Dementia Myth by Coleman Vernon

Author:Coleman, Vernon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: EMJ Books
Published: 2019-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Alzheimer’s Disease

At any age, few things are more frightening than the idea of losing your mind.

And, as a result of work done by drug companies, doctors, charities and journalists, for most people ‘losing your mind’ means developing Alzheimer’s disease. For an increasing number of people over 50, this nightmare is becoming a reality.

Alzheimer’s disease was virtually unheard of just a few decades ago. Today, Alzheimer’s disease is described as an epidemic.

Scientists have claimed that Alzheimer’s disease is commoner now because people are living longer. This is nonsense. Visit any cemetery and the chances are high that you will find plenty of graves for people who died in their 80s or 90s around 100 years ago. (You will also find plenty of graves for young children – showing just how high the incidence of infant and child mortality used to be and why the average life expectancy was so short.)

The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease has risen partly because the size of the population has increased. If there are twice as many people living in a town then the incidence of dementia in the town will probably increase in proportion. And the incidence of Alzheimer’s will continue to rise steadily as the population increases.

But the alleged incidence of Alzheimer’s disease has also risen because there are strong commercial incentives for this diagnosis to be made erroneously. A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease should never be made until all other possible causes of dementia have been excluded but, as I have already shown, that is not what happens.

Alzheimer’s is, like all forms of dementia, a terrible disease: gradually robbing the sufferer of his or her memory, judgement, reasoning skills, speech and dignity. The disease also has an effect on the emotions as well as on behaviour.

Here are three basic facts:

Alzheimer’s, a physical, progressive condition for which there is no known cure, causes degeneration of the nerve cells in the cerebral cortex of the brain as well as loss of brain mass.

Alzheimer’s affects both men and women; no sex or nationality is immune to the disease.

The incidence of Alzheimer’s seems to increases with age: it occurs in up to 30 per cent of people over the age of 85. However, although this is uncommon, Alzheimer’s disease can affect people as young as 35. When it occurs at an early age, Alzheimer’s is known as early-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease and it tends to progress much more rapidly than late-onset Alzheimer’s. For many years, early-onset Alzheimer’s was known as pre-senile dementia (dementia that is not associated with advanced age). Early-onset Alzheimer’s disease can be an inherited disease. It is important to repeat, by the way, that there is no reason why mental faculties should deteriorate with age. Dementia is not a normal consequence of growing old.

Dementia (which is a Latin word meaning ‘loss of mind’) is a gradual deterioration in mental function: affecting memory, thinking, judgement, concentration, learning, speech and behaviour. Because the disease begins very gradually, the symptoms of Alzheimer’s may go unnoticed for a while.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.