be similar to the symptoms. For this reason, experts recommend that middle-aged people get an accurate diagnosis if they have poor sleeping habits, as REM sleep behavior disorder that occurs in old age can worsen into a degenerative neurological disease 5 to 10 years later.
