Alzheimer’s Disease is a type of dementia, a term for a decrease in mental ability that affects your memory, thinking, and behavior. Alzheimer’s Disease progressively worsens over time. The longer Alzheimer’s is in your system, the more difficult it is to do daily activities. Alzheimer’s affects about 4.5 million Americans.
The majority of people that have Alzheimer’s Disease are at least 65 years old. However, Alzheimer’s is not just for the old. 5% of people with Alzheimer’s suffer from early onset Alzheimer’s. This often affects people in their 40s and 50s.
In 1901, Dr. Alois Alzheimer was working in a German mental hospital. He met a woman there who showed signs of dementia. She often made false accusations and used strange words for …show more content…
This helps narrow down the possibilities of your condition and lead them closer to discovering what the patient has.
Alzheimer’s Disease occurs in stages. It starts out as simple memory loss. Later stages of Alzheimer’s include the inability to respond and interact with your environment and have a conversation.
The first stage is called the early or mild stage. During this stage, people with Alzheimer’s repeat themselves often and put objects in unusual places, like putting the TV remote in the cookie jar. Minor memory loss also …show more content…
This is the stage when the disease is first diagnosed by doctors. During this stage, people with Alzheimer’s may forget to turn off appliances, forget to eat meals, and forget how to read. Victims also tend to wander away from their homes.
The third and final stage of Alzheimer’s Disease is called severe AD. By this stage, the plaques and tangles have harmed so many parts of the patient’s brain that they cannot think, reason, or talk. The patient will need help doing everything. They also have problems with eating. Finally, the patient is kept in bed and eventually dies. The patient usually dies from problems caused by Alzheimer’s, rather than the disease itself, such as heart disease, infections, and the inability to eat.
The cure for Alzheimer’s Disease has not yet been discovered, but there are some treatments to slow the progression of plaques and tangles.
The latest Alzheimer’s Disease drug is called memantine. This is the first drug that can be used during the final stage of AD. It lowers glutamate, a substance that is believed to destroy brain cells. Memantine helps slow the work of the plaques and tangles, allowing the patient to live longer. Like all other AD drugs, memantine does not stop Alzheimer’s; just slows it