Alzheimer is a primary neurodegenerative disorder. It usually appears from the age of 65, although it can also occur in younger people.

When a person suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease, he experiences microscopic changes in the tissue of certain parts of his brain and a progressive but constant loss of a vital chemical for brain function called acetylcholine.

This substance allows nerve cells to communicate with each other and is involved in mental activities linked to learning, memory, and thinking.

What Causes Alzheimer’s Disease?

Alzheimer occurrence is mainly due to reduced brain production of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter in the brain, and this reduction causes deterioration in the performance of the cholinergic circuits of the brain system.

It is difficult to determine who will develop Alzheimer’s disease, since it is a complex disorder, of unknown cause, in which, apparently, multiple factors are involved. These are some of the elements that can increase the chances of suffering from this disease:

• Age: it usually affects those over 60 years. However, there have also been cases among those under 40. The average age of diagnosis is 80 years. This is why Alzheimer’s is sometimes considered a disease for the aged.
• Sex: women suffer Alzheimer’s more frequently. This is probably because they live longer than their male counterparts.
• Genetic inheritance: We have familial Alzheimer’s disease – a variant of the disease that is genetically transmitted. It accounts for 1 percent of all cases. However, an estimated 40 percent of Alzheimer’s patients have a family history.
• Genetic Mutation: Various mutations in the amyloid precursor protein gene or in presenilins 1 and 2 could also be associated with mutations in the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene. This can predispose one to suffer from Alzheimer’s.
• Environmental factors: tobacco has been shown to be a clear risk factor for Alzheimer’s pathology, the same as fatty diets.

Alzheimer Symptoms

At first, small and unnoticeable memory losses arise, but over time this deficiency becomes increasingly noticeable and incapacitating for the affected person. The person will have problems performing simple and daily tasks, and also, other more intellectual ones, such as how to speak, understand, read, or write.

Alzheimer’s disease results in dementia and also affects memory in its different types. The deterioration suffered include:

• Short-term memory loss: inability to retain new information.
• Long-term memory loss: inability to remember personal information such as birthday or profession.
• Impaired reasoning ability.
• Aphasia: loss of vocabulary or misunderstanding of common words.
• Apraxia: lack of control over the muscles themselves, causing, for example, that the patient cannot button the buttons of a shirt.
• Loss of spatial capacity: disorientation, even in familiar places.
• Character changes: irritability, confusion, apathy, decay, lack of initiative, and spontaneity.

Alzheimer’s Stages

The following stages occur:

Early stage or Mild stage

The damage of the disease still goes unnoticed, both for the Patient and for family members. The patient forgets little things, such as where he has put the keys or has some difficulty finding a word. At this stage, you can still work or drive a car, although you may begin to experience a lack of spontaneity, initiative, and certain depressive traits.

Sense of judgment is reduced and you have difficulty solving new situations and organizing activities. Signs of apathy and isolation and mood swings may also appear.

Moderate stage:

The disease is already evident to family and friends. The patient has difficulties with tasks such as shopping, following a television program, or planning dinner.

It is no longer just a loss of memory, but also of reasoning and understanding. At this stage, the deterioration progresses fairly quickly and those affected can become lost even in familiar places. Furthermore, they are visibly apathetic and depressed.

Severe stage:

During this stage, all areas related to the patient’s cognitive function are affected. They lose their ability to speak correctly or repeat unrelated phrases over and over again.

They may not recognize family and friends; and they may not even recognize themselves in a mirror. The disorientation is constant.

The more serious patients forget to walk and sit and, in general, lose control over their organic functions.

They forget recent and distant events and may remain motionless for hours without activity and generally cannot walk. These people are no longer autonomous individuals but need to be fed and cared for.

Some of them may scream, cry, or laugh for no reason and do not understand when they are spoken to. In its most serious stage, flexion stiffness and contractures arise, and patients may even have swallowing disorders. Many of them end up in a vegetative state.

Alzheimer Treatment

Alzheimer’s disease is a slowly evolving pathology. From the first symptoms appear until a more serious stage begins, it can take years, depending on each person.

At the moment there is no treatment that reverses the degeneration process that this disease entails. Treatment encompasses strategies to prolong personal functioning as much as possible and includes drugs to slow the progression of the disease.

