About Alzheimers

MIKE SELVON asked:


“All in all, we are faced obviously with a peculiar disease process,” physician Alois Alzheimer wrote in 1901. After performing an autopsy on one of his patients, the German doctor concluded that the memory loss, disorientation, impaired speech and delusions were caused by brain shrinkage, widespread dead cells and protein deposits. He began to learn more about Alzheimers, but just fifteen years later, Alois Alzheimer died, never knowing that a whole branch of Alzheimers research would develop based on his work.

Some of the newest Alzheimers research has focused on brain cell connectors. A new study done by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine found a connection between signs of Alzheimers and a brain protein called kalirin-7. “We already knew that kalirin controlled the synapses,” lab researcher Peter Penzes explains.

“But now we understand how it works and that it could be responsible for memory storage. Kalirin acts like a volume dial, making the synapses stronger. This suggests that a drug that would stimulate kalirin could improve memory or delay the progression of memory loss.” The next step in this Alzheimers brain research is, of course, human clinical trials.

A British Alzheimers research study suggests that Hormone Replacement Therapy may protect against memory loss in women. “It’s further evidence that the brain systems that are involved in dementia are adversely affected by loss of ovarian function,” claimed head of research Dr Michael Craig.

“There may be a critical window of time around the menopause stage when HRT may have a beneficial effect in protecting against Alzheimers and dementia,” he added. However, some American studies found that HRT may actually increase the risk of Alzheimers symptoms, Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease, suggesting another stalemate.

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, warned: “This is not conclusive evidence and women are not advised to start HRT specifically to protect against dementia since it can have side-effects and possibly increase the risk of stroke.”

While there has been no definitive Alzheimers prevention found by research, doctors say that exercise, which raises your heart rate for at least 30 minutes several times per week diminishes your risk of Alzheimers. In animal experiments at the University of Chicago, they found that signs of Alzheimers were less visible in mice that had frequent exercise.

In fact, active mice who exercised had 50-80% less plaque deposits in the brain than sedentary mice. “Regular physical exercise is probably the best means we have of preventing Alzheimers disease today,” says Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimers Research Center at the Mayo Clinic. He added, “It’s better than medications, better than intellectual activity, better than supplements and diet.”

Thelma

Alien asked:


Alzheimer’s disease was originally named after Dr. Aloysius “Alois” Alzheimer, who was a German doctor that specialized in psychiatry and neuropathology. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), also known simply as Alzheimer’s, is a neurodegenerative disease that, in its most common form, is found in people over age 65. Approximately 24 million people worldwide have dementia of which the majority (~60%) is due to Alzheimer’s

The main risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease is increased age. The rates of the disease increase markedly with advancing age, with 25 percent of people over 85 suffering from Alzheimer’s or other severe dementia. Many scientists believe that AD results from an increase in the production or accumulation of a specific protein (beta-amyloid protein) that leads to nerve cell death. Loss of nerve cells in strategic brain areas, in turn, causes deficits in the neurotransmitters, which are the brain’s chemical messengers.

Two types

The two types of Alzheimer’s disease are:

* Sporadic Alzheimer’s disease - this type accounts for more than 90 per cent of cases. Adult men and women of all ages can be affected, although most cases occur in people over the age of 65 years. It can take up to 20 years for the disease to develop.

* Familial Alzheimer’s disease - this rare type is caused by a genetic mutation. The age of onset is earlier than for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease, with symptoms appearing when the person is aged in their 40s or 50s.

What causes it?

The exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease isn’t known, although some risk factors are known. The risk of developing the disease increases with age, for example.

There’s a higher risk of Alzheimer’s if a family member has the disease. However, inherited genetic factors are responsible in only a small number of families.

When the disease is inherited, it tends to lead to early onset of Alzheimer’s, usually between the ages of 35 and 60. One of several different genes may be at fault, such as the presenilin-1 gene on chromosome 14 or the amyloid precursor protein gene on chromosome

What Are the Symptoms of AD?

AD begins slowly. At first, the only symptom may be mild forgetfulness, which can be confused with age-related memory change. Most people with mild forgetfulness do not have AD. In the early stage of AD, people may have trouble remembering recent events, activities, or the names of familiar people or things. They may not be able to solve simple math problems. Such difficulties may be a bother, but usually they are not serious enough to cause alarm.

However, as the disease goes on, symptoms are more easily noticed and become serious enough to cause people with AD or their family members to seek medical help. The disease’s course varies from person to person. Eight years is the average length of time from diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to death. Survival begins to decline three years after diagnosis, but some people live more than a decade with the disease.

Prevention

Although there is no proven way to prevent AD, there are some practices that may be worth incorporating into your daily routine, particularly if you have a family history of dementia. Talk to your doctor about any of these approaches, especially those that involve taking a medication or supplement.

