The Seven Stages of Alzheimers

Alzheimer's

This brief report is a summary and review of the rather nasty degenerative brain disorder that is known as Alzheimer's. The disease has been known about for a decent amount of time but the overall progress come to when it comes to preventing or curing the disorder has become remained frustratingly slow. Even so, progress is indeed being made and more is now known about the disorder than was before. This report will explore the possible known causes of the disease, the symptoms, the treatments that current exist and the general prognosis for those that contract the disorder. While the disease eventually runs its course once contracted at this time, there does seem to be progress with staving it off and/or slowing it down.

Analysis

Many people are familiar with the general disorder that has come to be known as dementia. Indeed, Alzheimer's is a form of dementia. In total, about 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's. The vast majority, but not all, of the people that contract the disorder are over the age of sixty years old when symptoms manifest. The disorder, like dementia, leads to an overall degradation in memory function. Indeed, the first thing that seems to go is memory function overall. Next to go are things like emotions and inhibitions. In terms of what is going on with the brain itself, there are lesions forming on it. These are known as amyloid plagues or tangles. These lesions accumulate and become bigger. This coincides with an ability to cope with daily life that declines with every passing day as the disease starts to run its course. The progressing deterioration is caused by the affected brain cells dying off. As for the causes of Alzheimer's, the main precursor known about at this time seems to be genetics. There have been theories about aluminum, such as from pans and such, being a cause but this has mostly been shot down and disregarded as being sound science (WebMD, 2016).

Things that have carried at least some weight are links between Down Syndrome and Alzheimer's, links between obesity and Alzheimer's and certain genes present in the makeup of a given patient, not unlike the nefarious breast cancer gene that almost guarantees that someone will get breast cancer. However, the introduction did make mention of prevention and the main avenue to accomplish this seems to be a commitment to "exercising" and using the brain as much as is possible so as to prevent or at least delay the onset of the disorder. However, much of this work is theoretical at this point and nothing has been definitively proven at this point (WebMD, 2016). While preventing or curing the disease has been elusive at this point, there has indeed been a framework constructed that illustrates and explains the progression of the disease. Overall, there are seven stages of the disease. They are, in order, normal outward behavior, very mild changes, mild decline, moderate decline, moderately severe decline, severe decline and very severe decline. Normal outward behavior is when the disease is technically present, would be visible on a PET scan but is not manifesting in terms of symptoms or effects as of yet. Examples of mild decline would include forgetting something that was just read, asking the same question over and over, having trouble making plans or not being able to remember names when meeting new people. Moderate decline would include more severe memory loss such as forgetting personal details about one's self, having trouble putting the right date on a check, forgetting what month or season it is and having trouble cooking meals or even ordering something off of a restaurant menu. The final stages of the disease include problems with simple and basic functions like eating or even sitting up straight.