Alzheimer’s Disease is the most frequent form of dementia, although there are other forms whose symptoms frequently look like Alzheimer’s. It usually affects people 65 and older. With it, neurons die or don’t function normally. This death or abnormal function of nerve tissue results in changes to memory, behavior, and thinking.
Over the course of an average of about 4-8 years, noticeable symptoms of the disease increase and eventually interfere with a person’s ability to perform basic body functions, such as walking or standing, swallowing, and speaking.
Alzheimer’s Disease is fatal and there is no cure, although there are some promising medications that temporarily stall its progress. There are also some experimental treatments involving lifestyle and nutritional corrections that seem to help with the symptoms of dementia.
Dementia is the name of a class of diseases affecting the nervous tissue in the brain. There are several kinds of dementia:
Alzheimer’s Disease, which accounts for up to 80% of dementia cases, either by itself or in combination with other kinds of dementia. Early symptoms include difficulty remembering conversations, names, and events, other kinds of communication, apathy and depression, disorientation, confusion, and behavioral changes.
Cerebrovascular disease (including major and minor strokes). This occurs when blood vessels are blocked or damaged, resulting in difficulty with judgment, decision making, planning and organizing, balance, and gait.
Lewy body disease results in many of the same symptoms as Alzheimer’s, but symptoms include sleep disturbances, visual hallucinations, and muscular slowness, gait problems, and imbalance. However, cognitive symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s may not appear.
Mixed pathologies include more than one cause of dementia, and are more common than once thought, possibly as high as 50% of those originally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The likelihood of having mixed dementia is highest in those 85 or older.
A loss of memory does not mean you have Alzheimer’s disease, but can be a symptom of other ongoing issues in your life such as stress, lack of sleep and anxiety. Getting screened is the first step in finding out if you have a memory problem related to Alzheimer’s.
Having the knowledge about what your memory issues are from helps to:
Increase your quality of life—and that of your family
Determine if medications which may help in the early stages of memory loss is right for them
Better prepare for long-term plans.
Clinical research has shown that the markers for Alzheimer’s and other dementias begin to develop in the brain as much as 20 or more years before symptoms begin to appear.
Blood tests can reveal the presence of the proteins that appear to be related to development of dementia.
Genetic tests can show whether a person has the APOe4 gene that indicates a higher likelihood of developing dementia.
An MRI or PET scan can reveal development of the characteristic brain pits and valleys of dementia.
These markers can be found long before a person starts noticing memory problems such as word-finding, remembering places or how to get there, or the names of people recently introduced.
While these are not tests we perform at Cognitas Health, we can guide you to develop a personalized lifestyle program once you and your doctor have determined cause.
Your doctor may order medical tests like hormone, thyroid, glucose and blood tests to look for other factors causing memory loss.
In perplexing situations, you may be asked to have a lead test to see/determine if there are heavy metals in your blood; lumbar puncture for proteins in spinal fluid; toxicology screening to examine drugs in your body; or any other types of tests that will help to rule out other causes.
Email: info@cognitashealth.com Phone: 650-464-3062 Address: 2375 Adele Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043 |