Comparing Dementia And Alzheimer's Disease

What Is Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer's disease is a definitive disease that causes the collection of symptoms known as dementia. Not every type of dementia is progressive, but Alzheimer's disease is. Alzheimer's disease progresses slowly and causes cognitive function and memory to become increasingly more impaired. Researchers are still trying to determine the cause, and there's no cure right now. Over five million individuals in the United States currently have Alzheimer's disease. Younger individuals can get it, in which case the diagnosis is early-onset Alzheimer's disease. 

However, the majority of individuals don't exhibit symptoms until after they are sixty years old. When an individual develops the disease after they are eighty years old, the time from diagnosis until death can shorten to only three years. But younger individuals often live much longer following their diagnosis. Alzheimer's disease causes brain damage for years before the onset of visible symptoms. The condition causes abnormal deposits of protein to create plaques within the brain. This causes cell connections to break, and the cells slowly die.