Alzheimer's disease is a progressive degenerative condition of the brain that results in the onset of dementia. As of today, there is no cure for this unforgiving disease, and the treatments for Alzheimer's patients are mediocre at best. Most of the medications that are prescribed to the patients are aimed to slow down the progress of the disease. The types of treatments also vary depending on the stage of progression that the patient is currently in (Simon 2012). From statistics recovered from the Alzheimer's Association's website, there are currently five million Americans who are living with Alzheimer's, and that number is being increased by one person every sixty-seven seconds. Alzheimer's ranks as the sixth most leading cause of death in the United States killing approximately 500,000 people each year. One-in-three seniors will die of Alzheimer's or another dementia related disease. However intriguing these numbers and ratios may be, there is one statistic that grabbed my attention. In 2013, 15.5 million caregivers provided approximately 17.7 billion unpaid hours of service to patients with Alzheimer's that is valued at around $220 billion (Alzheimer's Association 2014).
The history of the knowledge of dementia can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans; however, the discovery of Alzheimer's dementia can be credited to the German psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer. In 1901, Alois Alzheimer identified the first known case of this form of dementia, later to be called Alzheimer's disease, in his fifty-year old patient whom who called Auguste D. She eventually passed away from the condition in 1906, leading him to publically repot his findings regarding Auguste D. During the next five years, eleven cases with the same symptoms and results were reported in medical literature (Alzheimer 1897).
To better understand this mentally and societally hindering disease, it is important to understand how Alzheimer's affects the body and mind.
