Alzheimer’s Dementia
What is Alzheimer’s Dementia?
Alzheimer's is the most common illness associated with dementia. Although treatment cannot cure or reverse the decline, it can help slow down its progress so an early diagnosis is recommended.
What are the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease?
The most important thing to remember is that Alzheimer’s symptoms are the same as with other causes of dementia, some of which may actually be curable: such as an infection, anaemia, or a thyroid problem.
Alternatively, they could be caused by very different factors like stress, alcohol abuse or depression.
So the symptoms alone are not reliable in arriving at a diagnosis. Also remember that any one symptom could have a perfectly mundane explanation – and that brains do tend to simply slow down with age.
That said, the usual symptoms include the following functional and personality factors:
- Difficulty with forming new memories
- Forgetting things like routines, names and numbers
- Not being able to find things
- Getting confused in familiar surroundings
- Losing one’s sense of time
- Difficulty with numbers, calculations and money
- Difficulty forming plans, reasoning and thinking abstractly
- Becoming less responsible or dependable
- Passive behaviour and a reluctance to be ‘involved’
- Rapid mood swings for no reason
How does Alzheimer’s disease affect the brain?
In the brain, messages are sent along networks of brain cells via tiny chemical messengers. Alzheimer’s disease produces tiny ‘plaques’ (disc-like particles) and tangles of fibrous material (called tau) that block the chemical messengers from moving along the brain cell networks. This impairs brain function – making it more difficult to create memories, to plan and to reason. As more plaques and tangles develop, brain cells start to die and the brain actually gets gradually smaller.
What is the cause of Alzheimer’s disease?
There is no single cause of Alzheimer’s. Pollution, viruses, heredity and repeated head injury may all contribute – even underuse of the brain could be a factor. (Aluminium was once considered to be a cause, but this is now doubted.)
Age is the most common factor with Alzheimer’s and there does also appear to be a hereditary element in many cases. But there is still no way to predict who will or won’t get the disease.
The importance of getting a professional diagnosis:
Diagnosis is essential to discovering whether the cause of the symptoms is curable or not. Also, the sooner Alzheimer’s is identified, the more effective treatment could be and the slower the subsequent degeneration.
A positive diagnosis will also open the door to support services geared to dementia sufferers and their carers – and allow the individual and their family to plan for the future.
What medications are there for Alzheimer’s disease treatment?
While there are now various drugs that can be prescribed, none of them is a cure – they can only slow down the development of the dementia.
The drugs work by slowing down the breakdown of the brain’s chemical messenger, acetylcholine, and temporarily stabilises or improves brain function. However, the drugs do not work equally well for everyone – one may work better than another for a particular individual.
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