Losing a love one to Alzheimer’s

 

AD is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German doctor. In 1906, Dr. Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of an older woman who had died of an unusual mental disease. He found abnormal clumps ( amyloid plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers ( neurofibrillary tangles). Today, these plaques and tangles in the brain are considered signs of Alzheimer’s.

Today, the only definite way to diagnose Alzheimer’s is to find out whether there are plaques and tangles in brain tissue. To look at brain tissue, however, doctors usually must wait until they do an autopsy. Therefore, doctors can only make a diagnosis of “possible” or “probable” AD while the person is still alive.

Many older people worry because they forget the things more frequently, and think that the bad memory is the first signal of the disease of Alzheimer.

Before one thought that the loss of the memory and the confusion was a normal part of the aging process. Nevertheless, nowadays the scientists know that most of the people they stay alerts and have a good use of their faculties as they age, although is possible that it takes them a little more time to remember things.

Slowly, the disease attacks the nervous cells in all the surrounding parts of the crust of the brain, as well as some structures, deteriorating patient capacity to control the emotions, to recognize errors and patterns, to coordinate the movement and to remember things. Later on, the afflicted person loses all memory and mental functions.

Approximately half of the people in the hospices and almost half of all the people older than 85 years suffer of the Disease of Alzheimer. It is now the fourth main cause of death in the adults and, unless the prevention and the treatment are developed to effective methods, the Disease of Alzheimer will reach epidemics proportions.

With the advance of the disease the judgment capacity is affected seriously and the impossibility to execute the motor functions in spite of conserving the function to neuromuscular get worse; (need to use diapers) is a lack of control of sphincters and the impoverishment of the speech arrives at the absolute autism (aphasia). All of this leads a dependency state, until reaching a vegetative. The death happens habitually by the complications that arise in the evolution (pneumonia by aspiration when failing the deglutition mechanisms, infections by the appearance of position ulcers, falls, etc.)

The National Institute on Aging, part of the Federal Government’s National Institutes of Health, has primary responsibility for research on AD and age-related decline in cognitive abilities (such as thinking, decision-making, and language skills). This responsibility is part of a larger mission to understand the nature of aging and find ways to help people stay physically, emotionally, and cognitively healthy for as long as possible.

Several years ago, NIA, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke launched The Cognitive and Emotional Health Project, which has begun to identify and describe the diverse lifestyle factors that possibly affect the emotional health and cognitive abilities of older adults. Further research on the most promising factors will be necessary to determine whether any will result in strategies that can help people remain mentally and emotionally vibrant as they age. The hope is that successful strategies will also contribute to our knowledge of what goes wrong in the brain during the development of neurodegenerative diseases like AD.

These days, it seems that newspapers, magazines, and TV are full of stories about ways to stay healthy, eat right, and keep fit. Lots of people are concerned about staying healthy as they get older. They wonder whether they can do anything to prevent diseases that happen more often with age, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). AD has no known cure, and the secrets to preventing it are not yet known. But research supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and other public and private agencies offers tantalizing clues about the origins and development of AD. These findings are raising hopes that someday it might be possible to delay the onset of AD, slow its progress, or even prevent it altogether. Delaying by even 5 years the time when AD symptoms begin could greatly reduce the number of people who have the disease

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