What is Alzheimer’s?
Alzheimer’s disease is a disease of the brain that causes progressive loss of all cognitive functions, primarily memory, and is characterized microscopically by abnormal protein storage in the brain. What is Alzheimer’s? Dementia, commonly known as dementia, means “progressive loss of memory, language, arithmetic, decision-making, attention and other cognitive functions.” Not every Alzheimer’s patient has dementia, but not all dementia patients have Alzheimer’s. Because there are dozens of other diseases that cause dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia. For this reason, the term he Alzheimer’s disease dem and ans dementia sıklık are used interchangeably, often and sometimes by mistake. The estimated number of Alzheimer’s patients in our country is estimated to be around 250 thousand and this number is expected to increase with the increase in the elderly population.
There are some structural changes in the brain during normal aging process, but there is no significant loss of cognitive/mental abilities. In Alzheimer’s disease, however, there is a marked “difficulty in learning new information”. Alzheimer’s disease is not a mental illness, but psychiatric findings are added during the course of the disease, so it may have similarities to a psychiatric patient.
The following disorders occur in Alzheimer’s disease:
- Memory problems
- Difficulty in thinking and causation
- Difficulty in decision making
- Difficulty in finding words
- Difficulty in arithmetic operations
- Personality and behavior changes
- Disappearances
- Difficulty in performing functions that could easily be used in the past
The Alzheimer’s disease process goes through certain stages:
- In the early period, there are mild and often neglected symptoms. Forgetfulness, fatigue, inability to remember words, learn new things, social behavior and decision making disorder.
- Significant symptoms an problems arise that prevent the continuation of daily life activities in the medium term; disappearances, disruption, inconvenience, agression, paranoia.
- Becomes fully dependent on the caregivers in advanced stage and physical disorders are added, disruption of bladder and intestinal control, speech disorder, daydreaming, difficulty in following simple orders, emotional disorder, loss of awareness, constant wandering.
Alzheimer’s desease is not lethal but due to the added circumstances the life span may be affected.
Resource: Assistant Professor Ufuk Ergün