Alzheimer’s Disease Emily Giuffre Health Pd1 Nov. 25. 2012 To start off with, I wanted to do Alzheimer’s because my Grandpa use to have it before he died. I wanted to understand more of what Alzheimer’s was so I did a bunch of research over the week. Alzheimer’s is a disease that occurs within the brain and is a form of dementia or brain disorder. When you’re a victim of Alzheimer’s, many brain cells get destroyed and you can even die from it. Most Alzheimer’s victims die from pneumonia, cancer, heart disease, stroke, or other health problems like falls or infections associated with the disease. The symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease often are subtle at first. Over time, people with the disease lose their ability to think and reason clearly, judge situations, solve problems, concentrate, remember useful information, take care of themselves, and even speak.
The causes of Alzheimer’s hasn’t really came to a conclusion, but it has become increasingly clear that it develops because of a complex series of events that take place in the brain over a long period of time. Also, causes can also be because of a mix of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. The causes pretty much differ from person to person though. About Five million people in the United States and more than Thirty million people worldwide have Alzheimer's disease. Over the age of eighty-five, fifty percent are diagnosed with it. Alzheimer’s usually begins around the age of sixty-five. Alzheimer’s seems to occur in mostly women than men. The number of people with Alzheimer's disease is expected to rise substantially in the next few decades because of the aging of the population. The risk of Alzheimer’s increases more when one of your family members has/had it. When treating the disease, any one intervention will be found to delay, prevent, or even cure it. There are also people out there to help maintain victims mental function, managing behavioral symptoms, and slowly or delaying the symptoms of the disease. For support of Alzheimer’s there are high physical, emotional, and financial costs. People with mild Alzheimer's disease usually require close supervision and help with everyday tasks such as cooking, shopping, and paying bills. People with severe Alzheimer's disease can do little on their own and require complete full-time care. The cost of caring for people with the disease is estimated at over One-hundred billion dollars per year in the United States. The average yearly cost per affected person is twenty thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars, depending on the severity of the disease. That cost doesn't take into account the loss of quality of life for the affected person, or the physical and emotional toll on family caregivers. A recent study out of Rhode Island hospital(RIH) confirmed that Alzheimer’s is marked by brain insulin resistance and corresponding inflammation which is a condition that some researchers are now referring to as type 3 diabetes. Dr. Susanne de la Monte, from RIH, is the one who found this out through all the research she did. Research says that if you eat more healthy saturated fats, like coconut oil, it helps prevent/cure Alzheimer’s disease. Two groups of researchers have said Alzheimer’s is linked to a mutation in genes. The gene TREM2 is only the 2nd found to increase risks of Alzheimer’s disease. There are other genes that contribute to Alzheimer's disease, but researchers haven’t found them yet. The brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease has abnormal areas containing clumps and bundles of abnormal proteins. These clumps and tangles destroy connections between brain cells. This usually affects the parts of the brain that control cognitive functions such as thought, memory, and language. Levels of certain chemicals that carry messages around the brain (neurotransmitters) are low. The resulting losses in intellectual ability are called dementia when
