Alzheimer’s disease happens to be a progressive disorder of the nervous system that causes brain shrinkage and eventually death of brain cells. Alzheimer’s most of the time ends up in dementia, where thinking declines constantly, along with social and behavioural skills and ultimately affects the ability of functioning independently in a person.

According to statistics, about 5.8 million people living in USA at the age of 65 and above suffer from alzheimer’s. Out of this, 80% are 75 years or older and out of about 50 million people living globally with dementia, around 60 to 70 percent are believed to have alzheimer’s disease.

The early signs of this disease may include forgetting recent conversations or activities. With the disease progressing in the body, there would be severe impairment of memory and loss of ability to conduct every day activities.

Medications usually remove or make the progression of the disease slow down. The treatments through medications usually help the individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s disease maintain independence and maximize the functional ability for a short interval of time. In case of advanced stages, there could be complications like serious loos of the brain’s cognitive functions like, dehydration, infection or malnutrition, etc. leading to death.

Symptoms

A key symptom is memory loss, with early signs being difficulty to remember recent conversations or events. With the progress of the disease, there could be memory loss and other dire conditions in health.

Initially, an individual having alzheimer’s may remain aware of remembering things with a lot of difficulty or in organizing thoughts. The changes that happen in brain to an individual with alzheimer’s may find it difficult to:

1. Remember: Every individual finds himself or herself in difficulty to remember things occasionally. However, memory loss with alzheimer’s lingers and gets worse, affecting on the individual’s ability to function well at home or work.

Those with this disease may repeat sentences or words over again and again, tend to forget conversations, events, appointments, regularly misplace things, often placing them in illogical places, tend to get lost in familiar places, eventually forget daily use objects, people, and places, etc.

1. Reasoning and thinking ability: With this disease the ability to think and concentrate, especially on abstract concepts like numbers etc. is lost. It gets eventually difficult to multitask.
2. Taking decisions and making judgements: With this condition, there is usually a decline is an individual’s ability of taking reasonable judgements and decisions in daily situations. For instance, a person could be poor in social interactions, choice of dressing and conduct in an inappropriate manner.
3. Planning and also performing regular familiar tasks: With the disease progressing, it may get increasingly difficult to plan a favourite game or cooking a meal. Gradually as the disease progresses, it may get difficult for the person to function cognitively in everyday things like cooking food or wearing clothes.

When should you see a doctor?

There are a number of common conditions, some including the treatable ones, where memory loss and several other symptoms of dementia may surface. In case you find yourself worried about the memory or thinking skills, get an appointment with a physician and get a thorough diagnosis and assessment.

Cura Multispecialty Hospital’s Treatment

Cura is a multispecialty hospital that caters to all kinds of diseases and their treatments. Our department for Brain, Spine and Nervous system has a team of expert physicians, nurses and other staffs that take care of the patient well. We understand the condition of the patient taking long and elaborate sessions of tests and diagnosis. The treatment provided is at par with the world class standards of medicine. We also provide post treatment consultations to ensure the patients overall well and health.