What causes Alzheimer’s disease? Is it genetic? Is it avoidable? Is there a cure?
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It works, we believe, by causing the formation of sticky bunches of proteins called “plaques”. These proteins clog up the spaces around our brain cells, blocking their signals and slowly choking them off and killing them.
We’re not 100% what causes it, there’s evidence it’s both genetic and caused by external exposures. You can’t fully avoid it, but there is plenty of evidence that all the “healthy stuff” (eating well, exercising, not drinking/smoking, etc.) gives you a decreased risk of getting it.
There is no cure but have a few treatments than slow it. But once it’s started it’s a fatal & progressive disease. Death might take a few years, or decade or more, but it won’t ever get better and you can’t get rid of it.
For the real ELI5 version:
Well Timothey, you remember last week when we played telephone at recess?
That’s how the neurona in your brain, and body send messages. When there’s nothing in the way, and you’re allowed to say the secret loud enough, you could still understand what it started as, right?
Now, imagine playing telephone, but part of your team had to be in another classroom. Your secret might make it part of the way there, but it wouldn’t make it through the wall and the rest of your team would never know what it was. Eventually, they would probably get bored and leave, right?
That’s kinda what Alzheimer’s does. A bunch of junk gets in the way of your neurons sending messages, so the message never gets where it was headed, and then all of the neurons that are ‘bored’ start to leave.
The real challenge for us now is figuring out why it happens. Because it’s inside your head, we haven’t figured out any really good ways to study it, because we don’t want to hurt anyone — but we also need to be able to see the brain in action to get more information… So the best we can do is take good notes, ask if people will let us study them after they pass so we can help others, and see if we find any patterns.
So far, we think that if a bunch of people in someone’s family have had it, that they probably will too – but not every time. We also think that things like diet, sleep, exercise, and keeping their brain busy can help too.
On the last couple of years, we have even started to think of Alzheimer’s as another type of Diabetes! Remember how preventable and treatable those are from when we talked about them last week?
The best things you can do, are mostly the stuff we should all do anyway! Eat well, walk or run a little bit every day, get enough sleep, avoid fake food stuff like preservatives and artificial sweeteners, and keep challenging ourselves to learn new things. Not just hard things, different things!
So, for tonight’s homework, to give your brain a workout, I want you all to do something safe with the “wrong” hand. Brush your teeth the other way around. Only open doors and drawers, or get dressed and do your buttons with the other hand! Make your brain work!
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