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| Image via Wikipedia |
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| Image via Wikipedia |
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| Image via Wikipedia |
There is no one single cause of Alzheimer’s disease, Alzheimer’s is brought on by varying factors with each person affected being different. However, the biggest two factors which increase the risk of you developing Alzheimer’s are the advancement of age and heredity. Your degree of mental fitness and your environment are also thought to play a part to some extent - although this and several other theories have not yet been proven..
Who
gets Alzheimer’s?
By
the time you reach the age of 65, roughly 5 in 100 people have
developed the disease, by the age of 80 the odds have jumped to 1 in
5 and almost half of all people at the age of 90 have some signs of
dementia. Alzheimer’s isn’t strictly limited to those over the
age of 65; much younger people have been affected by it. It is a
disease that is thought to occur in women more than men, but the main
reason for this is simply that women tend to live longer than men.
Alzheimer’s
and heredity
There
has proven to be a heredity link to Alzheimer’s in roughly 3% of
all cases of the disease. Heredity is thought to occur when the onset
of the disease has occurred at an early age, with about 40% of people
who developed the disease before the age of 65 having family members
affected by the disease. This does not mean that having a family
member with Alzheimer’s will guarantee being affected by it. Quite
the contrary, although those with affected family members are at a
slightly higher risk than others, there are still measures that can
be taken to help avoid the onset of Alzheimer’s.
Avoiding
Alzheimer’s
Many
believe that the environment in which you live can make a difference
as to whether you are more susceptible to developing Alzheimer’s.
Research is currently being conducted as to whether exposure to
certain metals is a contributing factor to developing the disease.
Many experts have tied aluminum as a possible cause of the disease
and suggest that antiperspirant deodorants are avoided due to their
high aluminum content.
Many
doctors also believe that one’s state of mental health plays a
large part in the onset of the disease. The sharper one keeps
oneself, the less susceptible one is to the disease. However, there
is not currently any evidence to suggest that staying mentally fit
will make a difference one way or the other.
There
are thought to be many other factors that could lead to the onset of
Alzheimer’s, but additional research is needed due to there being a
lot of conflicting evidence. Factors to consider include, head
trauma, various viral infections, a history of downs syndrome in the
family, smoking and thyroid disease.
The
future of Alzheimer’s
Unfortunately,
there is not currently any particular test that doctors can use to
indicate who may be more susceptible of developing the disease. The
primary goal in research right now is to understand better the
mechanisms of the disease with the hope of one day being able to
predict those people who are more susceptible to Alzheimer’s before
the disease actually sets in. By doing so, scientists and doctors
believe that it could lead to developments of treatment to delay the
onset of Alzheimer’s.
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