Causes, Symptoms And the Stages of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer is a neurological disease where the death of brain cells occurs with the cognitive decrease and loss of memory. In this type of dementia, the introduction of the disease is mild which progressively gets worse.

Causes Of The Disease

Alzheimer is basically caused by the death of the cells of brains, similar to different types of dementia. It does not occur in just a single day. The neurodegenerative disease is progressive in nature and takes a course of time to occur. The tissue of the brain reduces the connections and the nerve cells by shrinking the original size of the brain. Though the tissues affected by the Alzheimer cannot be tested with the living brain, autopsy can be done for observing the little tissue, called tangles or plaques.

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• The tangles are generally included in the neurons of the brain and caused by disintegration of a protein named tau.
• Plaques are generally found within the brain cells which are dying. These are created from the beta-amyloid protein which is also known as the amyloid plaques.

Symptoms

Now, what are the symptoms of this Alzheimer’s disease? From various tests and diagnosis, various symptoms can be observed for this particular disease. They are as follows:

• Take New Information In The Memory: New information cannot be entered into the memory. Personal belongings can even get misplaced due to the worsened memory. Due to this disease, the patients can even forget the appointments and any important events. The patients can lose the routes which were formerly familiar to him/her. He/she can repeat the same conversations or the questions repetitively.
• Basic Skills Like Reading, Writing And Speaking Can Get Affected: This particular disease can even snatch away the basic human skills like speaking, writing and reading. The patients can find difficulty in spelling, speech and writing.
• Personality And Behavior Changes: Mood changes may occur with agitation, apathy or social withdrawal. It may sometimes include socially unacceptable behavior with obsessive and compulsive disorders.
• Visuospatial Inabilities: The patients may not have eyesight problems but he/she may still find difficulty in recognizing common objects or faces. Clothing orientation in the body and inability to function simple elements can also occur.

Stages Of The Disease

Generally this disease is a progressive degenerative one and occurs in 3 main stages :

• Early Stage: In the early stage, the patient may operate in an independent manner. He or she may continue doing his/her daily activities like driving or working at home or office. The introduction may be remembering any particular word or name, forgetting any topic just after reading it.
• Middle Stage: This stage can stay for longer period and also known as the moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the patient possesses an increased risk of getting lost or forgetting the events from his /her own past. He or she may even forget the name or addresses of his own location, name of school or college from where he/she have graduated.
• Late Stage: This is the final stage where the patient loses the responses towards the environment and for the personal care 24/7 assistance is required. He/she may have difficulty in basic communication. This particular stage is also vulnerable to infectious disease like pneumonia.

Generally, the person with this disease can survive on an average of four to eight years post diagnosis. Sometimes, the patient can live up to 20 years of time, depending on some other factors. During the pre-clinical stage, when the diagnosis have not been done, the changes in the brain can occur at that very early stage. Sometimes the stages may even overlap and cannot be diagnosed easily.