let's say you're going to the grocery
store but you realize you left your keys
in your room you go up to get them and
then walk into the room and look around
for a second and realize you completely
forgot why you even came here in the
first place we all know how frustrating
this can be right but this scenario is
totally normal and is something
everybody experiences from time to time
and besides causing you to take one more
trip up the stairs to your room after
you remember again it doesn't throw off
your day too much when problems
remembering or problems with your
thinking skills in general become so
severe and so common that they actually
interfere with your daily life it might
be diagnosed as dementia dementia though
is not a specific disease what do I mean
by that well it's more of a general term
that describes a range of potential
difficulties with reasoning judgment and
memory for example somebody with
dementia might have troubles with
speaking or writing coherent lis or
understanding what was spoken or written
they also might have trouble recognizing
their surroundings especially when those
surroundings should normally be very
familiar to them planning and performing
tasks that require multiple steps can
also be difficult for patients with
dementia even tasks that you might think
are really simple like getting dressed
in eating this can become a serious
challenge for patients with later stage
dementia and to make matters worse many
times patients aren't even aware that
they're experiencing any troubles or any
sort of cognitive deficiencies at all
now dementia is most common in the
elderly especially after age 65 but it
is certainly not a normal part of Aging
so dementia in very general terms is
something we use to describe when
someone has troubles learning
remembering and communicating but where
does Alzheimer's disease fit into this
well Alzheimer's disease is a type of
dementia specifically it's what's known
as a neurodegenerative disease and it
counts for about sixty to eighty percent
of all cases of dementia affecting about
five million people so if we look at
neuro we know that this refers to the
nerves of the nervous system or
basically your brain and then
degenerative or degeneration means to
decline or to deteriorate so with
Alzheimer's disease there's this
deterioration of your nerve cells in
your brain and this brain of yours
houses about a hundred billion nerve
cells which are also called neurons and
these guys communicate using a hundred
trillion connections that's a lot
now this communication and those
connections are will control essentially
every other organ and every other
function in your body not to mention
your thinking abilities unfortunately
though the main type of cells that
Alzheimer's disease targets and affects
are these precious neurons and depending
on where the affected neurons live in
your brain different functions of your
brain can be affected for example if
nerve cells in this area of your
cerebrum are affected you might have
trouble solving problems or making plans
because these cells help you do those
things or if the neurons in this area
are affected you might have problems
remembering something or storing new
memories and as Alzheimer's disease
progresses more and more these neurons
die and your brain tissue actually
begins to shrink due to this loss of
nerve cells
all right so nerve cells in your brain
are destroyed in Alzheimer's disease but
how are they destroyed well
unfortunately answers to seemingly
fundamental questions like these aren't
really fully understood yet but
scientists have pinpointed a couple
possible culprits that usually seem to
be involved and these are called plaques
and tangles plaques are like these weird
abnormal clusters of protein fragments
that build up between neighboring
neurons so this is a normal group of
nerve cells going about their business
you know communicating and whatnot with
Alzheimer's disease these plaques start
to form in between these neurons which
is thought to make it a lot harder for
them to communicate
now besides plaques the other hallmark
of Alzheimer's disease are called
tangles
unlike plaques though these guys are
found inside the neurons and most of
these are made up of a protein called
tau and tau proteins are helpful usually
but in Alzheimer's disease they're all
twisted in abnormal which ultimately
ends up hurting the cells okay but we
still haven't said why these plaques and
tangles form well again that
still a huge huge area of research and
is something scientists continue to gain
insight on would have yet to completely
understand