Early treatment can make life better for Alzheimer's patients, a debilitating disease that affects someone every 70 seconds. Here are some tell tale signs that help you in recognizing its onset.
© AFP/File Jean-Philippe KsiazekJune 08, 2009, (Sawf News) - Early treatment of Alzheimer's can make life better for Alzheimer patients, a debilitating disease that affects someone every 70 seconds. Here are some tell tale signs that help you in recognizing its onset.
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that causes physical changes deep inside the brain and it is the seventh leading cause of death in USA. As many as 5.3 million people in America are affected by this deadly disease.
This fatal disease has become the greatest medical challenge for America as it affects someone every 70 seconds. It gets worse with time as it destroys brain cells, causing problems with memory, thinking and behavior which can be severe enough to affect work, lifelong hobbies or social life. The bad news is that till date, doctors haven’t found a cure for Alzheimer’s but the positive news is that early treatment of this disease can definitely make life better for Alzheimer's patients.
Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a Fox News medical contributor, says that there are 3 major outward signs for detecting Alzheimer’s:
1. Loosing track of time and place: This might include not knowing what season it is, forgetting important dates and events, asking for the same information again and again, forgetting names and appointments but remembering them later.
2. Problem with visual images and spatial coordination: People with this disease don’t recognize their own reflection in the mirror. They might have trouble in judging distances, color or contrasts.
3. New problems with words, reading or writing: This includes not being able to recall the common words we use in day to day conversations like looking at a clock and calling it a hand watch and not getting the right word for it. This impairment in using and understanding languages is called Aphasia.
Other outward signs are:
4. Challenges in planning or solving problems: Patients might have problem working with numbers or remembering a recipe or keeping track of monthly bills.
5. Difficulty completing familiar tasks at home or office or at leisure: Sometimes people forget the directions of a familiar location or have problems in managing budget at work.
6. Misplacing things and losing ability to retrace them: The affected person might put things in unusual places. People might lose things and be unable to go back over their steps to find it.
7. Changes in mood and personality: Affected people might become confused, suspicious, depressed, fearful or anxious.
8. Onset of Agnosia: This is the inability to process sensory information, which is a disorder in perception. For example, people might run into furniture being unable to comprehend what they see.
9. Onset of Apraxia: A person affected by Alzheimer’s might be incapable of performing basic motor skills like walking, dressing or eating.
The inward signs of Alzheimer’s are:
The frontal lobe, Cerebral Cortex, helps carry out purposeful behaviors and complex reasoning. When Alzheimer's strikes the frontal lobe, victims lose the ability to plan and initiate complicated activities like balancing a checkbook. Photo Credit: PBSThe healthy and puffy part of the brain called Cerebral cortex shrinks in size when a person is affected by this disease. Cerebral Cortex is the center of reasoning, language and all other higher level thoughts.
The hippocampus (Curved shaped) takes our immediate thoughts and impressions and turns them into memories. Alzheimer's attacks the hippocampus first, so short-term memory is the first thing to fail. Photo Credit: PBSAnother part of the brain called hippocampus becomes bigger as compared to a normal healthy brain. Hippocampus, which is very important for new memories, processing memories and recollection, gets bigger thereby shrinking the size of the brain. As a result the brain stops functioning normally. As Alzheimer’s attacks Hippocampus first, short term memory is the first thing to fail.
The only way of making life better for an Alzheimer’s victim is to take him/her to a doctor as soon as you see any of the above mentioned symptoms. Don’t mistake these signs as signs of ageing and don’t let your beloved slip into worse and more advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.
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