Some Facts About Alzheimer's

I've noticed some postings that are insensitive about Ulzhimer's. I have a relative that suffers from a severe strain of the disease.

It kills your brain. Slowly, your cells die. It begins with misplacing things like keys and forgetting what one is doing on errand trips. It gets worse. The person starts to forget what they just said--consequently, they repeat themselves over and over again. After that, more cells die, the person can have a harder time walking. Names of close relatives are forgotten. Yet more cells die, the person goes into a babbling state. Relfexes and doing the simplest tasks (playing catch for instance) can still be done. The person loses control over the excratory functions--they require help to use the restroom. Occassionally, and this is the cruelest part for us relatives, a glimpse of the person that once was comes out for a breif instant. Then the person goes back into stories that make no sense, and have no meaning. Faces, are still recognized. But yet more cells die, and the faces are fogotten. Fatigue on the remaining cells grows--the person becomes prone to lapsing into semi-comas where their eyes are open and moving, but they cannot respond to anyting.

Tastes become more and more bland. It gets harder to get the person to eat. They have an even harder time walking--they are even more prone to falling down. When patients are up, they are prone to wandering around aimlessly. Without round-the-clock care, they can get out of their homes, and wander in front of cars. Many patients die this way. It is an awful, awful disease, if anybody around here made fun of people with AIDS they'd be rightly condemned. So to all of you that don't get it--Alzheimer's disease is awful...a person who is sure to be loved by many in the world slip slides away into death.

There are somethings I've noticed that help: as painful as it may be, talk to people with the disease. Too may people avoid them because the talk is so depressing. But it cheers them up and makes them feel relevant. Simple tasks like catch can be enjoyable for the patient.

Finally, and this goes for any of you that know how to play music, for some reason music is ingrained in the brains of patients. They know all of these old songs. When my relative who has an advanced stage of the disease hears music, she perks up. She can sing along with the music, and really have a great time. When we've been in homes, this is true for other patients as well.

So instead of taking delight in the suffering of one prominent patient, why not understand how truly horrible the disease is. Volunteer to help out at senior centers that cater to patients, or learn how to play an instrument and cheer up people (many of whom have done more for this country than most of us ever will).

More information on the disease can be found at: http://www.alz.org/AboutAD/overview.htm

They're doing another study in hopes of stopping the advancement of this disease..SAD!!!

I'm pro-life, but I support stem-cell research because of how it can help people already in this world. My understanding is that quite a bit of this research is dependent on stem-cells...yet another reason to get rid of Bush.

I am so frustrated by all the posts today referring to Reagan, wishing him a horrible death.

Let me tell you, I have spent much of the last two years helping my mother change my father's diapers, arranging nursing home care, negotiating the horrible health care system we have, living on the edge with every ring of the phone.

My dad died a horrible death due to this disease. I don't wish it on anyone. Some here just want to use it to bash Reagan.

Bash him for his policies, but don't bash him for his disease.

Thank you for posting this. I visited my grandma today; she is in an assisted living unit esp. for people with Alzheimers. I hadn't seen her for a while and feel guilty about it. So I am feeling particularly sensitive about this.

Also thanks for the tip about the music. I am going to go to that site to learn more.

I'm not insensitive to the suffering of good people. Nor do I find pleasure (per se) in the suffering of anyone. But I won't feel compassion and sadness for evil people who suffer... as with the case of Reagan.

BTW, isn't it ironic that the Reagans and some conservatives have changed their tune about stem cell research because of Reagan's condition? Funny, they didn't seem to care before someone they knew got a disease than could be cured with help from stem cell research.

Compassionate conservatism cares a lot about undeveloped human cells, doesn't it?

You care for everyone that suffers this awful fate. As for stem cells, sometimes it takes seeing the extremes of suffering to turn people around. I'm not fond of the Reagans, but on this one I give them the benefit of the doubt. It is such a terrible disease, and we must allow people to cope with it in their own way--that includes the Reagans.

because I'm a jaded, hateful reactionary of the times I live in, I've learned to save my good emotions for those deserving of them.

This infers that you are not sensitive to "bad people".

Who gets to decide? You?

Compassion costs nothing and offers the moral high ground. I have no love for Reagan, believe me. I suffered under his policies. But I feel compassion for any human being who suffers.

crossed paths with the alzheimer's community since i was doing fundraising.

