Huntington’s Disease What is Huntington’s? A family passed down disease which is an autosomal dominant trait characterized by the onset of Chorea and Dementia after the ages of 40-50? Signs of initial onset of the disease include paranoia, poor impulse control, depression, hallucinations, and delusions. Over time, there will be an intellectual impairment, loss of fine motor control, athetosis, and diffuse chorea involving axial and limb musculature develops. Normally, an individual will end up…
side effect of prescription of drugs , the worst depression of medication including blood pressure medication, sleeping pills, ulcer medication, and heart drugs containing reserpine. Depression is one of the risk factor to increasing heart diseases, and risk disease. In old people depression increase the risk of suicide, especially in older people of white…
Laura’s grandfather has begun having memory problems. First, he would constantly forget where he placed his keys or his wallet. Then he would have trouble remembering to pay the bills or cooking dinner. One day, Laura took him shopping, and in the middle of the trip, while they were both using the restroom, Laura’s grandpa left. Laura spent many hours searching for him in the shopping area, but to no avail, she could not find him. When she returned home, she found him sitting on the couch, and…
A dormant eighty-five-year-old Alzheimer's patient sits in a wheelchair in his nursing home where he has resided for the past 15 years. His full and eventful life has come to a halt as his alzheimer's began to progress rapidly. His love of music, which began as a child and carried over into his adulthood, has vanished, or so it seemed. Until one day a music therapist came into the nursing home and placed a pair of headphones that were connected to an iPod, over the resident’s ears which were…
caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), which represents more than 60% of all dementias in those sixty-five and older, and with related dementia. In this study, related dementia is Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and other types of dementia. Caregivers with formal training or caregivers of people with non-dementia diagnoses were ineligible. The need for participants was spread through informational flyers, various media outlets, various Alzheimer’s Association outlets,…
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that affects approximately 23.6 million people globally (Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 Collaborators, 2015). The disorder is marked by delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and behavior, which typically result in problems related to self-care and general functioning in social and occupational settings (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Despite the first detailed clinical description having been written in 1810 (Haslam, 1810), and…
Dementia Care: How to Communicate Effectively According to the Alzheimer's Association, one in three senior Americans will contract Alzheimer's or another form of dementia. As the senior population increases, there is expected to be a 40 percent increase in the number of cases by 2025, and unless a cure is found the numbers will more than triple by 2050. In short, many senior caregivers are going to need to talk with a loved one who is suffering from dementia. Below are some tips on…
One of the many diseases caused by faulty cell-to-cell communication is Alzheimer’s disease. This disease causes many cells in the brain to die. Therefore, as more and more of the cells die, it causes the brain to shrink. What causes the brain cells to die, which then causes the brain to contract, is the unusual twist of the protein called tau. Tau is a protein in the brain that delivers nutrients and other important elements to the brain cells. The effect of the twisted protein inhibits the…
Degenerative diseases are increasingly on the rise, traditionally affecting the elderly, but in recent times, children and adults too. Often, they are either incurable or very difficult to cure resulting in many sick people with limited potential to restore them. Over the last few years, a new development has been found for those with degenerative diseases: Stem Cells. To understand how stem cells work, first we have to understand how a degenerative disease works. Most degenerative diseases are…
The staff at St Peter’s Residence at Chedoke need help finding a better solution to prevent residents from wandering into other residents’ rooms. Many of the residents suffer from Alzheimer disease or a related dementia (reports from long-term care institutions range from 11–24% [1]) and numerous experts agree that all people with dementia are at high risk for wandering due to their cognitive deficits and unpredictable behaviour [2]. The client (staff at St Peter’s Residence at Chedoke) has…