What is Alzheimer’s Disease?

Basically, Alzheimer’s Disease causes progressive loss of brain function. For reasons yet unknown, the disease involves what are termed ‘tangles’ in the brain that eventually spread throughout the brain causing, at first, memory difficulties, personality changes and, at the end, loss of bodily control. Although it is not considered a “normal” part of aging, it appears to afflict approximately ½ of all individuals who reach the age of 85. That process is often referred to as “dementia” but it is also a fact that loss of brain function can be caused by other factors such as a stroke, for instance.