Medicines

Cholinesterase inhibitors (Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne) and memantine (Namenda) are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Furthermore, Tacrine, donepezil, galantamine, memantine, and rivastigmine are the drugs indicated in the early stages of the disease. With these drugs, the initial and moderate stages of the pathology are improved, delaying the deterioration of memory and attention.

In 20 percent of cases, these medications can have side effects that cause gastrointestinal disorders such as nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. However, they do not have any kind of interaction with other drugs.

In general, anticholinesterase drugs usually delay the cognitive decline of patients by half a year. The effectiveness rates are high; about 50 percent of patients respond positively to the administration of the drug, while 20 percent respond to a greater extent positively than the half.

Unfortunately, it is estimated that 30 percent of patients may not respond to the medication.

Neuroleptic drugs can be administered for psychotic symptoms that usually appear when dementia is recommended in extreme cases since they also affect other neural systems.

Prevention Of Alzheimer Disease

Experts’ recommendations mainly focus on two key points: early detection of the first symptoms, and exercising memory and intellectual function.

In addition, maintaining a balanced and low-fat diet protects against cognitive decline. In general, maintaining healthy lifestyle habits can be useful in preventing Alzheimer’s.

Risk Factors For Alzheimer Disease

It is estimated that half of the cases of Alzheimer’s disease can be attributed to nine potentially modifiable risk factors:

• diabetes mellitus,
• high blood pressure in middle life,
• obesity in mid-life,
• smoking,
• A sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity,
• depression,
• cognitive inactivity or low educational level,
• hearing loss and
• social isolation.

It is believed that the more years of training a person has, the possibility that Alzheimer’s will appear later, because having been exercising memory strengthens the brain.

Depression can favor the appearance of Alzheimer’s or a cerebral vascular disease.

Life expectancy cannot be predicted, but death occurs, on average, about 7 years after the disease is diagnosed.

A Note To Caregivers

It is also important the nature that those people in charge of patient care must have. Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s can be difficult due to mood swings or memory problems, but if you take the right attitude, treatment can be more bearable.

Thus, caregivers must take care of themselves. Caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease is a stressful and demanding activity, and caregivers can become depressed and exhausted and often neglect their own physical and mental health. The following measures can help caregivers:

Caregivers can consult social workers (such as those at their local hospital) about appropriate sources of help, such as day care programs, home visits by nurses, assistance part-time or full-time for household chores and admission to care centers. Counseling and support groups can also be beneficial.

Secondly, caregivers have to remember that they have to take care of themselves. They should not give up their friends, their hobbies, and their activities.

In deciding to move a person with Alzheimer’s disease to an environment that provides more support, both the desire to maintain security and to maintain independence for as long as possible must be taken into account.

Biomarkers In Spit That May Help Detect Alzheimer

Alzheimer is a disease with devastating effects. The number of people suffering from it is only expected to rise over the next several years.

Researchers have thrown themselves into discovering potential treatments, and a new study may help diagnose Alzheimer sooner than later. This will open up new avenues for potential treatments.

A research that is still at the beginning stages represents new hope for diagnostic tools and treatment of this degenerative illness.

A pilot study carried out suggests that certain chemical biomarkers in saliva may help identify people at risk for developing Alzheimer disease. The results demonstrate that there are significant differences in the concentrations of a large number of salivary metabolites in patients with AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) relative to unaffected controls.

Thus, experts now believe that salivary molecules may act as trustworthy diagnostic indicator, which could help diagnose the disease in its earliest stages before brain damage occurs and dementia sets in.

Unlike blood or cerebro-spinal fluid, saliva is one of the most noninvasive means of getting cellular samples and it’s also not expensive.

Final Thought

Before those affected by Alzheimer’s disease become too disabled, decisions must be made about medical care and economic and legal provisions.

These decisions are known as advance directives or living wills. It must be assigned to a person legally authorized to make treatment decisions on behalf of the affected person. The affected person should discuss their wishes for medical care with the lawyers and with their doctor. It is best to discuss these issues with all stakeholders before decisions need to be made.

As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, treatment is aimed at providing comfort to the person affected rather than trying to prolong life.

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