Insurers boost dementia insurance, related services in aging Japan

A man with dementia holds shows a card reading "I have dementia. I need your assistance" as he strolls in park in Omiya, Saitama Prefecture.

A person with advanced dementia would not even know what the card's purpose was, let alone be able to read it. Fortunately in my experience Japan has enough good Samaritans who can identify such a person and guide him or her to the nearest koban.

This dementia epidemic is only going to get worse. The damage is done when people are young. Japanese kids/teenagers do not get enough sleep, which stops their brains fully developing and results in dementia later in life. Most of the tens of thousands of teenagers I have worked with in the last two decades or so survive on only 3-6 hours sleep per night for years on end. The hippocampus controls your memories and needs a minimum of 6 hours sleep every night to clear your brain of garbage memories. These kids are not sleeping enough and, as a result, their brains do not clear and they become these little zombies that are unable to remember anything. It all comes back to the education system, which is based on the rote learning style of remembering many useless facts in order to pass a test. The students spend hours and hours memorising facts an substitute sleep for it. However, the less sleep they get, the less they remember. It's just stupid! Dementia will continue to grow in Japan and not just because of the ageing society. Each generation of Japanese kids sleeps less and less. No doubt the amount of senior citizens in Japan will decrease, but the percentage of dementia sufferers will increase.

Learn a second language and greatly decrease chances of dementia. There are some solid correlations here.

Learn a second language and greatly decrease chances of dementia. There are some solid correlations here.

Not sure if that's a valid medical observation. A woman I know speaks six languages. She began sinking rapidly from age 76.

Not sure if that's a valid medical observation.

It is, but this is not a valid evidence against it:

A woman I know speaks six languages. She began sinking rapidly from age 76.

It's been shown that learning a second language can stave off dementia. That doesn't mean it will for each individual - we are talking about trends over groups of people.

Learn a second language and greatly decrease chances of dementia. There are some solid correlations here.

It might be true, but there are also studies showing that low intelligence is a risk factor for dementia. It might just be that second language learning is a proxy for higher intelligence, since only people who are already fairly intelligent tend to learn a second language.

scum. These guys are banking in the fact that people either won’t remember or will not fall under coverage due to symptoms. this should all be covered under he Nation health Care scheme.

"Not sure if that's a valid medical observation. A woman I know speaks six languages. She began sinking rapidly from age 76."

That's called a hasty generalization. A popular fallacy to use.