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This is one one of the most common illnesses among seniors and it's not as minor as many people think.
It's actually a brain disorder that is also the most common cause of dementia, a serious mental condition characterized by decreased capacity to perform mental activities.
Particularly, dementia attacks the memory as well as the thought and behavioral processes occurring in an individual.
The problem with Alzheimer's is its tendency to cause irreversible dementia, which means whatever damage the disorder has caused will never be corrected.
Sixty is the usual age of onset, although the disease has also been found in younger people but only in very rare cases.
Here, nerve cells near the brain which are supposed to be responsible for memory and other cognitive functions are damaged.
This then causes a loss of connectivity between these nerves, leading a patient to have very poor and eventually absent memory and cognition.
Alzheimer's disease is progressive and terminal and the patient may simply completely lose touch of reality at a certain stage.
Here, he begins to require full-time care by family members or a special facility depending on how he is coping.
The most common symptoms include memory loss, language breakdown, personality changes and failure to recognize otherwise familiar things and people.
However, the changes usually begin with simple forgetfulness or absentmindedness until everything progresses into graver memory problems and eventually, loss of it once cellular damage has reached severe levels.
Because the disease progresses at differing rates with different people, some patients actually live longer than the others.
Studies show patients usually survive 8-10 years from diagnosis.
Medicines have been chemically manufactured for the treatment Alzheimer's disease but nutritional remedies have been discovered, particularly diets rich in antioxidants such as vitamins E and C, fatty acids and magnesium.
Some herbs such as the Gingko biloba and Bacopa monnieri have also been found to be effective in improving brain nerve cell functions.
Today, more studies are being conducted to look into other possible remedies to Alzheimer's disease, although currently available medicines and natural remedies are doing quite well in patients struggling to overcome the disease.
As of September 2009, there are 35 million plus people afflicted with the disease and the figures are expected to reach 107 million by 2050.
While dealing with Alzheimer's disease patients can get very annoying, people should understand that this is no longer the working of the individual's personal choices.
Instead, whatever a patient does or fails to do is directly related to his deteriorating mental functions which render him incapable of telling between socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
For those of us who have family members battling the disease, it is not only a choice but a responsibility for us to be patient and persevering as we work towards making them feel loved and accepted despite their condition.
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