6 Early Dementia Signs Most People Miss (And What To Do Now)

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]When was the last time you walked into a room and completely forgot why you were there? But instead of sort of like laughing it off and not thinking anything about it, you actually felt a flicker of fear. You wondered whether it could mean something more. Now, if that question resonated with you, then this video is for you. Because the truth is almost everybody has had that moment at some point. And almost everybody has wondered, even briefly, whether it might mean something more, whether or not you've got early dementia. The honest answer is that most of the time it doesn't. But there are six specific early signs that when they cluster together are genuinely worth paying attention to. And these are the ones that family members and even the person themselves tend to brush off for years before anybody takes them seriously. In this video, I want to do three different things. I want to walk you through the actual physiology of what's going on in the brain when dementia first begins to take hold, so that the signs that we go through next make a bit more sense rather than sounding like a bit of a random list. Then I'll take you through the actual six early warning signs that people most commonly miss in roughly the order that they tend to appear. And then finally, I want to be really honest with you about what to actually do if you are worried both for yourself or for somebody that you care for as well because there was far more that can be done now compared to just even 5 years ago. Now to make sense of these different warning signs, you need to have a bit of a mental picture of what dementia actually is and what's actually happening in the brain. So imagine your brain as an enormous city with billions and billions of streets all connecting different neighborhoods to each other.

[00:01:47]Each street is a connection between your brain cells and your memories and your habits and your personality, your sense of where you are and what day it is. All of these are stored in the patterns of traffic that flow through these streets.

[00:02:03]Now in Alzheimer's disease which is the most common form of dementia two specific kinds of rubbish start to build up in that city. The first one is a very sticky protein called amaloid which clumps together and forms plaques between the buildings blocking the pavements. And then the second one is a tangled protein called tow t au which builds up inside the buildings themselves and causes them to collapse from the inside out. So those plaques and tangles those two different proteins damage the streets and bring down the buildings and slowly road by road neighborhood by neighborhood the city begins to shut down.

[00:02:48]And here's the part that tends to shock people when they hear this first. The process of all of that doesn't begin in your 70s. It begins sort of 15 to 20 years before you ever notice a single symptom. And the science here is pretty much settled now. We don't really argue this point. Brain scans of people in their 40s and 50s who go on to develop Alzheimer's already show amaloid building up sometimes decades before the diagnosis. The lights are dimming inside the city long before anybody notices the streets are getting darker. I hope that makes sense. This is why early signs are so subtle and it's also why catching them early matters so much because every year that you intervene with lifestyle changes is a year that the disease has less ground to take. The first sign is all about your short-term memory, but specifically the way it starts to slip and disappear. This is the one that most people think they know and it's the one that gets brushed off the most often because you know everybody forgets things sometimes. But the version that matters is more specific than just forgetting things. It is forgetting the same thing again and again and again within the same conversation. Like the person asks you what time the appointment is and 20 minutes later they ask again with no memory of asking the first time. They tell you the same story at lunch that they told you at breakfast with the same enthusiasm, literally as if they've never told you this before.

[00:04:17]They put the kettle on and then they forget about it. And then they find it cold an hour later and then they put the kettle on again and then they forget about it again. And this is not an occasional thing. This is a pattern here happening more and more often over time.

[00:04:32]So what's actually going on inside your brain when this happens? One of the first places to get damaged by Alzheimer's is a very small structure deep inside your brain called the hippocampus. Now the hippocampus is the part of the brain or part of the city that writes down new memories. If that gets damaged then new information never really gets recorded properly. So it never reaches the long-term storage. So this is why somebody in the early stages can describe their wedding day from 40 years ago in really vivid detail, but they cannot tell you what they had for breakfast. Basically, their older memories were written down when the system was working fine before these symptoms started, but the newer memories never really make it down onto the page.

[00:05:19]The second sign is all about familiar tasks. the ones that used to run on autopilot without you thinking about them but then suddenly become really hard work. So that could be somebody who you know enjoys a lot of cooking who then starts struggling with a recipe that they've made you know a million times or somebody who's driven the same route for 30 years. They take a wrong turn and they get a bit lost. Or it could be somebody who has always managed the household money who then starts making basic mistakes with their bills and forgets to pay for things that they've usually paid on time for decades. But why does this happen? Well, automatic tasks live in a different part of the brain to conscious thinking.

