Jamaican Health: Alzheimer’s disease and the Illusive Memory

People have the misconceptions that once you have the Alzheimer’s disease that you immediately start forgetting things. This is actually not the case. It is one of the brain diseases that progressively get worse over a period of time. Understanding the illness and getting a diagnosis from a medical practitioner from early, will help the individual and their family cope better and prepare for the disease.

There are three identifiable stages of the Alzheimer’s disease; there is mild, moderate and severe Alzheimer‘s. Each person has a different experience and might not even get to the severe stage. A symptom of the disease might not even present itself until as much as twenty years down the line. At the beginning or mild stage of these brain diseases, you will not be seriously affected in your everyday lifestyle. A person with the illness will forget things regularly.

Generally, people with the disease are over the age of 65. There are cases of younger people who are genetically predisposed having Alzheimer’s disease. In such cases you will note that the individual forgets things like where they put the car keys. They might even forget simple words like a loved one’s name or even the names of animals, pets and friends. Also they might substitute the names of objects or animals like calling a dog a wolf. In more serious or severe Alzheimer’s cases they will tend to repeat themselves, ask the same questions, become moody, exercise poor judgment and start to pull back from social situations.