Battling Alzheimer

Alzheimer’s disease is such a hot topic, it’s hard to keep up with everything that is being said about it. Here are some blog posts and articles that you may have missed earlier this month.

The February 7 issue of Nature, quoted by HealthCentral, reports that amyloid plaques, considered the main sign of AD, can form in one day in laboratory mice. At least one doctor cautions that, despite the headlines, this doesn’t mean that AD can form in one day. AD develops more slowly. The study also found that soon after the plaque appeared, specialized cells called microglia appeared. Doctors wonder if microglia might actually fight the growth of plaque.

The Alzheimer’s Association is reaching out to African-Americans, who are more susceptible to high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes and heart disease, problems that have been linked to increased Alzheimer’s symptoms. They offering a Healthy Heart and Brain Kit. Some assembly required?

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The past few days, I keep coming up with ways of coping with Alzheimer’s disease that depend on already having a healthy relationship with the person who has it. If you never had enough respect for that person, or if they never had much respect for you, or if that respect was based on power or abilities that they lack now, that may cause problems with your relationship now. Alzheimer’s may not cause changes in the moral character of the person with the disease. If you’re the loved one of someone with Alzheimer’s, I guess it’s up to you whether it causes changes in your character, for good or for bad.

Perhaps no quality is as important for someone with Alzheimer’s than trust. It’s hard to feel secure in a world that you can’t remember. You need to have someone or something to trust in if you can’t remember where you are, what you’re supposed to be doing, what happened to important people or things.

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When you discover that something is missing from the place where you left it, what do you assume? Most people assume that somebody else moved it. That’s not my first response. My first response is to ask myself if I’m sure that’s where I really left it. I forget things. I know that. I’m not the only one who does it. Time management experts will smile knowingly. Enough people routinely find things by systematically looking in all the usual places that the time management experts can refer me to their handout on the subject.

But what if you discover that nothing is where you left? What if everything has been moved, including yourself? What if you don’t remember how you got where you are, but nobody will let you leave? That’s the common plight of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

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I feel guilty. Here I’m writing for a blog called “Battling Alzheimer’s” and instead of telling you about the newest drugs, or the latest theories, I’m telling you about washing dishes with my grandmother.

But when I look at the research into new drugs and new preventions, and when I remember my grandmother, I keep thinking that a lot of the researchers are all wrong. They look at Alzheimer’s disease as if it were an infection that you can vaccinate against or take a pill for. Most of the solutions they’re promoting require you to put something into your mouth. I don’t think the mouth is the key to Alzheimer’s. I think the mind is.

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I haven’t seen the critically-acclaimed film Away From Her, but it fascinates me. The Alzheimer’s Association promotes it (it promotes the Alzheimer’s Association), and it’s available on DVD. Based on “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” a short story by acclaimed novelist Alice Munro, it may earn Julie Christie a second Oscar. Director and screenwriter Sarah Polley, a Canadian actress, was also nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Adapted Screenplay. Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis put in fine performances too. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 95, which is high for them (122 fresh tomatoes, only 7 rotten ones).

In Away From Her, a couple is separated for the first time in fifty years when she enters a nursing home with a 30-day “no-visitors” policy (do Alzheimer’s facilities really have such rules?) after wandering away and being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In those thirty days, she develops a relationship with another man, and her husband has to choose how to respond.

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Alzheimer’s experts now believe that the disease, and even the symptoms, begins many years before any formal diagnosis. German researchers Drs. Heiko and Eva Braak theorize that, if you looked, Alzheimer’s structures (plaques and tangles) could be found in the brains of teenagers, 60 years before serious symptoms develop. They have already found such structures in twenty-year-olds.

Current tests for Alzheimer’s are actually psychological and cognitive tests - the only absolute test for Alzheimer’s is a brain dissection. But according to the New York Times, a radioactive dye, PIB, has been developed that allows researchers to locate amyloid protein deposits, considered a sign of Alzheimer’s disease, in the brains of living people. The problem is that there are not yet any reliable medications to prevent the disease, so tests with PIB would tell more people they have the disease without being able to stop it.

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By Sarah Shepherd

In 1901, a German physician was presented with an unusual and never before seen case. His patient was a 51 year-old woman who seemed to be suffering from mental problems. In addition to having several bouts of memory loss, she accused her husband of being unfaithful. She had difficulty understanding simple things that we being said to her and she could no longer perform certain actions. The physician attempted to treat her as best he could, but never before seeing these symptoms together in one person proved to be a major stumbling block. He monitored her as these symptoms intensified, and within a few years she was completely bedridden. Less than 5 years later, the woman was dead. The causes of death were pneumonia and infections caused by bedsores. The doctor published his findings after the autopsy, and in 1910 it was suggested by a fellow physician that the disease be named after this German doctor. The debilitating brain disorder was henceforth known as Alzheimer’s Disease.

According to the National Alzheimer’s Association, a person is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s every 72 seconds. The disease affects the brain by destroying brain cells. This leads to memory loss and causes problems with things such as motor skills and thinking processes. The cause of Alzheimer’s has yet to be determined. Even worse, no cure has been found. Approximately 5 million Americans are living with this disease, which is unfortunately a fatal illness. It is estimated that over 500,000 people are living with early onset Alzheimer’s, which affects people under the age of 65.

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