Statement: The content of this article is written by quoting authoritative medical information combined with personal opinions, the source of the literature and screenshots have been marked in the text, in order to facilitate everyone's reading and understanding, some of the storylines have fictional components, which are intended to popularize scientific health knowledge, please be aware.
This year's 78-year-old Grandma Li fell and injured herself, it stands to reason that it is not uncommon for the elderly to fall with bad legs and feet, but this time Grandma Li fell a little strange, because Grandma Li fell on a road full of small potholes next to her house, the problem is that this road Grandma Li has always known that it is not easy to walk, and she has basically never walked from here for so many years, what is going on today?
In the face of the family's inquiry, Grandma Li seemed a little dazed, and after thinking about it for a long time, Grandma Li actually said, "What am I going to do?" As for why she went out in the afternoon and why she took that road, Grandma Li said that she didn't know anything.
In the face of the grandmother's performance, the delicate little grandson whispered, "Grandma won't have Alzheimer's disease", a sentence woke up the dreamer, and the family quickly took Grandma Li to do relevant examinations, and finally the doctor said that it was indeed the early stage of Alzheimer's disease.
Faced with the result, the family was uncomfortable at the same time, but it was not surprising, because if you think about it carefully, Grandma Li usually has a lot of behaviors in her life that are in line with Alzheimer's disease, the most typical is the mantra "What am I going to do?" ”
60%-70%！ Is "dementia" caused by Alzheimer's disease just memory deterioration?
Alzheimer's disease is a very common geriatric disease in the mainland, compared with other cardiovascular geriatric diseases, Alzheimer's disease has been ignored by the public, thinking that this is the same thing as memory deterioration in the elderly, but in fact, dementia as a disease is not low risk for the elderly, especially dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease, which is simply the degeneration of brain tissue that prevents normal functioning;
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, 60%-70% of dementia is caused by Alzheimer's disease, and according to statistics, about 40 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
Dear readers, in order to popularize more content that is beneficial to everyone, the author works hard every day, and it is not easy to create, so he has to add a short 5-second advertisement to the article, and you can read the full text for free by watching. I know it might be a little intrusive, but it does give me the motivation to keep writing. Your understanding is my biggest motivation! I'll try to bring more quality content!
As we said above, many people only think that Alzheimer's disease is memory deterioration, which is not correct, let us clearly feel how much Alzheimer's disease affects the elderly through Lao Zhao's personal experience.
Lao Zhao said:
In the early days of my illness, I found myself occasionally forgetting to turn off the faucet or finding the glasses I had just put down.
At first, I thought it was just ordinary old age forgetfulness, but over time, the frequency and severity of these little things gradually increased. Fragments of memory kept disappearing, and my world began to fall apart.
When the diagnosis confirmed that I had Alzheimer's disease, at that moment, my heart sank to the bottom.
But I soon realized that the challenge was much more than memory deterioration. My daily living skills also began to degrade, and everyday tasks that I used to be proficient at, such as dressing, cooking, and even walking, became increasingly difficult.
Every day, I struggle with these changes. I try to remember the faces of my loved ones and their names, trying to find familiar scenes in my mind that are drifting away. However, it's like groping in the dark, and the more you try to hold on, the faster these memories seem to slip away.
In addition to memory loss, mood swings are also a serious problem.
I found myself becoming more and more emotionally unstable, sometimes drowning in unprovoked melancholy and sometimes being irritable about small things. These mood swings not only bothered me, but also made my family feel helpless and miserable.
Language communication has also become a challenge.
I found myself finding it increasingly difficult to find the right words to express my thoughts and needs.
In conversation, I often forget what I was about to say, or I pause and can't find the next word to say. This made me feel embarrassed and frustrated in social situations, and gradually, I began to avoid communicating with people.
My ability to take care of myself is also gradually decreasing.
Sometimes, I even forget how to tie my shoes or use cutlery. The loss of these basic skills made me feel deprived of my dignity and independence, and I became increasingly dependent on the help of others.
If it weren't for the support of my family, I might not have been able to hold on a long time ago......
Alzheimer's disease, how exactly does it make people "demented"?
So, how does Alzheimer's disease, which makes the elderly suffer, make people "demented"?
Alzheimer's disease, as a neurodegenerative disease, causes a person's cognitive function to gradually fail, and the mechanism of production is quite complex. At present, the pathogenic theory of Alzheimer's disease is very complex, the most authoritative of which is the damage of brain neurons caused by the silencing of abnormal proteins, which leads to the inability of brain function to proceed normally, the most common of which is β-amyloid precipitation, which affects the transmission function of normal neurons.
The reason why our human body can transmit information in a timely manner depends on the transmission of information between neurons, and this is inseparable from a structure called synapses between neurons, and you can understand the synapses between every two neurons as the distance between two departments.
