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Persuasive Essay On Alzheimer's Disease

1408 Words6 Pages

Five million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s, a cure is still unattainable, this disease kills more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined, and the number of deaths have increased by 89% since 2000 (Alzheimer’s Association). “How do we cure Alzheimer’s” is a loaded question, meaning multiple questions need to be asked and answered before the big question could ever be answered. Questions like “What is Alzheimer’s?”, “What genes are involved in this disease?”, and “How early can we catch and treat Alzheimer’s today?” need to be answered. The only way our society can cure Alzheimer’s, or even find a better treatment, we must be able to understand every aspect of the disease. The first question that should be …show more content…

This question alone is tough to answer due to the fact that AD is still not completely understood. The effects the disease has on the human brain is obvious and familiar, the causes remain a mystery. Scientists currently believe that the cause of Alzheimer’s is a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. This combination includes age, cardiac and vascular health, sex, social isolation, sleep, anesthesia, head trauma, and stress. Age is the number one risk factor; after age 65, the risk of developing AD doubles every 5 years. Some data suggests that more women are diagnosed with AD than men, however, this number may be affected by the fact that women tend to live longer than men, but on the other hand, recent research suggests that estrogen and menopause may be involved in raising the risk for AD (curealz.org). Depression, sleep deprivation and stress are all possible factors as well. In studies with animal models, stress has been shown to accelerate the disease (curealz.org). The isoflurane in inhalant anesthesia may accelerate Alzheimer’s, but there is not enough evidence to stop production. Traumatic brain injury has also been linked to Alzheimer’s, as well as Parkinson’s and chronic traumatic

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Introduction Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and gets worse over time. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events or short memory loss. As the disease advances, symptoms can include difficulty with language, disorientation, mood swing and behavior problems. As a person 's condition progressed, they often withdraw from friends and family. Slowly, bodily functions deteriorated and eventually death occurs.

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The article titled “Half of Alzheimer 's cases misdiagnosed” made it evidently clear that Alzheimer’s disease is a disease we have yet to fully understand or treat. Not only is there a lack of information about this disease, it is common for the similar side effects of dementia to be confused with Alzheimer’s disease. To clarify what dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is, I will provide an authentic definition of each. To begin, I will state that there are different forms of dementia. According to a site that specializes in providing information about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, states that “Dementia is a general term for loss of memory and other mental abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life.

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1. The author’s article, “Alzheimer’s Time Bomb”, tells about how many people will be struggling with Alzheimer’s in the next 50 years and how it will effect our country since there is no cure. 2. The author writes about this to make people more aware of Alzheimer’s and the fact that not as much effort is being put into making a cure as there should. They say, “the federal government in 2012 unveiled its first ever "National Plan to Address Alzheimer 's Disease."

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Alzheimer's is something that is real and affects those all around us I would love to be able to play a role in gaining control of

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A surgery type of research trial that benefits the patients of Alzheimer’s disease is available. If the surgery was done correctly, the development of Alzheimer’s disease would decrease for the patient or the disease would develop later in life. The benefits of the increased Alzheimer’s research in this trial is mainly for the researchers, doctors, and the patients. For a study, a neurosurgeon would create small holes from a drill and places medicine into the brain of the patient (Hooper et al.). There are two types of drugs that can be placed by the surgeon; placebo and active agent.

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Alzheimer 's is a brain disorder that affects more than 5.3 million people in the United States. The elderly are mainly affected by loss of memory. Scientists have not yet found a cure for this disease which is destroying minds. The government has been helping with a plan giving $600 million a year. Their goal is to prevent or treat the disease by 2025.

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Unfortunately Alzheimer's can affect anyone, it is a disease that weakens the memory more and more as time goes on and eventually turns into Dementia. In 2007 my grandpa started to develop Alzheimer’s and my grandma wanted to make sure he would be cared for by his

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Alzheimer Awareness 1901 was the first recorded Alzheimer case. A woman named Auguste Deter was under the care of Dr. Alois Alzheimer; however he was not able to figure out what was wrong until Auguste had died in 1906. Samuel Cohen, a researcher looking into a drug to cure or at the very least slow down the process of Alzheimer’s, noted that even if Alois and Auguste were alive now they would not be able to help her with modern medicine. The lack of research on the disease affects 40 million people today and in the future when the baby boomers state to become older it will affect approximately 150 million people.

