Understanding Alzheimer's Disease: Symptoms, Causes, and Risk Factors

As an organization centering on providing education on this disease and giving support to those affected by it, we want to start our first informational blog post by giving a brief overview of the simple question of, “What is Alzheimer's, and what are its effects?”

To answer the question of how Alzheimer’s can affect people, we first have to know what it is. To put it simply, Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that mainly causes memory loss and confusion. The disease is categorized under dementia, which is a broad term describing the impairment of cognitive abilities that affect daily life.[1] It is also the most common cause of dementia, accounting for about 60-80% of its cases.[1]

Alzheimer’s typically occurs in stages, progressively worsening over the course of many years. At its earliest, the symptoms are minimal, and typically do not prevent someone from participating in day-to-day activities such as driving and working effectively.[2] As the disease progresses, more nerve cells are damaged, which might hinder a patient’s ability to respond to their environment. They will often start to require care from another person, such as a family member or nurse caregiver.[2] In its latest stage, the symptoms are the most severe and will cause the patient to lose many capabilities, such as carrying on a conversation, being able to walk, and having a strong immune system.[2]

Alzheimer’s has many different noticeable synonyms, memory deficiency being the first and most significant one. Even though symptoms vary from person to person, these three are constant throughout: vision and spatial problems, such as being aware of their surroundings, and

impaired judgment or reasoning, which may have an effect on decisions.[3] Other synonyms that are very noticeable and fluctuate from person to person are Taking longer to complete normal daily tasks, Repeating questions, Trouble handling money and paying bills, Wandering and getting lost, Losing things or misplacing them in odd places, Mood and personality changes, Increased anxiety and/or aggression.[3]

There are two leading theories for the scientific source of Alzheimer’s. These are two microscopic protein malformations that occur within or between nerve cells: plaques and tangles. Plaques are deposits of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid that build up in the spaces between nerve cells. Angles are twisted fibers of another protein called tau within the nerve. These malformations irreparably kill the nerve cells' effectiveness. Alzheimers accelerates the rate at which these malformations occur. Though researchers haven’t discovered a prevention to this process yet, in years to come we may see breakthrough treatments to this terrible disease.