Abstract
Alzheimer’s is a disease that attacks the brain and can result in brain death. This disease is chronic and lately a lot of elderly are being diagnosed with it. Alzheimer’s disease can be referred to as a silent killer because once a person gets the diagnosis, they will have it permanently. Alzheimer’s Patients have a decreased short-term memory; this can result with the onset of confusion. At times, families with loved ones that encounter this disease usually have to change their lifestyle by adjusting it to their love ones needs. This book shows a great outlook on dilemmas families come across when a loved one is diagnosed with this disease.
A Description of Alzheimer’s disease Alzheimer’s disease is an unpleasant disease that affects the brain in specific ways. Normal healthy neurons are responsible for the communication that occurs in the body. However, in Alzheimer’s patient, the neurons can no longer communicate with one another so the synapses start to disappear. As a result, neurons start to die and the brain shrinks, causing the initial signs of the disease which is the loss of memory. When the onset of the disease starts it alters with the patient’s daily function. The book Still Alice displays a poignant portrait of Alzheimer’s where it portrays the struggles of Alice Howland, an intellectual and successful woman devastation with the news of Alzheimer’s disease. At first when she was told that she had the disease she was in disbelieved but
Alzheimer’s Disease is an irreversible, genetically linked illness. This disease was chosen for the topic of this essay under the consideration that in many families the illness can be incredibly tragic, passing down for generations without mercy. It is not rare to encounter families in which each member is afflicted with a form, mild or severe, of Alzheimer’s. The disease is a progressive brain disease which comes in two separate types: Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. These will be discussed in full later on in the paper.
1) This video was an educational and eye-opening documentary about the infamous Alzheimer’s Disease and its effects on the victim and their family. The film follows several different families, each directly affected by the disease, and how they cope with the loss of their, or a loved one’s, memories and mind. One such family, the Noonans, had a rare form of the disease, where its destruction of the mind began much earlier in life, around age fifty. Three of the Noonan siblings out of ten caught Alzheimer’s and none of the other seven knew whether they had the gene for it or not, passed on by their mother, who also died of this. Watching this unfold in the movie “The Forgetting” was rather eye-opening,
More than 30 million people are affected worldwide, Alzheimer's is the number one cause of dementia. Alzheimer's is a progressive disease that destroys memory and essential mental functions. The brain cells and the actual cells deteriorate and die; the main symptoms are confusion and loss of mind. Dementia follows Alzheimer's; you can’t have one without the other. Dementia, on the other hand, it is not its own disease, it is a group of thinking and social symptoms that hinder everyday tasks. Over 100 years ago a German physician by the name Alois Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer's disease is a familiar sight to me. I had a sad experience during my work as a nurse in my country Colombia and Spain with Alzheimer disease patients. Day by day I came to know each patient’s story because every day they were living the moment without remember the last minute. This is also what happened to Lisa Genova’s novel Still Alice. The protagonists is a 50 year old woman, a very well organized, efficient, highly-educated, and smart Harvard professor, wife of a successful man, and the mother of three grown children, who has diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. People have learned about the progression of Alice’s disease through her reactions, so feeling what she feels- a
Alzheimer’s disease affects the world greatly, and the numbers of victims are growing. Alzheimer’s disease affects everyone affiliated with the sufferer. Alzheimer’s disease devastates the brain and its ability to function. The issue is sensitive, complicated, and is negatively impacting the world. Alzheimer’s disease may not always be fatal, but “Alzheimer’s disease has no survivors. It destroys brain cells and causes memory changes, erratic behaviors and loss of body functions. It slowly and painfully takes away a person’s identity, ability to connect with others, think, eat, talk, walk, and find his or her way home” (“What is Alzheimer’s”). This tragic disease impacts over five million people in the United States. Alzheimer’s disease touches all, and it is essential to understand the basics of Alzheimer’s.
“Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a slowly progressive disease of the brain that is characterized by impairment of memory and eventually by disturbances in reasoning, planning, language, and perception.” (Howard Crystal) In Health 1000 we were asked to read the book Still Alice. I have never dealt with or have done any study on Alzheimer’s disease before reading this book. After finishing this book it has really opened my eyes to how bad of a disease and how it cripples the mind. I never imagined the effect of this disease on a patient and the patient family. This book is about a upper middle aged lady named Alice who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and how she and her family learn how to deal with disease. One of the things this book
Alzheimer’s is a disease that is scary for those individuals who have developed this disease, as well as the illness is terrifying to those different love ones also. However, some questions have risen from this disease. Does this disease only affect the elderly? How is Alzheimer’s a disease to get? When will the individual lose his or her memory? Is there a treatment for this illness? The writer will be covering each one of these questions, and other issues about Alzheimer’s in the essay. The essay will also have the symptoms, the diagnoses, and the stage of having Alzheimer’s disease.
