What if one fine morning while logging into your Facebook profile, you cannot recollect your password? Or, what if you are unable to recall names or the faces of people that were once very familiar to you? What if you have a really hard time learning new information?

Known as the most common type of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease is a general term for memory loss¹ and intellectual disabilities, which can get serious enough to create disturbances in one’s life while performing daily activities. It is a neurodegenerative disease which although slow in its initial stages, worsens as time progresses.

• Given below are some of the symptoms that will help you to figure out if any of your loved ones has been suffering from this disease lately:

1.  Inability to perform extremely familiar tasks at home or work.
2. Facing serious difficulties in grasping or remembering new information.
3. Inability to perform² complicated tasks involving calculations.
4. Frequently misplacing things and inability to keep track of their own activities.
5. Losing track of seasons, months, or days.
6. Tendency to surrender and to refrain from taking part in most of the social events.
7. They try to develop very specific ways of doing certain things and get highly agitated when their routine is disturbed.
8. Inability to make decisions concerning money matters.
9. Difficulty in finding the right word for the right thing /vocabulary-related problems.
10. Sudden mood swings.

• What is the cure?
  For a long time, there has been practically no treatment that could cure an Alzheimer’s patient³ except for drug and non-drug care which can only better the condition but cannot fully cure the disease. Doctors believe that talking therapies can also help the patients to a certain extent.
  However, very recently, non-invasive ultrasound technology has been developed by Australian researchers, with the help of which they can clear out neurotoxic amyloid plaque structures from the brain as they are mostly held responsible for memory loss.

• Did you know?
  Since most people with Alzheimer’s are 60 and older, most people mistake Alzheimer’s disease to be a mere sign of aging and think that it is absolutely normal to forget things once you cross the age of 65. But doctors are clearly of the opinion that one can be a victim even in his 40’s and 50’s, thus proving it to be a pure misconception.
• Several filmmakers worldwide have handled this complex subject with a great deal of grace and dignity.
  Following are some of the movies which depict what life is actually like with Alzheimer’s disease:
  Still Alice (2014), A Song For Martin (2001), The Notebook (2004), U Me Aur Hum (2008), Away From Her(2006), Mai (2013), Poetry (2010), Memories Of Tomorrow (2006), Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me (2014).

It is a matter of immense pain to see your loved ones as victims of Alzheimer’s. However, if the person is handled with constant love and support, the entire experience will tend to appear less horrible, if not entirely so, for who on earth can deny the power of love?

1. Jahn, Holger. “Memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.” Dialogues in clinical neuroscience 15.4 (2013): 445-454. ↩︎
2. Lai, C. W., et al. “Patients’ inability to perform a preoperative cardiopulmonary exercise test or demonstrate an anaerobic threshold is associated with inferior outcomes after major colorectal surgery.” British journal of anaesthesia 111.4 (2013): 607-611. ↩︎
3. Gitto, Christina A., et al. “The patient with Alzheimer’s disease.” Quintessence International 32.3 (2001). ↩︎

Last Updated on March 16, 2024 by NamitaSoren