Alzheimer’S Disease: Stages, Causes, and Symptoms

Are you forgetting the recent events you witnessed or the conversations you had with people? Are you having sudden problems with your communication skills? You should immediately go and consult a doctor. As these symptoms of the common disease called Alzheimer’s disease. It is the most common type of dementia. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that could drastically affect your abilities to carry out the simplest daily life tasks. As it is a neurological disorder, it requires immediate medical care. Though it’s generally caused due to hereditary factors but the environmental factors could be an additional reason. These may also give rise to this disease. Also, early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease may begin at the age of 30. If you notice those symptoms within you, this article could help you prevent reaching its further stages.

Alzheimer’s is an irreversible, progressive neurological disorder. It affects the cells of the brain leading to its wastage and finally its death. Thus, it accelerates the decline of thinking ability, behavioral, and social skills. All these results in complete bed rest of the affected person. It is a chronic disease affecting more than a million people per year in India which could last for years or even lifelong. Thus, the treatment of Alzheimer’s could slow the process, but it is an incurable disease.  

Symptoms

An early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease is forgetting all the recent events or conversations with people.

The modifications in the brain may lead to the changes associated with:

Memory

Memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease worsens with time. People suffering from Alzheimer’s may repeat statements, forget conversations, get lost in usual places. They may also forget the names of people or objects and have trouble finding appropriate words.

Thinking and Reasoning

A person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease may find difficulties in thinking and concentrate on things. Also, multitasking and managing things related to numbers also become difficult.

Making Judgements and Reaching to Conclusions

The ability to choose proper clothes according to the weather. Difficulty in responding to problems such as burning food. Also, an unplanned situation while driving is faced by a person affected by Alzheimer’s disease.

Performing or Planning Usual Tasks

Tasks like cooking, playing any game, dressing, or bathing becomes a struggle with the progress of Alzheimer’s disease.

Sudden Changes in Behaviour

The changes occurring in the brain leads to sudden mood swings and behavioral alterations. Also, depression, hallucination, irritability, aggressiveness, changes with sleeping habits, distrust are some common problems witnessed by the affected person.

Stages of the Disease

1. Early-stage Alzheimer’s: Common difficulties found like misplacing objects, and remembering names. Also experiencing trouble with planning, choosing appropriate words.
2. Middle-stage Alzheimer’s: It’s the longest stage where a person may confuse words, irritated, and lost somewhere, or behave abnormally like refusing to bathe.
3. Late-stage Alzheimer’s: Individuals lose the ability to respond, talk to people, and control their movements. So, they become vulnerable to infections and require all-time assistance.

Causes

Mostly, Alzheimer’s disease occurs due to the combination of genetic, poor lifestyle, and unhealthy environmental factors. Also, the studies show that there is a deposition of proteins, known as plaques and tangles, that build upon the tissues of the brain.

Risk Factors

Certain factors increase the risk of causing Alzheimer’s disease-like:

1. Increasing age
2. Genetics and Family History
3. People suffering from Down’s Syndrome
4. Poor sleep patterns
5. Unhealthy lifestyle
6. Past head trauma
7. Past heart disease
8. Mild cognitive impairment
9. Women suffer more than men

Treatment

Alzheimer’s is an incurable disease but there are certain medications that can improve its symptoms for a certain period of time.

1. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors: These help the nerve cells of the brain to communicate with each other.
2. Memantine: These block the effects of the chemical in the brain called glutamate.
3. Self-care: Aerobic exercises can improve cardiovascular health. It needs to practice for 20-30 minutes for 5 days a week.

Prevention

Alzheimer’s disease is a non-preventable condition. However, an unhealthy lifestyle increases the risk of the disease. So, Proper, healthy lifestyle choices may reduce its risk which includes:

1. Basic Nutrition Tips
2. Consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy product, lean protein-rich diet
3. Avoid high saturated fat and cholesterol
4. Avoid processed food and refined sugars
5. Use less salt and food with high sodium content
6. Use healthy oil in food
7. Regular exercises
8. Proper control of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, obesity
9. Avoid smoking and over-drinking of alcohol

It is important for us to understand if a person shows sudden changes in his behavior. People with Alzheimer’s may behave very unusually which might be irritating to you but remember one thing that they do not do it intentionally. Every individual tends to forget things and we all know that frustrating feeling when we do not remember it. So, step in the shoes of individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s and try to understand their helpless condition.