Alzheimer's: Progression of Symptoms & Related Factors - Essay Sample

Introduction

Alzheimer's disease is a medical condition associated with the progressive destruction of memory and other crucial mental functions. This paper aims at describing the disease and the factors related to its development.

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Progression of Symptoms

The disease begins with the degenerative symptoms on the brain areas that control thought, memory, and language. There is a progression of various symptoms in the affected as the disease stages progress. The disease cycle has been categorized into seven stages which can be further get categorized into three phases as is discussed below.

During the early stages, the patients show symptoms such as mild forgetfulness due to short memory losses, swift mood swings encompassing irritability, and anxiety, difficulty in processing new information and learning of new information, communication difficulties, confusion about time and place, and decline of the ability to perform routine tasks. As the disease progresses into the second phases, the symptoms become more severe, and the effects of earlier mentioned symptoms become more visible. The patient experiences symptoms such as increase in the short-term memory loss and confusion, difficulty in recognition of people including the family members and friends, feelings of restlessness and shorter span of attention, aggressiveness and significant swift mood swings, neglectfulness of personal hygiene and frequent need to be assisted with daily tasks, and loss of appetite. During the later stages of the disease individual's abilities are usually at the brink of total collapse. There is the inability to understand or use speech, inability to recognize one's self or other people including close family members and relatives, inconsistency in excretion activities such as the passing of urine or faces, increasing immobility, and sleep time that culminates in severe disorientation.

Most Likely Groups to get the Disease

Although there is no single identified cause of Alzheimer, medical researchers believe that a combination of factors causes it. These include lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise, poor quality of sleep, smoking, obesity, and diet that is deficient of fruits and vegetables, environmental factors like long-term exposure to some environmental solvents and infection with certain viruses and bacteria, and genetic factor. Such factors include; changes in certain genes due to old age, past-down syndrome cases, and family history of Alzheimer's disease. Persons falling in any of these categories are at risk of Alzheimer infection, although, the disease has been mostly associated with females than males from research.

Lifestyle Factors Likely to Increase or Decrease the Disease

Lifestyle factors such as lack of body exercises, short and inadequate sleep sessions, poor diet that lacks or has inadequate amounts of vitamins such as fruits and vegetables but has a lot of fats that leads to obesity and high blood pressure. There is also smoking that increases risk factors for blood vessel complications, and appear to increase the chances of Alzheimer infection. To decrease the chances of infection one should observe proper diet composed of right proportions fats and vitamins, take enough sleep, exercise the body to keep fit, and avoid activities such as smocking.

Things to Start Doing Now to Increase the Odds of Keeping One’s Cognitive Functioning With Age

Research has proven that leading to a healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease with age. Regular physical activities can maintain brain health. The Mediterranean-style diet such as plant foods like vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, fish, poultry, and eggs among others have also been proven to reduce the risk of the disease and also, have additional benefits of lowering the effects of cardiovascular diseases, that are hugely associated with Alzheimer's decease prevalence at old age.