Caregivers Must Use Sponges On The End Of A Body - 2597 Words

Imagine you’re feeling a little dehydrated. Your throat is burning, and your head is throbbing. Of course, you decide to get yourself a glass of water, as most humans do. First, you walk to the cupboard and pull out a plastic cup. You fill the cup with ice-cold water and raise it to your lips. As you take a drink, the cool liquid runs over your tongue, and you feel rehydrated. It is one of the simplest tasks humans do. Something we can do from a young age. Our bodies are programmed to know when we are thirsty; our brains make us feel thirsty so we will drink water and keep our bodies alive and healthy. But people with advanced Alzheimer’s have no concept of these simple, instinctive tasks. Their brain function is slowly reduced to less†¦show more content†¦When my great aunt was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s I was still young, but I found it shocking that she could no longer remember me and my sister, and then eventually my father and her husband. When my f ather told me that at the end of her life, she didn’t even know how to drink or eat, I was amazed. What is it that makes the most advanced system of electric and chemical signals suddenly stop working? How can we forget everything we have known and learned since we were born? The complexity of the brain and the disease makes diagnosis and treatment very hard for doctors. But the disease is so terrible, I was left wondering: How can we improve the length and quality of life for Alzheimer’s patients? The key to curing a disease is to understand how the disease works, so it can be treated effectively. One must know how the disease starts, how it progresses, what symptoms it presents with, and finally how it threatens and kills patients in order to properly diagnose and treat it. So I decided to start my research there. While scientists are still working on understanding the details of Alzheimer’s, they do know that the disease involves the build up of plaque and tangles in between neurons that interfere with cell signaling and cause the death of these cells. Plaques are made of a protein called beta amyloid, which is a