What Is Alzheimers Dementia?
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Alzheimers Dementia can be a devastating diagnosis because of its unpredictable nature. The Alzheimers patient may live for a few years misplacing keys continuously and forgetting their loved ones’ names but suddenly deteriorate into utter confusion, suddenly unaware of who or where he or she is. There are some stories of people who live at home until they die ten years later, but there are other cases of people who require an Alzheimers home care to help them get through daily functions. With so many questions, a good starting point is to understand the disease and how it differs from other forms of dementia. Then coping skills and treatments can be examined.
Alzheimers Dementia is characterized by increasing and persistent forgetfulness. Alzheimers patients routinely forget names of loved ones, appointments, words to express themselves, or even entire events. Balancing the checkbook or cooking a meal suddenly becomes overwhelming. Emotional mood swings are common, as the Alzheimers patient struggles to deal with confusing emotions and frustration. Unfortunately, the causes of Alzheimers are not widely understood, although visible brain effects include tau protein tangles and beta-amyloid protein plaques. Inflammation and brain cell death are also triggered in the Alzheimers brain. The average person lives with Alzheimers Dementia for eight years before dying, so it’s important than caregivers and patients seek counsel on coping skills.
Unlike Alzheimers Dementia (which seems to be triggered by some sort of build up), Vascular Dementia is caused specifically by blood vessel blockage resulting in a stroke. In other cases, profoundly low blood pressure, brain hemorrhaging and blood vessel damage from arteritis can cause the confusion, agitation, impaired gait, problems with language and memory, as well as bladder issues commonly associated with Vascular Dementia. Approximately 1-4% of people over 65 suffer from this type of dementia. Many sufferers also exhibit signs of Alzheimers Dementia.
In some cases, dementia appears as a symptom of another serious disease. For instance, Huntington’s disease patients often suffer the personality changes and motor impairments most commonly associated with progressive Alzheimers Dementia. Similarly, Parkinson’s disease can cause shaking, speech impairment and cognitive confusion similar to Alzheimers patients. AIDS and the rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may all result in dementia.
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