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Essay about Alzheimer's Disease

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Alzheimer's Disease

If we accept that the brain's ability to "fill in the blanks" about each experience we have, then we can conclude that our past is indeed partially our own brain's creature. However, there are still some norms created by people that define certain experiences as normal and others as not. What happens when a person starts to behave ab-normally? How is his/her brain filling the blanks in a different manner? To discuss this subject we would discuss the most common form of dementia among old people, the Alzheimer's disease.

Dementia is a brain disorder, a loss of intellectual function (thinking, remembering, reasoning), which substantially affects a person's ability to carry out daily activities. …show more content…

Thus, the ability of the person to participate in normal interaction with other people is severely damaged. (3)
The experiencing of the world and the way the patient reacts to it is radically influenced by this unhealthy interaction within the brain. The initial symptoms involve mild forgetfulness of recent events, activities or familiar people/things. In the process of development of the disease, skills acquired throughout the life of the patients such as brushing the teeth, easting with a fork and a knife are forgotten; thoughts are very unclear, and behavior becomes unable to be subordinated to normal human life norms. All the clues the brain has learned so as to be able to fill in the blank in everyday life have been forgotten. (3)

The symptoms of the disease are predominantly behavioral – agitation, anxiety, depression or sleeplessness, in general mood swings a feeling of withdrawnness. (1)
Main characteristics are personality changes, impairment of judgment (4)
Plaques and tangles develop in the brain, leading to the death of brain cells. The rate of progression can vary from 3 to 20 years with the final stage being common to all – a complete incapability of taking care of oneself. There is a list of warning signs developed by researchers that are used as base for judgment of resemblance of a medical condition to AD and the potential further examination this could prompt. Among the major signs, as formulated by

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