Alzheimer's is a complex, progressive neurological disease that makes up 60-80 percent of dementia cases. Symptoms usually begin with mild, but noticeable memory loss, and may advance to the inability to speak or understand surroundings. Someone close to me once said that regular memory loss is, "I can't find my keys." Dementia memory loss is, "I don't know what keys are."
According to recent research posted on the National Institute on Aging website, Alzheimer's specifically affects about 6.5 million people in the U.S., age 65 and older.
What happens in the brain?
Plaques and tangles are believed to be some of the culprits in neurons misfiring and/or shutting down. The Alzheimer's Association shares, "The average brain has 100 billion nerve cells called neurons. Plaques are deposits of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid that build up in the spaces between nerve cells. Tangles are twisted fibers of another protein called tau that build up inside cells."
Here is a video specifically explaining the Tau Protein Pathology:
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
But good news may be on the horizon. A new clinical study, published in the Lancet Neurology Journal, shows promise that it could "be possible to delay symptoms in people genetically fated to develop Alzheimer's at a young age." In the piece, "Scientists Announce Possible Breakthrough in Delaying Alzheimer’s" on Gizmodo, writer Ed Cara reveals that a new trial led by the Washington University School of Medicine set out to re-test Gantenerumab, an "experimental anti-amyloid drug (which could) help people with an inherited form of Alzheimer's."
Cara writes, "In a subset of patients treated the longest, the drug appeared to reduce their risk of developing symptoms as expected, by 50 percent." He adds, "The findings will require follow-up, but outside experts are cautiously optimistic about what this could mean for the future of treating Alzheimer's."
There have been quite a few starts and stops with trials for this particular drug, which is a monoclonal antibody. For some patients in previous trials, there were some pretty hefty side effects as well as flaws in the design of prior studies, which even led to the abandonment of the drug for a while. However, there is a glimmer of hope from doctors and researchers that there is light in this dark, scary diagnosis.
Cara also shares that the senior author and professor of neurology at Washington University Medicine, Randall J. Bateman, claimed, "Everyone in this study was destined to develop Alzheimer’s disease, and some of them haven’t yet. We don’t yet know how long they will remain symptom-free—maybe a few years or maybe decades."
Human anatomy model.
Photo by David Matos on Unsplash
A commenter astutely points out, "This is fantastic news. But one of the big issues—and it is by no means a 'small' task to address—is early detection that's fast and simple. This disease is like a simmering volcano. By the time you realize there's a problem at all, the volcano has already erupted, and you're just playing triage damage control after that.
"But if you can catch it early, before symptoms present, as a normal part of yearly preventative health screenings (not to make light of the accessibility issue of that for so many people), the options to address it expand dramatically. And you get to start treating it before the disease begins to adversely affect people's quality of life, both for those suffering from the disease and for those caring for the people suffering from it."
That is the hope—catching it early and fending it off for as long as possible. And ultimately, eradicating it from our brains completely. It's one step at a time, and this week's steps seem positive.
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
Gif of Robin Williams via 
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.