Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that causes several body problems, including memory problems, thinking problems and behavioural problems. It is one of the most common causes of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is named after a doctor who first described the disease and called it. The Doctor’s name was Alois Alzheimer.
The condition is different from normal forgetfulness, in which a person forgets about a particular place or person’s name, but if the individual forgets his name and forgets the places well known to him, then this is different from normal forgetfulness.
Symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease
The typical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease may vary from mild to severe. It is critical to know that patients with Alzheimer’s disease may show different Alzheimer’s symptoms. The major difficulty that arises with this illness is memory loss. The memory loss interferes with daily life.
The early and later symptoms may vary in severity. The first signs are:
- Difficulty in remembering ordinary things
- Losing things like keys and glasses in the house
- Quickly being lost in well-known places
- Confusion of time and location of being
- Pressure to perform straightforward mathematical calculations
The signs of later stages of Alzheimer’s:
- Inability to remember the way to brush the teeth or comb the hair
- Inability to remember their house location
- Difficult to remember the names of simple things
- Confusion about time and place
- Changes in mood and behaviour
- Poor judgmental qualities, etc.
Changes in the brain during Alzheimer’s disease:
According to various scientists, there are about 100 million nerve cells in our brain, and they work together to make the brain function perfectly. Brain nerve cells send signals from the brain to different parts of the body. Alzheimer’s disease is known to interfere with the functioning of the brain nerve cells or the nervous system.
During ageing and Alzheimer’s disease, two abnormal structures called plaques and tangles form and damage nerve cells.
- Plaques are formed of the beta-amyloid protein
- Tangles are made up of another protein called tau protein
The destruction and death of the nerve cells with the buildup of these proteins causes Alzheimer’s disease and other symptoms of dementia.
Who is at risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease?
There are a few common risk factors that can initiate the beginning of Alzheimer’s illness, and they are:
- Age is a major risk factor. People above the age of 65 are at risk of getting AD, and the risk keeps increasing every five years. More than 17% of people are over 80 years old.
- Gender: it is not clearly known the reason behind the cause of the disease in women; still, at least twice as many women suffer from AD in comparison to men who reach the age of 65. Women live longer than men, and this fact is confused with the maximum cases of women who suffer from AD. Research is being done on whether oestrogen hormone lack post menopause is the primary reason for the cause of AD in ageing women.
- Family history or heredity: Yet another risk factor. People who have close ones or relatives with AD are more likely to get the disease.
- Genetic makeup: Two genes are related to developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The risk genes, APOE-e gene, APOE-e4, APOE-e2 or APOE-e3, are known to cause a risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, in case two copies of this gene are inherited.
The deterministic genes are very rare and found only in a few extended families worldwide.
Some other risk factors are:
There are a few other causes of memory problem that arises with Alzheimer’s disease:
- Medicinal side effect
- Depression
- Consuming too much alcohol
- Blood clot or tumor
- Unwholesome Diet
- Head injury
- Liver problem
- Kidney problem, etc.
Diagnosis:
No such test can examine the presence of Alzheimer’s disease. The patient’s condition is usually diagnosed with the help of a few common tests, including the analysis of the symptoms, some neurological tests and a few physical tests such as:
- Blood pressure check
- Weight check
- Urine test
- Blood test
- Pulse rate check, etc.
Treatments for Alzheimer’s disease:
There is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease to date. The scientist is still working on finding ways to prevent damage to nerve cells in the brain. A few drugs are available to control the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, and they are also FDA-approved. The Alzheimer’s medication list is as follows:
These Alzheimer’s drugs are also available online in case you have difficulty finding them in your locality. Although Alzheimer’s is an incurable problem, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the condition of the patient. The Alzheimer reviews show that drugs, support, and increased physical and mental activity can improve the patient’s condition several-fold.
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