Read more at” (Pratchett, 2001). Alzheimer has affect more then the person who has the disease it affects entire families. In the following essay there will be answers to the following, sign and symptoms of Alzheimer’s, treatments, and finally short and long-term effects of the disease. “Alzheimer’s is the 6th leading cause of death in the Unites States” (Association, 2017). With this facts scientists still haven’t figured about what cause the disease, just the sigh and symptoms.
“Dementia is characterized by chronic, global, non-reversible deterioration in memory, executive function, and personality. Speech and motor functions may also be impaired” (Butler and Radhakrishnan, 2011). As defined by Butler and Radharkrishnan, dementia is a disease that affects a person for their whole life. In the next part of this paper, I’m going to talk about the dementia and the effects it has on a person live whether it is with the symptoms, overall experience with it, and what exactly it does to the body. Dementia isn’t a fun disease to have or deal with. According to the World of Health Organization, over 35 million people have dementia (Robitaille, Garcia, & McIntosh, 2015). I’m mainly going to talk about the specific type of dementia Alzheimer’s. “Alzheimer’s disease is defined as a type of dementia characterized by an onset and slow deterioration, and involves impairments in memory, speech, personality, and executive function”(Butler and Radharkrishnan, 2011). Memory loss isn’t just the only thing that happens with dementia. They also experience impairments in language, communication, focus, and reasoning (Ellis, 2013).
Dementia is a disorder that affects the memory and thinking of whoever has it. It is very important to understand the different types of the disorder to get proper treatment. Dementia also can cause anger issues as it develops over time. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia as if effects around five million people. Symptoms include forgetting day or year, forgetting where placing things and trying to find them later, and poor judgement. Vascular dementia is usually caused when some has a major stroke or a silent stroke. Symptoms include trouble talking or understanding speech, inability to recognize familiar sounds and sights, and frequent trouble with walking. DLB dementia effects not only a persons mental state, but
Alzheimer’s disease slowly steals a person’s dignity and erases precious memories. The “Alzheimer’s Disease Guide”, found on WebMD explains that tasks become more difficult to do often leading to confusion and behavior changes. The article further explains the progression of the disease also brings hardship to family and friends (1). To best cope with Alzheimer’s we must better understand the disease.
Symptoms are different for everyone but, it can be memory loss, hallucination, depression, and forgetting how to do things or people (Jun, 2014). Depression is part of the stages because they do not understand what is going on and feel alone . The stages of Alzheimer’s are different for each person and every person reacts different. Alzheimer's not only that person but, also their families and friends. Stages usually go hippocampus, logical thoughts, mood swing, hallucination, deepest memory, and then control center (Jun, 2014). Hippocampus is where the newest memory is located this may be what a person had to eat or what a person did that day. Next is the frontal lobe where logical thoughts are taking place. Mood swings are very normal with
Alzheimer is a disease that affects the elderly most. The disease was discovered by Dr. Alois Alzheimer in the year 1906 when he was examining a female’s brain. He found out that the woman displayed memory loss, language problems and some inexplicable changes in behavior. The disease was named after the doctor who was a German psychiatrist and a neuropathologist. Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative brain disorder that leads to memory loss, personality changes, and language problems (Gilbert & Julie 2). The disease is mostly diagnosed in people over the age of 65 years, though there is a small minority of people under the age of 50 who get the disease. Studies show that 1% of a whole population aged between the ages 65-75 have severe
Dementia is an ever-growing problem for society; with the world population living for longer it is estimated that by 2050 over 115 million people worldwide will suffer from some form of dementia (World Alzheimer’s Report, 2009). Dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease is the condition that stems from Alzheimer’s disease in particular, rather than other conditions such as vascular dementia or fronto-temporal dementia for example. Earl symptoms may include problems generating people’s names or the correct names of objects, observable difficulty cognitively functioning in social situations, short term memory retention difficulty, continuously misplacing important objects, poor executive functioning, and a shift in mood such as depressive and irritable swings (Holsinger, Deveau, Bustani, Williams, 2007; Llewellyn, 2010). The causes of Alzheimer’s disease are considered to be of genetic, environmental and lifestyle choices (Munoz & Feldman, 2000). There is as yet no known specific cause of Alzheimer’s disease, and the focus of this essay necessarily concentrates on differentiation and prediction of cerebral changes in Alzheimer’s Disease. This essay will examine past research that has observed the ways in which the utilisation of MRI has enabled the future pathways of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia to be understood and expanded, in relation to individual treatment plans and future research.
The theme of the book is related to the early onset Alzheimer’s disease and how the main character, Alice Howland’s quality of life or in other words her lifestyle is affected due to the disease she is diagnosed with (Genova, 2009). The novel sheds light on the lives of those