Sai Muttavarapu

Period 5
Alzheimer’s and the Brain
Online Lecture

Notes
-Life expectancy in the U.S has been increasing.

-In the 1900’s, 47 years was todays 78 years.

-Alzheimer’s is the most common illness between people who live for a long time.

-Alois Alzheimer was the first person to introduce Alzheimer’s. Her subject was a
51-year-old woman. She was suffering from confusion, memory loss, and psychotic.

-When Alois Alzheimer’s subject died, they did an autopsy of her brain and
discovered tangles in her memory center.

-Memory is recalling learnt information

-Cognition is memory, attention, visual spatial skill, and reasoning

-Dementia is memory loss along with another disability that gets in the way of an
everyday life

-Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. It is a gradual

progression of plaques and tangles on tissues in your memory center.

-Some causes of dementia are depression, strokes and medicine side effects

-Most irritating things for a person suffering Alzheimer’s is forgetting names and
faces, where things are at home, forgetting appointments and/or plans, and
forgetting words and names but they are always at the “tip of their tongue”

-Protecting a healthy brain is more helpful rather than curing a damaged one.

-Symptomatic treatments, vaccines, secretase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies,

statin, lithium, intranasal insulin spray, and anti-inflammatory drugs all help to
reduce the tangles in the brain.

-Mental conditioning, physical conditioning, cognitive training, stress reduction, and

a healthy diet all serve to reduce the risk of a dementia.
-For physical conditioning, it is important to exercise more and walk more because
it helps the heart pump more blood and oxygen and nutrients to the brain. This
opens up many branches in your brain cells.

-For mental conditioning, it is important to play crossword puzzles or anything that

has to do with words and understanding and remembering because it keeps awake
the neural circuits. Being bilingual also reduces the risk of getting Alzheimer’s.
Connecting is a huge part too,

-Stress can lower your memory power. Scientists know that because when they
injected a stress hormone called cortisol into a person, they had temporary
impairment in memory. People who often are stressed are more risked to get
Alzheimer’s.

-You can always manage your stress by spending time with friends, sharing your
feelings, trying meditation, and relaxing often.

-Some factors that are nutritious to the brain are having a normal weight, eating
healthy foods and not consuming too munch fat. Omega-3 fats from boiled or grilled
fish, and nuts are very healthy to the brain. Overweight doubles the risk of
Alzheimer’s and obesity quadruples the risk of Alzheimer’s.

-Not smoking, avoiding head trauma, and thinking positively are also other ways to
keep healthy.

Summary

This lecture is an online lecture and I saw it on January 26, 2013. I learnt
many ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s causes memory loss,
psychotic, out of touch reality. Alzheimer’s is the most common dementia cause and
dementias are caused by tangles in brain. Even though there isn’t a cure for this,
there are still ways to lower the risks of getting Alzheimer’s. Things like exercising,
eating healthy, talking to close people, and thinking in a positive perspective can
make you become a healthier person.