I agree this is a devastating disease that one would hardly have any humor about if it touched them.

Where Reagan is concerned, I really don't think people wish that suffering on anyone or their family - it is simply a convenient focus for the fact that a man that used the flag, the economy and the military to spread so much hatred destruction and despair and hed little sympathy for the suffering of others (classifying them as the less productive members of society) met such a fateful end in his old age.

I've lost relatives, including my grandmother to Alzheimers. I wish it on NO one, not even Cheney... <reposted from your dupe thread>

I have epilepsy and your flashing sig bothers me tremendously.

Would you mind terribly replacing it w/something that does not flash?

TIA

It's more poignant, too. Don't you think?

being done in southern California at UCSD, looking at the use of viral vectors to transfer Nerve Growth Factor to the brain of patients with Alzheimers. The approach seems to address many of the affects. I saw some of this evidence in a seminar, so don't know how publicly accessible it is. The research I saw was in the middle of a phase I clinical trial, so they must be approaching phase II.

At least some of the results are discussed in this manuscript:
J Mol Neurosci. 2002 Aug-Oct;19(1-2):207. Nerve growth factor gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease. Tuszynski MH, Thal L, U HS, Pay MM, Blesch A, Conner J, Vahlsing HL.

If you want to look further into it, search for Tuszynski's name, he seems to be a front runner in the field.

Best wishes to you and yours.

In Switzerland, a neuropathologist named Judith Miklossy showed that when she looked for spirochetes in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, she found them in an alarming percentage of the patient's. Since this is a bacterium invisible in human tissue unless you look as well as stain for it post-mortem, we need to do more dementia-based autopsies to determine the role and frequency of spirochetes in debilitating neurological and neuromuscular diseases. Part of Miklossy's work showed an association of the location of spirochetes in the patient's brain with amyloid plaques. What role can these bacteria or other bacterial pathogens play in producing amyloid in mammalian brains? Better animal models of brain cell metabolism and infection are needed to find out.

There is abundant evidence that NGF administration fixes or improves Alzheimers. Doing it with the protein is hard, because so much is required. Doing it by gene transfer is much more efficient. This has not a damned thing to do with Spirochetes.

Ask for better models all you want, but jebus, NGF has already been shown to be effective.

This isn't even my field, so perhaps you have a more highly refined grasp of the situation than I do. What's wrong with NGF?

My Dad had Alzheimer's disease. I fed him lunch and dinner every day for months before he left us ... others on the staff of his nursing home took care of him at other times. My dad was an extremely smart electrical engineer in his prime days.

In his last months my sister and I made him a "busy box" with big bolts and nuts to screw together, hinges to move back and forth, wooden blocks to build things with ... you get the picture, I hope.

We had given my Dad a telephone handset in his "busy box". In one of my last visits with him we were talking about the things in the box, and he held the handset out to me, admiring it, and said "Have you ever seen such a wonderful thing as this? The curves, the symmetry, the beauty of it is just astounding."

Never, never think that the person behind the disease isn't still there. He or she is still there, hidden behind a wall of misunderstanding and confusion. I can't type anything else right now because of the tears in my eyes.

I lost my Mother to Alzheimer's, a most horrid disease.

He'll never have to choose between a pill or a meal, or experience a bedsore from lack of care. He will never lie in his own urine and feces. And everything that a true worshipper can do is being done for him.

I never saw homeless anywhere but the Bowery before Reagan. Homeless and infomercials are the true Reagan legacy.

George W. would not have been possible with Ronnie Raygun.

I wish Ronnie were dying in a gutter begging for help while nobody comes.

Because that's what he gave us.

Don't get luxury. There is nothing luxurious about Alheimer's. I agree his policies as president, especially on trade, were terrible. But that isn't a reason to take pleasure in such an awful disease.

Taking pleasure in other people's diseases is plain wrong.

I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's a few weeks ago. But though she was given the best of care, she had really "died" a long time ago - she wasn't "there" any more.

I suspect Reagan is the same way - everything that made him who he was died a long time ago.

This helps me avoid taking satisfaction off these things.

Nice tips about talking and music. Will try to remember if I'm near someone with Alzheimer's.