Alzheimer’s disease has become one of the most common and challenging illnesses facing aging population today.
Approximately 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and older are currently living with the disease, with women making up nearly two-thirds of those affected. It is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.
Neurologist Steven Toenjes says that memory loss is among the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
“It is a degenerative disease that is created by the pathological entities that wind up damaging the nerves of our brain and really sets them up to start dying. It begins with memory and involvement, episodic memory, things like What did I just do? What did we just have for breakfast? Remembering where you’re going on your way to an appointment and things like that, you can have other cognitive domains involved, often language problems.”
There are numerous modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s with obesity being the top factor in the US.
“Modifiable risk factors exist. There’s a number of them; obesity is a big one. There are a number of ways that sleep is significant, adequate amounts of sleep, appropriate sleep, treating sleep apnea if it’s there. You see the hearing aids, hearing loss is a major risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease and treating the hearing loss with hearing aids mitigates that risk, meaning it is modifiable and so everybody that knows the person with the that doesn’t like the way their hearing aids you, just tell them no, it’s Alzheimer’s risk and you need to treat your hearing as soon as you tell them that almost everybody gets and puts those hearing aids. Head traumas. Of course, we shouldn’t try to get head traumas and there’s not much you can do about the past of head traumas, but it is important thing for us to be trying to avoid recurrent concussions and head traumas and then cardiovascular,” said Toenjes.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a progressive brain disorder that currently has no cure. However, remaining physically and mentally active is very important and some medications can help improve memory.
“Nonpharmacological treatments are extremely important. Diet is very, very helpful, sleeping, an adequate amount aerobic exercise, regular cardiovascular exercise really, really helps our memory and slows decline, remaining physically and mentally active is extremely important and that is a treatment. Remember the hearing loss part we got to treat that. If we have sleep apnea, we need to treat that objectively, can slow the decline even in an Alzheimer’s patient that can slow them down. But we also have drugs. We’ve had a number of drugs, rivastigmine. Those are medications that can enhance memory function when studied, that is objectively something that that has efficacy,” said Toenjes.
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