* Consume a low-fat diet.

* Eat cold-water fish (like tuna, salmon, and mackerel) rich in omega-3 fatty acids, at least 2 to 3 times per week.

* Reduce your intake of linoleic acid found in margarine, butter, and dairy products.

Tammy

Steven Godlewski asked:


Alzheimers disease robs you of intellectual and social abilities and interferes with regular life. About 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimers Disease. The disease usually affects seniors over the age of 65. As the population ages this number is expected to quadruple.

There is no cure for Alzheimers disease. There is progress being made by researchers to improve the quality of life for those who have Alzheimers. Drugs are being discovered and studied which may lead to treatments of the disease.

If you have been a caretaker of a loved one with Alzheimers disease, or have a loved one suffering with it, you know that it takes patience and love to keep you and them going.

If you think a loved one may be showing early signs of Alzheimers Disease, what should you look for? One of the most prominent signs of Alzheimers Disease is forgetfulness. It starts out with occasional forgetting simple directions or recent events. It progressively gets worse until the patient may forget even family names and objects they see every day. They also may repeat things they’ve already told someone, and put objects down and forget where they placed them. On the other hand, they might put something away so they will remember where they put it, and put it in such an illogical place that no one can find it.

Early Alzheimers Disease patients have trouble conducting conversation and finding the right words to say. They may have a hard time following conversations or expressing their feelings. Eventually their reading and writing ability will also be affected.

Abstract thinking is something else that these patients with Alzheimers disease have. They may suddenly be able to deal with numbers, especially in balancing the checkbook. Disorientation causes them to lose track of time, and it is easier for them to get lost. They may feel they are in unfamiliar surroundings even if they are home.

They have trouble with everyday problems, such as knowing that food has been on the stove too long. Patients with Alzheimers disease eventually have problems dealing with planning, judgment, and decision-making. Familiar tasks become a struggle, even the basic activities like dressing or remembering to bathe.

One of the most distressing symptoms of Alzheimers disease is the personality changes that affect them. It is not uncommon for a patient with Alzheimers disease to have extreme mood swings and often accompanied by depression. They may begin distrusting those around them, be increasingly stubborn, and withdraw from family and friends. As their Alzheimers disease get progressively worse, they may become defiant, stubborn, aggressive, and take part in inappropriate behavior.

One report tells of a wonderful woman, whom was a good mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother that had been afflicted with Alzheimers disease. When her family was forced to put her in a nursing home due to the Alzheimers disease, she became aggressive to other patients and began using language she never would have dreamed of using before she fell victim to Alzheimers disease. The staff had a hard time in restraining her in the nursing home. They found she was sneaking in to other patient’s rooms, uncovering them, and leaving them. This was so unlike the mother and grandmother they knew before the affliction of Alzheimers disease, they had a hard time even visiting. Most of the time, she wouldn’t remember her daughter being there that morning. Finally, her family put an erasable board in her room so her visitors could write their name and the date they visited allowing the family to know who was there and when.

Unfortunately, families don’t often recognize the onset of Alzheimers disease because it starts out so slow. There usually are no sudden changes in the personality to alert family members there is a problem. As the symptoms gradually get worse, or they realize memory is fleeting for their loved one, they may not realize until the patient is far into the advanced stages of Alzheimers disease.

How Alzheimers disease progresses and what the average survival rate will be depends on the individual. The average survival rate is eight years. Some live fewer years, and some could live up to 20 years with the disease. People with Alzheimers disease eventually will no longer be able to take care of themselves. This leaves loved ones with the burden of deciding whether to place the patient in a long-term care facility or try to take care of them at home. It’s a difficult decision and everyone must realize that it takes considerable attention, love, and patience to deal with the problems that come with Alzheimers disease.

Rhonda

Kate asked:


My great aunt was just diagnosed with dementia. I asked my mom what the difference was between dementia and Alzheimers since they seem to be the same thing to me. Does anyone have any info?
A little more info…she walked out of the house at 2am and was found by the cops, who then brought her to the hospital. They ran some tests on her and said it was dementia. Please say a prayer for her. I love her a lot.