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About four months ago I could say I did not know much about Alzheimer 's. That was until I started watching my now favorite TV show “Grey 's Anatomy.” The main character Meredith her mother was suffering from this disease, I became fascinated with how the disease works, what the symptoms are, if there 's a treatment, and most importantly could I get it. Safe to say my genetic test came back negative for the genetic mutation YAY! In this paper I will go over common symptoms, how the disease progresses, compare a normal brain to a brain with Alzheimer 's, clinical trials, care-giving, and many more things doctors have figured out about this deadly disease. For many forgetfulness is almost always blamed to stress, or old age not many think Alzheimer

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Elderly people need special attention. One of the common age-related problem that affects a person’s ability to think, decrease in daily functioning, and memory loss that gets worsen through time is what we called dementia. It commonly occurs to elderly but is not considered as a normal part of aging. Dementia is defined as: “a syndrome – usually of a chronic or progressive nature – in which there is deterioration in cognitive function (i.e. the ability to process thought) beyond what might be expected from normal ageing. It affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgement.

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Due to the fact that there are numerous factors to Alzheimer’s Disease, it is difficult to pinpoint an exact formula to take care of all of the factors that causes Alzheimer’s Disease. Another reason why is there is no cure is the difficulty of diagnosis. Although losing memories and being forgetful is a crucial sign of Alzheimer, symptoms can still vary from person to person. Due to this, it is difficult for doctors to diagnose a patient with Alzheimer which can lead to late diagnostics and the patient may have already reached the later stages of Alzheimer’s

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With the disease drastically effecting the lives of more than 20 million people, the movement to cure Alzheimer’s should be gaining much more traction, especially since those numbers are expected to more than triple by mid-century. Reasoning for the absence of motivation could be due to a variety of factors, but some could include ineffective marketing and lack of awareness of dementia and its tragic potential. Overview While there are a variety of types of Dementia, Alzheimer’s is the most common, accounting for an estimated 60% to 80% of cases (2017 Facts and Figures). It is a disease that gradually

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A meta-analysis reported that caregivers of people with dementia were significantly more likely to experience depression and anxiety than non-caregivers, meaning that caring for a relative with AD significantly increases the risk of mental health difficulties, difficulties which are more pronounced for female caregivers (Ma, Dorstyn, 2018). The progressive decline in patients’ cognition, function, behavioural and psychiatric symptoms, and the tremendous stress faced by the caregivers are often predictive of institutional placement (Zhu, 2006). As the disease progresses, it carries with it a tremendous increase in burden on the caregiver who does the caregiving (Ampalam et al., 2012) meaning that caregiver burden rises with disease severity. Many studies documented the conflicts between women’s labor force participation and informal caregiving and showed that caregivers who were employed were more likely to withdraw from the labor market, be late or absent more often, take unpaid leave, or reduce their hours of work because of their caregiving responsibilities (Ettner

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2248 Words | 9 Pages

D amage to the brain starts a decade or more before memory and other cognitive problems appear” (Alzheimer’s Disease Fact Sheet). Due to the development of the disease a decade before the critical effects shows the vast span of time and money Alzheimer's patients occupy. Even though extensive research has and is being done for the disease, “Alzheimer’s is complex, and it is unlikely that any one drug or other intervention can successfully treat it. Current approaches focus on helping people maintain mental function, manage behavioral symptoms, and slow or delay the symptoms of disease” (Alzheimer’s Disease Fact Sheet).

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Dementia is one of the most feared diseases and expensive to society currently. It is defined as a clinical syndrome of acquired cognitive impairment that determines decrease of intellectual enough capacity to interfere social and functional performance of the individual and their quality of life. It is a known fact that patients tend to express themselves through their behaviour and expect their carers to understand this notion. The diverse kinds of causes of different behaviours are inability to communicate, difficulty with tasks, unfamiliar surroundings, loud noises, frantic environment, and physical discomfort. Many diseases can cause dementia, some of which may be reversible.

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