In order to transmit information from one neuron to another, neurotransmitters are needed to travel back and forth between them, and the deposition of abnormal proteins can block this process and lead to dysfunction of neural communication.
In addition, the precipitation of abnormal proteins can also lead to the thickening of nerve fibers, resulting in entanglement of nerve fibers, further disrupting the normal function of the brain.
With the abnormality of the brain's neurotransmission function, medical research has found that there will be further inflammatory response and oxidative stress in the brain, which will accelerate the damage and degeneration of brain tissue, so that Alzheimer's disease will have irreversible cognitive damage.
This damage is very different from the memory loss we imagined!
At the beginning, patients may show memory loss, thinking ability decreases, and as the symptoms worsen step by step, they will also manifest different manifestations, and we can use three "mantras" to divide the different stages of Alzheimer's disease.
There are three common mantras for Alzheimer's disease, and the elderly in the family often appear to be vigilant
If you have no concept of the specific manifestations of Alzheimer's disease, then the following content should be taken a good look, these three mantras can not only help us detect the abnormalities of the elderly in an early stage, but also help us to develop a care plan for the elderly, let's learn about the three most common mantras of Alzheimer's disease.
Sentence 1: What am I going to do?
This is a mantra that appears most often in the earliest stage of Alzheimer's disease, because the law of memory forgetting in Alzheimer's disease is from near to far, the earliest appearance is to forget what you do in your daily life and forget the objects around you, and this stage is often the stage that people are most likely to ignore.
Because when we are doing things in life, we also forget what we were supposed to do, such as trying to go to the bedroom to get something, and as a result, someone talks to us, and after speaking, we turn our heads and forget what we were supposed to do. However, the difference is that patients with dementia are more likely to have these conditions.
And when we think about it when we encounter this situation, most of them quickly remember what we are going to do.
People with dementia, on the other hand, often have a hard time remembering what they want to do without being reminded by outsiders, which is a dysfunction caused by degeneration of brain tissue. Therefore, if parents and the elderly often appear this mantra, they must be vigilant in time.
Second sentence: Where is this?
Getting lost is one of the most common behaviors in older people with Alzheimer's.
We can also often see a variety of ways on the Internet to solve the problem that the elderly can't find their way home, such as bringing an identity tag, writing the address and contact information on the arm, etc., in fact, the old man's sentence "I can't find the way" is a manifestation of the further development of the disease.
The reason why patients with dementia can't find the way is because the damage to the brain tissue affects their spatial perception, and in their eyes, the street they often walk on may become a little unrecognizable in a blink of an eye, or it looks different from their own impression, and it is precisely because of this that they often get lost.
This cognitive decline is a very dangerous situation for the elderly, when Alzheimer's disease develops to the advanced stage, there will even be a situation where they are lost in their own home, and when the cognitive impairment is severe, even their own home will suddenly become unfamiliar in their eyes, and the place that was originally the door has become a wall in a blink of an eye......
As normal people, we are scary to imagine, let alone the elderly who have dementia themselves.
It is precisely because of these reasons that the elderly fall from a height in their own homes and other news are not uncommon, many of which are caused by the elderly due to cognitive impairment of the wrong judgment of the road, so the elderly at home often appear this "mantra" when we must increase the protection of the elderly.
Sentence 3: Who are you?
Inability to recognize people is also a classic manifestation of Alzheimer's disease to the later stage, at the beginning of some people around them, and eventually will gradually develop into friends, relatives and even children, and the reason is also cognitive impairment, which is not the same as forgetting in everyone's imagination.
To put it simply, we think that the elderly with dementia forget who the people around them are, and they can't recognize it when they meet with old friends we haven't seen for a long time, but in fact, the old people are likely to be due to cognitive impairment caused by the mismatch between the faces they see and the faces they remember in their brains, that is to say, they only met yesterday, and when they meet again today, the old man sees you, and it is indeed a completely unfamiliar face in his mind.
It is also because of this that many elderly people in the later stage of dementia, even if they see their loved ones, they have to chat for a long time before they suddenly recognize them, so at this time, we should not feel impatient, and we should patiently help the elderly to re-identify the person in front of them through meetings and other means, which can help them relieve their own anxiety and fear, and it is also good for the condition.
The above are the three most common mantras after dementia in the elderly, and do the elderly in the family exist?
If there is dementia, what stage is the elderly in? I hope that through this article, you can have a new understanding of Alzheimer's disease and have more care and love for the elderly at home.
Bibliography:
[1] Min Xiaoxia. Analysis of the occurrence status and related influencing factors of mental and behavioral symptoms in elderly patients with dementia.2024.03.25.
[2] Lin Lisheng. "Signs of Alzheimer's Disease".2014.11.01.
[3] Wang Jiafan. "Alzheimer's disease is different from forgetfulness in 6 ways".2021.09.15.
#长文创作激励计划#