Racial tensions reached a boiling point over the summer, making it easy to harken back to the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and John Lewis among many others. But one of the most revered is Rosa Parks, the godmother of the movement.
The civil rights icon served as a catalyst for social justice demonstrations when in 1955 she refused to give up her seat for a fellow bus rider, simply because they were white and she was Black. Since that moment, generations thought of her as a surrogate grandmother that stood for what’s right.
Similar to most other grandparents, Rosa Parks passed due to complications with Alzheimer’s disease in 2005. There are still many things about the disease that are unclear but here’s what we know:
What’s Alzheimer’s?
According to the Alzheimer’s Foundation, Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia, a general term for memory loss and other cognitive abilities serious enough to interfere with daily life. Overall Alzheimer's disease accounts for 60-80% of US dementia cases.
Despite what most might think, Alzheimer's is not a normal part of getting older. The greatest known risk factor is increasing age, and the majority of people with Alzheimer's are 65 and older. But Alzheimer's doesn’t just affect the elderly. More than 200,000 Americans under the age of 65 have younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease (also known as early-onset Alzheimer’s).
Perhaps the saddest aspect of Alzheimer's is that it gets worse over time, no matter what. As Alzheimer's is a progressive disease, in its early stages, memory loss is mild, but with late-stage Alzheimer's, individuals lose the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to their environment. Alzheimer's is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.
On a brighter note, a person with Alzheimer's lives four to eight years after diagnosis, but can live as long as 20 years depending on other factors.
Risk Factors
Although researchers believe there is not a single cause of Alzheimer's disease, they have extensive information around which risk factors are stronger links than others.
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Genetics, lifestyle, and environment all come into play. Researchers have identified factors that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s:
- Age
- Family hereditary factors
- Genetics
Symptoms
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease progress slowly but completely over time. Sometimes these symptoms are confused with other conditions and may initially be put down to old age.
Physical symptoms include:
- infections
- stroke
- delirium
- difficulty eating and swallowing (dysphagia)
- difficulty changing position or moving around without assistance
- weight loss – sometimes severe
- unintentional passing of urine (urinary incontinence) or stools (bowel incontinence)
- gradual loss of speech
- significant problems with short- and long-term memory
Other symptoms may also develop, such as:
- increasing confusion and disorientation – for example, getting lost, or wandering and not knowing what time of day it is
- obsessive, repetitive or impulsive behavior
- delusions (believing things that are untrue) or feeling paranoid and suspicious about carers or family members
- problems with speech or language (aphasia)
- disturbed sleep
- changes in mood, such as frequent mood swings, depression, and feeling increasingly anxious, frustrated, or agitated
- difficulty performing spatial tasks, such as judging distances
- seeing or hearing things that other people do not (hallucinations)
- some people also have some symptoms of vascular dementia
Treatments for Alzheimer’s
Although Alzheimer's has no current cure, symptoms can be managed with proper care and attention.
Current Alzheimer's treatments cannot stop Alzheimer's progression, they can hold off the worsening of dementia symptoms and improve the overall well-being of the patients and their caregivers.
BDO’s Black History of Health series is designed to show the correlation between the health of historical black figures and Black Americans today. Many of the health disparities we currently experience have been in our community for centuries.
This series is meant to bring these conditions to the forefront and provide Blacks with preventative and management steps to reduce these disparities and improve the overall health of the Black American community. It’s time to change the narrative.
