CONFERENCE: ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
Last November, two doctors came to school to give a conference about Alzheimer’s disease and the patient's’ diet.
What is Alzheimer's?
It is a neurological brain disorder; it is the most common form of dementia (a group of disorders that impairs mental functioning). Alzheimer's is progressive and irreversible. Memory loss is one of the earliest symptoms, along with a gradual decline of other intellectual and thinking abilities, called cognitive functions, and changes in personality or behavior.
The cause of Alzheimer's
Scientists generally agree that there is unlikely to be a single clear “cause”. It is more likely the result of a combination of inter-related factors, including genetic factors, which are passed along family lines of inheritance, and environmental influences, which range from previous head trauma to educational level to one's experience early in life.
A growing research is also helping to identify various “lifestyle factors”, such as dietary habits, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which may influence one's risk of Alzheimer's disease. This disease develops as a result of a complex cascade of biological processes that take place over many years inside the brain.
Who is affected?
- 35 million people worldwide have Alzheimer's disease.
- 5.3 million people in the US have Alzheimer's disease.
- Every 70 seconds someone in America develops Alzheimer's disease.
- It is the 5th leading cause of death in people aged 65 or more.
- Death from Alzheimer’s rose 46.1% from 2000 to 2006.
- At current rates, 19 million Americans will develop Alzheimer's by the year 2050.
The Symptoms
- Difficulty performing familiar tasks
- Memory loss
- Problems using language
- Disorientation
- Loss of good judgment
- Misplacing things
- Mood swings
- Personality changes
- No initiative
Treatments
Drugs used to treat people with Alzheimer's fall into 2 broad categories:
- Drugs to treat cognitive symptoms, such as memory problems and other mental deficits of Alzheimer's.
- Drugs to treat behavioral symptoms that do not respond to non-pharmacological behavioral-management approaches.
These drugs might include a variety of types of drugs broadly categorized as anti-agitation drugs.
Ps: Famous people have died to this disease such as Ronald Reagan, Charles Bronson or Agatha Christie.
Morgan, 2TSA
Morgan is explaining to the class.
There are about 170,000 to 1,000,000 people who have Alzheimer’s disease in France. This disease is incurable, causes brain lesions and evolves over time. You can find many symptoms but the most popular ones are memory loss and dementia. This year they asked us to focus on these people’s diet. In fact patients that have Alzheimer’s disease forget to eat, think they have already eaten, cannot use the cutlery anymore, and all of this represents many problems for them.
First of all, there are chewing problems. The patients may not eat because of a reduction in their chewing capacity, they start losing teeths, they have toothaches or maladjusted denture. The nutritional doctor suggests as a solution changing the texture of food (chopped, mixed). It will be much easier for them to eat.
Then there are swallowing problems. They have swallowing disorders that scares them to choke, and for that reason a patient can refuse his meal. To help them to overpass the fear of choking we can mix the food, as I said before, and thicken liquids.
To finish, there are all the problems that are related to the Alzheimer’s disease. In hospital we can find wandering patients, while they are walking they forget to eat. We also have a problem with the cutlery; they have difficulties in handling it. And another reason why they do not eat is because they shiver. But hopefully, they found a solution: finger food. Finger food is a new concept, it consists in offering the patients food in small quantities and that can be eaten without any cutlery. For the people who wander, it allows us to put the food everywhere in the hospital, and when the patient passes by it, it reminds him to eat.
Otherwise, we have nutritional goals that we must apply to their diet. They have to eat 30 kcal/kg/day and 1 to 1.2 of proteins/kg/day. The nutritional doctor also demands a good distribution:
- 100 g of meat, fish or eggs for lunch and dinner
- 200 g of starchy food and vegetables
- 4 dairy products per day
- Bread with every meal
At the end of this conference, they proposed a project to us. We now have to create two menus for patients with Alzheimer’s disease while respecting the given conditions. One has to be in French and the other one in French and in English. With all the recipes of all the groups in the class, we will be able to create a recipe book and propose it to the hospital. If the hospital agrees, the book will be given to the patients and their families.
Camila, 2TSA