[00:06:03]They're stored in really wellworn pathways built up over years of repetition. When dementia begins damaging the cortex, which is that sort of wrinkled outer layer of the brain, the stuff that you see when you see a picture of the brain on Google, those pathways start to fray and become a bit damaged. And tasks that used to run quite well on their own suddenly need a lot of effort. And in fact, large studies that have followed people for years have found that everyday tasks like managing money can start slipping a long time before a diagnosis, sometimes many years before. And families usually only really spot this sort of thing in retrospect when they start looking back.

[00:06:43]Once there is a name for what's actually happening once that person has been diagnosed. The third sign is all about personality. Almost like a quite a shift in who somebody actually is and who they seem to be. And the reason it gets missed is that it doesn't look like dementia in the way that most people picture it. A normally chatty person becomes a bit quiet at family gatherings. You know, people might think it's because of their hearing or something or somebody who used to host friends starts cancelling plans or a gentle person becomes a bit more irritable or a confident person becomes suddenly anxious about leaving the house. And quite often this is a bit distressing for the families and the change is rarely dramatic or sudden.

[00:07:27]It's the kind of thing that families explain in a way that happens over years and we just put down to getting older, you know. And families often say things like, "They're just a bit different to how they used to be. They're not as sociable as they used to be." When families look back after a diagnosis, a change in personality or mood is very often one of the first things they remember noticing. And researchers are taking this more seriously than they used to. There was a growing interest in what we call mild behavioral impairment, which is almost like a new and lasting change in mood or behavior later in life that may in some people be an early footprint of the disease. The fourth sign on this list today is all about your sense of direction and losing your sense of direction in places that you should know inside out. Like, you know, getting lost in their own neighborhood or they step out of a familiar shop and they're not sure which way is home or where the car is. And in severe cases, people sometimes are found wandering far from home with no idea how they got there. But in the early stages of dementia, it is obviously a lot more subtle. That that might just be hesitating at a junction that they've been through a thousand times. They may take a wrong turn to a friend's house that they've visited for years. Now, the part of the brain that we're talking about here actually sits right next to the hippocampus that we talked about in that first sign. Unfortunately, it's also one of the very first areas damaged in Alzheimer's, often before anything else shows up. This is why a poor sense of direction can actually come before memory loss in some people. And there's some interesting studies out at the moment where researchers have even built video game style tests that measure how well people find their way around. And people in their 40s and 50s who do quite badly on these tests are more likely to develop dementia in the future. So, if you've noticed yourself or a family member becoming unsure about familiar roots and there is no other obvious explanation like poor eyesight or a new medication, then you've got to take that seriously. The fifth sign on this list is all about language and the growing struggle to land on the right word. And this one needs a bit of careful interpretation here because it's so common in everyday life. I've been recording for I think this is my sixth hour now and I'm struggling to get my words out in this video sometimes.

[00:09:51]Everybody has a bit of struggle on this sort of thing at some point. But what's different in early dementia is the frequency and the type. You know, the person pauses mid-sentence more and more often, hunting for a word that should be completely familiar and it happens more frequently and they start swapping in really vague descriptions instead. So the word for watch could be, you know, that thing on your wrist. Or the word kettle becomes the thing that you boil.

[00:10:18]The names of grandchildren or close friends slip out of reach a bit more often and the whole conversation starts to slow down because the person is quietly working much harder to keep up.

[00:10:29]So what's actually happening here? Well, the language centers of your brain sit on one side in two areas called the Brock's area and the Wernern's area or Vernicus area. And if you've studied stroke physiology, then you'll recognize these two areas from your revision. And as dementia takes hold, they slowly lose the ability to pull up stored words on demand. And here's something really interesting actually. So a study published in 2021 looked at short writing samples from people who were still healthy. And they found that subtle changes in the words people used could help to predict Alzheimer's more than seven years before any diagnosis.

[00:11:13]The brain is working harder to do something that used to be effortless.

