10 Facts to Know About Alzheimer's Disease
10 Facts to Know About Alzheimer's Disease
Alzheimer’s is a disease that Is the most common type of dementia. It is a brain disease that is related to memory loss and diminished cognitive skills. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are 5 million people in the US that are having Alzheimer’s disease.
1. Women have a higher risk
There are shocking facts and numbers that indicate this statement. Out of the 5 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the United States, 3.2 million are women. Another fact is that 1 out of 6 women over the age of 60 will develop Alzheimer’s, compared to 1 out of 11 men. Women in their 60s are twice more likely to develop Alzheimer’s as they are to develop breast cancer. One of the main reasons why this is happening is the fact that women live longer than man and that age is still the number one risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s. Researchers from Stanford University made a study with over 8000 people and they were looking for a form of the ApoE-4 gene, a gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer’s. They discovered that women who have a copy of that particular gene variant were twice as likely to potentially develop Alzheimer’s as women without the gene. Men who were carrying the gene were only at a slightly increased risk than men who did not have the gene. While it is not known for sure why the gene presents such a drastic growth in risk, researchers believe it may be how the gene interacts with estrogen.
2. Life expectancy varies
Life expectancy varies from person to person who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is 8 to 10 years. Sometimes, it can be only three years or to be longer than 20 years.
Alzheimer’s disease can go undiagnosed for several years, too.
3. Alzheimer’s disease was discovered in the last century
A German doctor named Alois Alzheimer first became interested in the disease that would one day be named after him when he started studying a 51-year-old woman whose name Auguste Deter, who had short-term memory loss, odd behavior and other problems with thinking which progressed to the point of severe dementia. After her death in 1906, Alzheimer requested an autopsy on her brain, wherein he noted the infamous plaques and tangles that now characterize the disease. A psychiatrist who worked with Dr. Alzheimer named the condition in 1910.
4. It is linked with a lot more than just memory loss
Alzheimer’s is widely-known to be associated with memory loss, and generating many symptoms like forgetting people’s names, not knowing the date and time and mixing up the location with some other different location. In the movies who are picturing the disease, it is normal all that we see, and it’s often played and pictured the funny side. But in the real life, the later stages of Alzheimer’s conduct about severe memory loss that eventually becomes a terrible obstruction to regular living. In the later stages. Patients are losing their basic life skills, and they will start forgetting how to eat and swallow.
In later stages of the disease, it’s not unusual for people to obtain sleep distractions, paranoia – and hallucinations, which can vary from auditory to visual. The mix of memory loss and hallucinatory symptoms can cause a petrified lack of awareness about one’s surroundings, resulting in confusion and panic that can seem to result from out of nowhere
5. Alzheimer’s disease is a leading cause of death
Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th leading cause of death in the US. Every 66 seconds someone in the United States develops the disease. One in three seniors who are having Alzheimer’s dies. According to the statistics done, since 2000 the deaths numbers from Alzheimer’s disease have increased by 89%.
6. The cost of Alzheimer’s disease is huge and it is still growing
In Ireland, which has more than 27,000 private and public residential care beds, a 2012 report by the Department of Health and Children stated that Ireland spends over €1.69 billion a year on dementia, which is a major increase from the last decade. In all of Europe, Ireland spends the highest public per capita on brain research, an estimated 40% of which goes to researching dementia. The amount that Ireland is projected to spend on long-term care by 2031 is estimated to increase 36% to 60%.
7. The total deaths from Alzheimer’s disease are more than doubled since 1990, and still, there is no cure
In 1990, the calculated number of deaths from Alzheimer’s was 795,000. By 2013, it had soared to nearly 1.7 million, though researchers point out that in the past, Alzheimer’s was often misclassified, meaning that many more people died from Alzheimer’s in the previous decades than studies would suggest. All over the world, Alzheimer’s is the 29th general cause of premature death, and it’s well known to be a disease that can’t be cured or slowed.
8. Alzheimer’s has seven stages
Seven stages of the disease are delineated by Dr. Barry Resiberg.
Stage 1: No impairment – Normal Functions
In this stage, the person is having normal functions and is not experiencing any memory problems.
Stage 2: Very Mild Impairment
Still, some huge differences are not able to see; over the age of 65, it is common for people at these ages to have Forgetfulness.
Stage 3: Mild Impairment
At the third stage, the family members and close friends may start to notice some changes related to the memory and the cognitive functions.
Stage 4: Moderate Impairment
Patients are starting to have difficulties and troubles with everyday tasks. Often changes in the mood are also present.
Stage 5: Moderately Severe Cognitive Impairment
During this stage, the patient will need help with many daily activities. They will have difficulty to dress properly; they will lose their sense of the location and the community surrounding them.
Stage 6: Severe Cognitive Decline
Patients in this stage need to be taken care of constantly.
Stage 7: Very Severe Cognitive Decline
It may last from two years to 12 years. Since Alzheimer’s disease is considered to be terminal illness, the patient in the last stage of this disease is getting closer to death.
9. You can modify some risk factors, and at the same time you can’t modify another
The risk factors you can modify are known as lifestyle factors, like smoking, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar. A large waist perimeter is another risk factor, as is suffering a traumatic brain injury. Wearing seat belts while driving, and helmets while biking or skiing, are ways to reduce” the risk of such an injury. If we all lost weight, controlled our blood pressure, lowered blood sugar and blood cholesterol, and did physical and mental exercises, it is thought that the incidence of (Alzheimer’s disease) would drop significantly. A decrease in incidence for about 50 to 75 percent is suggested if people acted on that advice.
Aging is a natural life process, and it's also the one of the biggest risk factor (or we can say that it is the biggest one) for Alzheimer’s disease, with a risk that duplicates for every 5 years we age. Our genes are also out of our control, and inheriting a version of the apolipoprotein gene known as ApoE (one of three forms of the gene) means bigger risk for the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease at a young age. Connected with genetic risk is a family history of Alzheimer’s.
10. Symptoms of the disease can develop in people at the age of 30
Doctors are not sure why most cases of early onset Alzheimer's appear at such a young age. But in a few hundred families around the world, scientists have triggered several rare genes that directly cause Alzheimer's.