You probably have heard about Alzheimer’s disease. It is the illness that appears in a progressive manner that makes the cells of the brain to deteriorate and die. You may have read about this disorder in your class discussion or in your favorite books, such as Going Going: The Abduction of a Mind by Jack Weaver; but haven’t really dug deeper into it. Furthermore, Alzheimer’s is the most basic source of dementia, which is a unceasing decline in behavioral, thinking, and social abilities that interrupts an individual’s skill to behave or perform on his or her own.
The initial symptom of this illness can be the failure to recall a particular event or conversation that happened in the past. The individual suffering from early signs of Alzheimer’s will begin to form a severe memory deterioration and his or her skill to execute his or her daily routines and works will slowly fade away. There are drugs and treatments that were developed to delay the rate of deterioration of a person with Alzheimer’s for a particular period of time. They can often help patients suffering from the disease to take advantage of their abilities to function and keep themselves independent temporarily.
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for Alzheimer’s or any other way to modify the disorder’s method to deteriorate the brain. In the further stages of the illness, the symptoms become more complicated and severe, which can lead to dehydration, infection, and even death. If you know someone suffering with Alzheimer’s or you want to delve deeper into this disease; then, here are the factors of a person’s life that can be greatly affected by Alzheimer’s that you might want to know:
Memory
People with Alzheimer’s will definitely suffer from random memory lapses. It cannot be denied that even normal people can forget where they put their spare keys, today’s date, or another person’s name but those with Alzheimer’s tend to experience the loss of memory in a greater extent and worse effect.
Hence, some of the symptoms include:
- Asking questions or stating something in a repetitive manner
- Failing to remember a previous conversations, important events, and significant dates and not recalling them anytime soon
- Constantly misplacing something and frequently placing them in an unreasonable location
- Getting lost in a well-known or acknowledge place
- Forgetting the names of loved ones and common things
- Having difficulties in arriving at the right terms to name things, expressing ideas, or joining in talks
Rationality
The disease can definitely cause troubles in an individual’s thinking, focus, and concentration, especially when it comes to abstract matters like numbers. Another thing that Alzheimer’s makes difficult in a person’s thinking and rationality is his or her ability to do a couple of things at once that may involve money — such as handling finances, budgeting, computing bills, etc.
Decision-making
Creating good decisions and judgments is among the things helps a person grow and become better. But Alzheimer’s can make one’s decision-making to become poor because of the declination and deterioration of his or her brain cells. Thus, people’s skill to create daily rational decisions and judgments can be affected and impaired. Some examples on how people with Alzheimer’s create poor judgments and choices are wearing outfits that are irrelevant to the weather, leaving the food burning, and more.
Behavior and personality
The changes and alterations that happen in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s can impact his or her behavior, personality, and mood. He or she may also experience the following issues:
- Mental health illnesses, such as depression
- Lack of enthusiasm
- Isolation
- Mood swings
- Suspicion towards others
- Annoyance and irritability
- Aggressiveness
- Modifications in sleeping routine
- Disappearance of inhibitions
- Roaming
- Self-deception
Accomplishing common tasks and planning
Alzheimer’s disease can definitely create a big change in people’s daily routine. It can be a total pain in the bum when it will hit the point where people start to not recognized the things that they usually do. An individual’s daily routine is commonly done in chronological order for the person is definitely familiar on the tasks at hand. But when the disease kicks in, everything starts to become a mess. He or she may slowly forget the process of his or her routine or will fail to recall the method on how to do a specific task.
Other preserved abilities
There are many essential abilities and talents that are suddenly being preserved by the body for a particularly long period of time the moment that the person’s symptoms start to become worse. The said preserve abilities can be comprise of reading books, listening to stories, telling tales, reminiscing moments, singing songs, listening to music, dancing, sketching, crafting, and a whole lot more.
The aforementioned skills may be preserved more than the expected time due to the fact that they are being manipulated by portions of the brain that are impacted later in the trajectory of the illness.
Alex Writes 