[00:11:18]And the result is a creeping vagueness in language that families often notice before the person does themselves. And then finally, the sixth sign is all about judgment and it's probably the most concerning one here. This is the one that often forces a family to act and do something about it because it's where things can become a bit unsafe sometimes. So, the person starts making decisions that are often quite out of character and that carry real consequences like sending a large sum of money to a stranger who phoned the house and they've got involved with some sort of scam or they forget to take their medication or they take it twice. And we have so many patients in the A&E with accidental overdoses where they've taken, you know, the morning and the afternoon and the evening doses from their dosit box and we do their blood and make sure that they're, you know, absolutely fine. We observe them for a few hours. But this is really, really common. Or they leave the cooker on and then walk away or they go to bed without turning the gas off on their hob or personal hygiene starts to slip away even in somebody who has always been quite meticulous. And you know, it could be things like they wear the same clothes for days or the house starts to look a bit messy or a bit grotty in places as well. Now, the area of the brain that's behind all of this, what we call executive function, is the preffrontal cortex, right at the very front of the brain. So, executive function is your ability to plan and to judge and to weigh up consequences and to hold back an impulse. And when this area is damaged, the result is usually not that dramatic. It is a very slow wearing away of careful judgment. So people can become quite impulsive or more trusting of strangers and less able to think through where a decision will lead to. And the numbers here are a bit sobering to be honest. So older adults in the early stages of decline are far more vulnerable to financial scams or somebody trying to convince them to change their will or things like that.

[00:13:25]In fact, an unexplained loss of money in the years before a diagnosis is one of the stronger warning signs that we know of. So that is a very quick whistle stop tour over those six signs. Now, if you recognize yourself in one or two of these things, then it doesn't mean that you have dementia. And the single most important thing I can tell you is to not panic. There are loads and loads of different causes for things like memory and attention problems. Things like poor sleep or depression or anxiety or problems with your thyroid or vitamin deficiencies or alcohol or the side effects of new medications as well. A really good assessment from your doctor will work through all of these before anybody uses the word dementia. What they should do is take a really thorough history, examine you thoroughly, check lots of different blood tests, see what medications you're on, see if anything has changed in your mood, if there's been any big stresses in the family or at home recently as well. And this really needs more than just a 10-minute appointment. And you know, the worst thing they can do straight away is just send you straight to the memory clinic.

[00:14:35]a doctor has to sit down with you and do an absolutely thorough assessment to check absolutely everything everything about your lifestyle. So, if you're concerned about yourself or a family member, step one really is to write down the specific things that you've noticed and then take them to your GP or your family doctor and if you can bring a family member who can describe what they've seen from the outside if you're concerned about yourself because that view is often more revealing than what the person themselves can describe. Now, if it's a family member showing these signs, then the kindest and most useful thing that you can do is bring this up with them and have a really calm, relaxed conversation with them and offer to go to the appointment with them. And obviously, for good reason, people often resist this. They become a bit frightened or a bit nervous. They are convinced they're fine. So, the gentlest approach really is to frame it, you know, like we want to rule something out. So say to your friend or your family member, you're a bit concerned about their memory or some of the decisions they've made and say, "Let's go to the doctor, make sure there's nothing serious going on." Don't even mention the word dementia or Alzheimer's. Because honestly, that's often what we do. We rule out the most serious things first. And like I said earlier, what they'll probably do is some blood tests. They may send you for a CT scan or an MRI scan. They may refer you to the memory clinic. But all of that should happen after they've taken a thorough history and examined you as well to make sure there's no physical causes of those symptoms. So the main thing really as you get older is just to be aware of these different signs. None of them mean on their own that you have dementia, but if you start to notice a few of them clustering together, then that is your cue to have a calm chat with your doctor without panicking. And here's the really hopeful part about all of this, about dementia. There is a huge amount that you can do through the way that you live, like your diet and your movement levels and your sleep and your blood pressure that can slow a lot of this down and in the early stages can actually improve how well the brain is working. The evidence behind this honestly is absolutely real. There are loads and loads of research studies that focus on this particular thing and I'm planning to do a whole separate video on exactly that because it needs its own video. So, I really hope that video was useful for you. Let me know in the comments if there are other parts of dementia that you'd like me to focus on.

[00:17:07]Whether that's the signs and symptoms or the lifestyle changes that you can make to try and reverse some of those symptoms or slow them down or any other things you'd like to focus on in terms of cognition and memory as you get older and I will try my best to add them to the list. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next