Three Stages of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease, named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, is a progressive and irreversible pathological change of the brain. In 1901, Dr. Alzheimer discovered weird signs in the brain tissue of a woman dying of an unusual mental illness. After examining the woman’s brain, Dr. Alzheimer found amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles which caused the woman’s memory loss, unpredictable behaviors, and language problems. In fact, in addition to the woman’s symptoms mentioned above, Alzheimer’s disease affects much more aspects of a person in the whole period of the illness. The process is divided into three continuous stages according to the symptoms, the mild stage, the moderate stage, and the severe stage.

In the first 2 to 4 years of Alzheimer’s disease, called the mild stage, the problems of patients are mild but noticeable. The patients can still work, drive, and socialize with others. However, they may have memory lapses, such as difficulties coming up with correct words when conversing, and troubles remembering new names when meeting new people. Also, it is probable for them to lose or misplace valuable objects without paying attention. Although these symptoms are not serious, they can be detected and thus should be treated as soon as possible to slow disease progression.

Afterwards, symptoms of these patients in the following 2 to 10 years, the moderate stage, become more obvious. They will have changes in personalities. For instance, they become suspicious, deluded, moody, or withdrawn. Besides, the ability of memorizing worsens faster as time passes. They may be unable to recall the address and phone numbers, forget the events happening in the past, or confuse with the date and the position. It is expected for them to wander without directions and get lost. Therefore, they require better help and greater care in their daily lives compared with patients in the moderate stage.

Lastly, patients experience much more acute symptoms in the final phase, the severe stage. They start losing awareness of the changes and events in the environment surrounding them. Also, they are not able to respond to others, carry on conversations, and control their emotion. In addition, they are deprived of physical abilities, including walking, sitting, and even swallowing. Eventually, the whole daily routine of a patient has to be taken care with round-the-clock assistance.

To sum up, this progressive and irreversible illness, Alzheimer’s disease, can be separated into three stages according to the symptoms. In the first mild stage, patients experience slight memory lapses which do not cause big problems in daily lives. Then, in the second moderate stage, individuals experience more serious memory loss and personality changes. Ultimately, in the third severe stage, invalids start to have problems in cognition, conversations, emotions, and physical abilities, forcing them to rely on the assistance all the time. Therefore, in order to prevent the state of the illness from getting worse and worse, people should be careful when noticing symptoms mentioned above and should undergo therapies once the problems are detected.

References

Mayo clinic. (2019) Alzheimer's stages: How the disease progresses. Retrieved from

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-disease/in-depth/alzheimers-stages/art-20048448

Pictures retrieved from

1. https://aaom.org/health/alzheimers-disease/

2. https://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2014/january2014/alzheimers-disease-a-disease-of-deterioration