“How do people actually die from Alzheimer?”
In: Biology
Dementia of any form, including Alzhiemer’s, is characterized by a degeneration of neurons. I Alzhiemer’s they’re in the brain, reducing cognitive function over time. Eventually, the brain is no longer able to control the body at all, resulting in breathing stopping, or digestion failing (the heart can usually keep itself going without the brain).
Parkinson’s would be nerves throughout the body breaking down, resulting in a loss of control of the muscles controlled by them, resulting in the failure of the body once again, this time including the heart.
Not a doctor, just worked in an old folks home, with a dementia floor:
Alzheimer’s and other dementia disorders don’t just affect memory – it’s the whole brain that’s affected. So, they begin doing things like forgetting to, or refusing to, eat. The part of the system that tells them they’re hungry just isn’t functioning, and it’s really difficult to convince them they need food. A lot of the dementia residents I worked with ended up painfully skinny, because we just couldn’t get enough food into them. They’d pull out feeding tubes, too. Refusal to drink led to dehydration, and in some cases, kidney failure.
Loss of motor skills/balance meant a lot of falls, a lot of broken bones, a lot of bumps and bruises and cuts that didn’t heal properly, and led to infections. If someone had a broken hip, and was on bed rest while they healed, they were at risk for bed sores, which are another vector for infection. Same for pneumonias – as patients lost their ability to swallow properly, they’d end up getting spit and food particles into their lungs. Do that long enough, and they’d get pneumonia.
Loss of cognitive skills – Like the patient that escaped from his son’s house when they’d taken him home for Thanksgiving, and he was hit by a car. He’d just walked out the front door in the middle of the night, in his jammies and slippers, and wandered into traffic. Or, the patient that had intense delusions that everyone was trying to kill her. She wouldn’t eat (cause we were poisoning her), was combative with the care staff (biting, spitting, flinging poop, swinging her cane), and would often hurt herself trying to hide from the staff (like trying to climb onto the top shelf in her closet, and falling). She no longer operated in the same reality as the rest of us, and couldn’t be reasoned with, and ended up hurting herself a lot. She also broke a nursing aides nose with the cane. We couldn’t render a lot of the care she clearly needed, because she was too combative to approach.
My grandmother recently passed with Alzheimers. She was surprisingly still mobile, however, she didnt recognize people, babbled alot, and hallucinated. She started losing to ability to swallow but was on pureed foods.
What did her in was that she kept falling. At 89, falls are common. We wanted her to use a walker but she of course never remembered. So one day she fell and hit her head. Most likely lead to a brain bleed.
Alzheimers patients generally die from rather common issues like falls or infections that wouldnt normally be deadly to a healthy person.
They eventually quit eating.
Some family members will have the person get a feeding tube to delay death.
As a long time Registered Nurse and a psych nurse, letting a loved one die honorably is far better than artificially keeping them alive when death is inevitable.
Latest Answers