First, let’s look at a healthy brain. The brain is an organ, like the heart or the lungs. It needs oxygen, blood, and nutrients. The more you feed the brain, the healthier it is.
The brain has three main parts: the cerebrum, the big one, the cerebellum, and the brain stem.
The cerebrum handles remembering, problem solving, movement, and feeling. When you bite into a delicious apple, this part lights up with excitement.
The cerebellum handles coordination and balance. And the brain stem handles things you don’t think about, such as breathing and blood pressure.
Alzheimer’s attacks all three parts of the brain. We don’t know why, but the disease eats away at brain tissue. That builds up plaques and tangles. Plaques clog up the passageways of the brain. Tangles form inside the dead cells.
These plaques and tangles cause a traffic jam. Signals get crossed. Nutrients can’t get inside. Sometimes the brain cells starting devouring themselves. The brain shrinks and shrivels until it’s useless. Death comes next.
At first, victims have trouble learning new concepts. Then they forget conversations and the names of family members, and finally, they forget how to talk, walk, read, write, or take care of themselves. They can’t remember the pleasure of that apple, or what it feels like to be kissed.
We don’t know why people get the disease, but the Alzheimer’s Association says somebody gets it every 72 seconds in America. The only known risk factors are genes and age. The older you get, the more likely you are to get it. And the disease could start eating away at the brain decades before any symptoms appear.
There is no cure.
