Can we prevent Alzheimer's Disease?
Alzheimer’s disease is still destroying people’s brains. The cause remains unknown. Around the world, there will be walks to raise money for medical research. Training courses and educational meetings also are planned.
An estimated thirty million people around the world have Alzheimer’s disease. In the United States alone, more than five million people are said to suffer from this slowly increasing brain disorder.
Alzheimer’s affects memory and personality — those qualities that make a person an individual. There is no known cure. Victims slowly lose their abilities to deal with everyday life. At first, they forget simple things, like where they put something or a person’s name. As time passes, they forget more and more. They forget the names of their husbands, wives or children. Then they forget who they are. Finally, they remember almost nothing. It is as if their brain dies before the other parts of the body. Victims of Alzheimer’s do die from its effects or conditions linked to it. But death may not come for many years.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common disability or mental sickness called dementia. Dementia is the loss of thinking ability that is severe enough to interfere with daily activities. It is not a disease itself. Instead, dementia is a group of signs of some conditions and diseases.
Some kinds of dementia can be cured or corrected. This is especially true if they result from drugs, infection, sight or hearing problems, head injury, and heart or lung problems. Other kinds of dementia can be corrected by changing levels of hormones or vitamins in the body. However, brain cells of Alzheimer’s victims die and are not replaced.
Victims can become angry and violent as the ability to think and remember decreases. They sometimes shout and move with no purpose or goal. Media reports tell about older adults found walking in places far from their homes. They do not know where they are or where they came from. These people often are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s generally develops differently in each person. Yet some early signs of the disease are common. The victims may not recognize changes in themselves. Others see the changes and struggle to hide them.
Probably the most common early sign is short-term memory loss. The victim cannot remember something that happened yesterday, for example. Also, victims of the disease have increasing difficulty learning and storing new information. Slowly, thinking becomes much more difficult. The victims cannot understand a joke, or cannot cook a meal, or perform simple work.
Another sign of the disease is difficulty solving simple problems. Alzheimer’s patients might not know what to do if food on a stove is burning. Also, people have trouble following directions or finding their way to places they have known all their lives.
Yet another sign is struggling to find the right words to express thoughts or understand what is being discussed. Finally, people with Alzheimer’s seem to change. Quiet people may become noisy and aggressive. They may easily become angry and lose their ability to trust others.
Alzheimer’s disease normally affects people more than sixty-five years old. But rare cases have been discovered in people younger than fifty.
Alzheimer’s is identified in only about two percent of people who are sixty-five. But the risk increases to about twenty percent by age eighty. By eighty five or ninety, half of all people are found to have some signs of the disease.
Alzheimer’s affects people of all races equally. Yet women are more likely to develop the disease than men. This is partly because women generally live longer than men.
Doctors who suspect a patient has Alzheimer’s must test the person for many other physical problems first. Alzheimer’s is considered if the tests fail to show the existence of other problems. The only way to be sure a person has Alzheimer’s is to examine the victim’s brain after death. America’s Food and Drug Administration has approved several drugs to treat symptoms of the disease. The drugs are of two kinds. A doctor must order these medicines for patients. Most are called cholinesterase inhibitors.
Cholinesterase inhibitors may work by protecting a chemical messenger needed for brain activities. They are meant to treat memory, thinking, language, judgment and other brain activity. They are used for mild to moderate cases of the disease.
The second kind of drug has a long name. It is represented by the drug memantine. This medicine seems to work by governing the activity of a chemical involved in information processing, storage and memory. It treats patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s.
It has been more than a century since a German doctor, Alois Alzheimer, told about a dementia patient whose brain was studied after death. Her brain had sticky structures and nerve cells that appeared to be mixed together. Later studies showed these nerves are made of a protein that changes so it sticks together in groups. The sticky structures were shown to be amyloid plaques.
Scientists are still not sure what causes Alzheimer’s disease. The leading theory blames amyloid plaques. Still, a theory exists that amyloid plaques are an effect of the disease, not the cause.
Work continues on possible genetic causes. This month, two teams of European researchers said they identified new genetic markers linked to Alzheimer’s disease. The teams worked separately. Their findings were reported in the journal Nature Genetics. The newly-found genetic markers may affect a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Until now, only four genes had been linked with the disease.
You may ask how to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease or dementia:
Dr. Robyn A. Honea at the University of Kansas found that patients with early Alzheimer’s disease who exercised regularly had less deterioration in the areas of the brain which control memory. [1]
The researchers found that patients with early Alzheimer’s had a “significant relationship” between the size of hippocampus, unlike healthy older adults. Those patients with better fitness ratings had less brain tissue atrophy and those with worse fitness had more brain damage. [1]
Dr Jeffrey Burns, from the University of Kansas School of Medicine, said, “People with early Alzheimer’s disease may be able to preserve their brain function for a longer period of time by exercising regularly and potentially reducing the amount of brain volume lost. Evidence shows decreasing brain volume is tied to poorer cognitive performance, so preserving more brain volume may translate into better cognitive performance.” [2]
Men and women living with a partner in mid-life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of age-related dementia. Previous studies have proven that an active lifestyle that includes a spouse or life partner is generally more socially and intellectually stimulating than a solitary lifestyle.
A study shows that people with a spouse or partner in mid-life are 50% less likely to develop age-related dementia than people alone in mid-life. Death of a spouse or partner before middle age seemed to have the most serious consequences where Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are concerned. [3]
SOURCE: Barbara Klein Jerilyn Watson Brianna Blake Bob Doughty Alzheimer’s Disease: Into the World’s Most Common Form of Dementia Voice of America 14 September 2009 [1] Study: Exercise slows Alzheimer’s brain atrophy AP July 28 2008- [2] Exercise ’slows down Alzheimer’s’ BBC 14 July 2008 [3] Life With a Partner Minimizes Alzheimer’s Risk By MedHeadlines • Aug 2nd, 2008 • Category: Alzheimer’s Disease, Lifestyle, Medical Research, Neurology
