Alzheimer’s Disease
It starts with minor memory lapses,
like getting people’s names confused or forgetting where you put the
keys to the car. At this stage, it’s nothing more than an old
running joke that other family members get a laugh out of during
get-togethers. But then, as time goes, it begins to affect other
aspects of your life, including work, and disrupts daily routine.
Pretty soon, you’ll find yourself wondering how to flush the toilet,
figuring out what the switch on the wall is for, and countless
menial tasks that you used to take for granted. Or, you’d wake up
one morning and find that you can’t see anything. Panicking with the
certainty that you have gone blind, things become more eerie when
the wife tells you that your eyes are closed. You forgot to open it.
You forgot how to.
The disorder is called Azheimer’s
disease, and it affects millions (4.5, according to the most recent
study) of people over the age of 65. Scientifically speaking,
Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia, a brain disorder that
seriously affects a person’s ability to carry out daily activities.
The disease starts to manifest its symptoms after the age of 60. The
older a person gets, the worse the symptoms become.
During the onset of Alzheimer’s
disease, the parts of the brain that control thought, memory, and
language are affected. At this moment, scientists have yet to
discover what triggers Alzheimer’s disease and the cure, but
countless research is being done and have been successful in helping
patients with this condition cope.
How Alzheimer’s Disease Got Its Name
Alzheimer’s disease was first
discovered in 1906 by Dr. Alois Alzheimer (hence, the name). Dr.
Alzheimer had a woman patient who died of an unusual mental illness.
While studying her condition, the doctor noticed changes in the
patient’s brain tissue, such as abnormal clumps (known as amyloid
plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (called
neurofibrillary tangles). Years later, these plaques and tangles
in the brain are considered as common symptoms of Alzheimer’s
disease.
Other signs of Alzheimer’s disease
that later scientists discovered include dead nerve cells in the
memory and cognitive areas of the brain, disrupted connections
between nerve cells, and low levels of neurochemicals, all of which
result in impaired thinking and memory.
Treatment
As mentioned, there is no cure yet
for Alzheimer’s disease. Additionally, what treatment options are
available do not guarantee a halt in disease progression. How fast
or how slow the disease progresses vary from patient to patient, but
the average is that patients with Alzheimer’s disease generally live
from eight to ten years after they are diagnosed. If, however, the
patient is diagnosed in the early and middle stages of Alzheimer’s
disease, the drugs like tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine, and
galantamine may help prevent some of the symptoms from becoming
worse.
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