preview

Alzheimer's Disease: The Disease of Memory Loss

Decent Essays

Alzheimer's Disease - the disease of memory loss Marlene Targ Brill uses, in her book about Alzheimer's, Nancy Reagan's quote to describe this awful neurodegenerative disease. "Alzheimer's disease is a cruel disease that steals lives. It's hard to know what to expect. The years of exchanging memories of old age are gone. It's long, long good-bye" (Nancy Reagan, former First Lady, pg 10). Alzheimer's symptoms are most often confused with normal symptoms of aging, although they have a greater effect on daily life. Some of the symptoms are: poor judgment and decision making, inability to manage budget, losing track of the date or the season, difficulty having a conversation and misplacing things and being unable to retrace steps to find them. Alzheimer's affects the brain, more precisely this disease drives to the loss of neuronal functions and synaptic connections and in different areas of the brain neuronal cell die. Alzheimer's progression differs from patient to patient, and is divided in 3 stages: mild, moderate and severe. In the first stage memory loss is installing. The patient may forget words, names, or even get lost in a familiar place. In the moderate stage the people with Alzheimer's may loss his logical thinking and confusion can begin to install. They may not recognize a familiar face and their personality can begin to change. In the severe stage, the last one, because of the brain damages caused by the Alzheimer's, patient lose their normal physiological

Get Access