Should I seek medical attention for Alzheimer’s disease as soon as possible?

  Alzheimer’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disorder that causes intellectual impairment in memory, computation, language and cognitive thinking skills. Alzheimer’s disease usually starts slowly and its initial manifestations are usually not obvious.  The disease can be clinically divided into three stages: early, middle and late. Early manifestations are usually forgetful and usually able to carry out normal social interactions, so they often go unnoticed by patients and families. The prominent symptom in this stage is memory (especially short-term memory) impairment, the patient always forgets what has just happened, but remembers the previous events quite clearly. Family members sometimes mistakenly believe that the patient has a good memory. Examples of specific manifestations are as follows: 1. When cooking, the salt has been put on, but I don’t know if the salt has been put on; obviously lock the door and go out, but halfway think the door is unlocked; go to the street to buy food, forget to take the basket or money; originally go to pick up the grandson and buy a bottle of vinegar, but the grandson picked up the vinegar but did not buy.  2, the words do not reach the meaning, nagging. Originally wanted to express one meaning, but said out is another meaning, to a thing always repeatedly keep saying.  3.Forgetting the name of an acquaintance. When you walk down the street, it is obvious that you are an old acquaintance but you can’t call each other by name.  4.Suspicious and suspicious. When you can’t find your own things, you always suspect others.  5.Emotional indifference. Not interested in anything, even the things that used to be interesting, but also feel bored.  6.Decreased calculation power. When you go shopping for groceries, it is very difficult to calculate a simple account, or even not to calculate at all.  It is worth noting that in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, despite the obvious memory loss, hollow language, and impaired generalization and calculation skills, there are still many patients who can continue to work, due to doing very familiar work, and whose incompetence at work is only discovered when new demands are made of him. One high school physics special teacher, Mr. Gao, had a colleague reflect that the quality of his lectures was worse than in the past a year before he retired, while he thought his colleagues were jealous of him. At this time, the special teacher’s son opened a private school, so Mr. Gao retired to teach at the private school and continued to teach physics. Students reported that Mr. Gao often repeated what he had already said in class and often failed to answer questions from his classmates. Mr. Gao’s son had to personally investigate his father’s lecturing ability, and as a result, Mr. Gao was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease by a physician at the hospital. The physician said that Mr. Gao had actually lost his words two years ago and often could not call his old colleagues by name, so he should have been seen by the hospital then.  In mid-stage Alzheimer’s patients, both distant and near memory are significantly impaired, such as forgetting phone numbers that have been used for years and not being able to remember when they got married. Some elderly people show obvious personality and behavioral changes, such as previously being mild-tempered and generous, but now becoming grumpy and narrow-minded; previously being very bad-tempered, but now being particularly obedient. Most patients show disinterest in things around them, lack of enthusiasm, and inability to complete the work they have become accustomed to. Some patients show restlessness, such as walking around the room aimlessly, or getting up in the middle of the night and touching around, opening and closing doors to move things, etc. Some patients may get lost if they walk a little farther, and some even get lost in a very familiar environment.  In the advanced stage, patients do not recognize their surroundings, do not know the year and season, have difficulty in adding and subtracting within 10, need care in daily life, and at most can only remember their own names or the names of one or two people such as their spouse.  Early detection and early treatment of Alzheimer’s disease can lead to better results at a smaller cost. Therefore, when an elderly person near you has memory loss, slow reaction, loss of concentration, indifference, nagging and suspicious, do not think it is a normal old age, but should seek professional medical treatment in time.