Lee

Jay George asked:


Alzheimer’s disease describes a condition named after its discoverer, Alois Alzheimer. In 1907 he wrote a textbook study of a woman of 51 who had died of dementia, and whose brain he had subjected to microscopic analysis.
The examination showed changes Alzheimer had never witnessed before. Parts of the brain showed tangling and other parts showed clumping of brain matter. Later research showed more “younger” people who had died of dementia who displayed the same brain abnormalities. This came to be known as Alzheimer’s disease.
It was later found that this type of dementia occurred far more often in older people, with their brains showing the same abnormalities at microscopic level.
However, at this time, Alzheimer’s disease was a diagnosis only applied to younger sufferers, since these formed the basis of Alois Alzheimer’s research. Older sufferers were labeled with pre-senile dementia or senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT).
Nowadays, with dementia in younger people being quite uncommon, it is usual for the term Alzheimer’s disease to describe this entire group, right across the age range.
‘Alzheimer’s disease’ is a deceptively simple label for a complicated set of symptoms which are hard to describe in their fullness without direct personal experience of such in another. A suitably evocative description is “A living death”, while more prosaic medical terminology cites “the slow onset of memory loss with a gradual progression to a loss of judgement and changes in behavior and temperament.”
The Royal College of Physicians describes Alzheimer’s disease in more detail, defining dementia as fundamentally “the global impairment of higher functions”, listing its impact on memory, daily problem-solving ability, the performance of learned perceptuo-motor skills (such as washing, dressing, and eating), appropriate use of social skills, and control of the emotional reactions, all of which occur under the influence of an increasingly clouded consciousness which is sadly typical of Alzheimer’s.
Memory loss is of course the most obvious feature of Alzheimer’s disease, but early on it can pass undetected as sufferers often manage to cover it up. The most recent memories go first, the distant past or long-term memory holding out until the disease has become quite advanced.

The short-term memory covers recent events, such as those taking place in the last hours or days, even weeks, and it is this which Alzheimer’s sufferers have real problems with, and whose failure can signify the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Because memory loss is central to Alzheimer’s disease and can easily be tested for, memory tests are an important diagnostic tool used to assess Alzheimer’s sufferers.
One formerly common test was to ask suspected Alzheimer’s sufferers a list of questions which probed both their long and short-term memory.
Typical questions included: How old are you, what is your date of birth, what day is it today, what month is it, what year is it, when was the First World War, what is the name of the Prime Minister, where are you now, count back from 20 to 1, and finally the sufferer would be given an address and asked to repeat it back 5 mnutes later.
If the suspected Alzheimer’s sufferer is co-operative, having been asked the questions in a respectful and unintrusive way, this is a relatively easy and inexpensive test to carry out, and which can yield useful pointers as to which parts of the memory may be problematic. Not only will long or short-term memory problems (or both) show up, but also potential orientation issues.
However, a low score by itself doesn’t prove either dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, as not everyone will know all the answers regardless of the state of their memory. The test is simply a guide to show that there may be a problem that needs further investigation.

The above is an overview of aspects of the very complex and involved medical condition known as Alzheimer’s disease.

Jay

chrismyarse asked:


With my Nana it has been a very slow decline iver the last 7 years shes still okay and just getting quite frgetful repeating herself etc. Just wondering if anyone knew of any preventitive measures or things they have found useful.

Roberto

sudha r asked:


My Mother is 66 years. Recently she has become stupid and forgetful, could it be onset of dementia or Alzheimers or is it the normal process of growing old?

Vernon

*********** asked:


Ok so my mother in law was living with Alzheimers on her own for a while. She lives, well (lived) in the now infamous Maple Heights Ohio. I wouldn’t be surprised is she was refinancing every time someone called or knocked on her door.

Her home is now in foreclosure. She is living with her sister who is taking care of her.

Is there any loophole in the law that will help her as she was not mentally competent enough to understand what she was signing? We don’t really care about the house, they can have it as even if it were in good condition it would be worth nothing anyways, we just don’t want people coming after her and garnishing her already next-to-nothing income. The house was completely paid off a couple of years ago now she owes 66,000.

I know nothing, anything you can tell me would help. Appreciate it.
Just to clarify, they are saying Maple Heights is the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis. 30% of the city is in foreclosure. This is why selling a home someone with an illness has been living in would be an impossibility.
I am guessing how it got up to 66k is that she kept refinancing. She would write the same checks for her mortgage over and over, and there would be fees every time she refinanced. Boy I wish I knew. She had nothing in that house. No food, no water, no furniture. She had bought a washer and dryer, and a baby gate because she had a delusion that she was running a daycare center. She had delusions that people were trying to poison her water and was drinking from empty water bottles she found on the street. I suspect nearly 100% of that money is in the pockets of the many many predators in that area. I broke down and cried when I saw the inside of that house. Theres no way she had spent it on much for herself.

Sean

David asked:


There is a lot of mental illness in my family. My paternal grandpa was an alcoholic, had dementia and died from Alzheimers. Two of his sisters, as well as his parents, all suffered from mental illness and killed themselves at different times. Sometimes I worry for my dad, who is 50 now. What are things I can do to reduce getting Alzheimers or dementia? I’m 18 now.

Joe

V W asked:


I need to know the effects of Alzheimers and vascular dementia on the patient and their family. Can anyone help me please.

Joyce