how is Alzheimer’s disease fatal?
In: Biology
Think of a bunch of tangled fairy lights. They’re all turned on and working – this is a healthy brain. With Alzheimers, your brain shrinks. As it shrinks, the fairy lights that are responsible for different things – their bulbs get broken and they can’t turn back on again.
Only everyone’s fairy lights are tangled differently (because we all have different lives) so for some people the fairy lights for short term memory are the first to turn off. For some people it might be the fairy lights for speech.
One by one these lights turn off – this is the progression of Alzheimer’s. There are generally two ways of dying with Alzheimer’s.
The first is that an integral fairy light dies. Perhaps the one responsible for your autonomic system (breathing, heartbeat). This would be a very quick death caused by Alzheimer’s. Without these fairy lights, the others can’t function.
The second is through secondary illness or infection. Say your waterworks fairy light goes and you get an infection. This is a massive power drain on your other lights, and they fade. Or the fairy light for chewing and swallowing is broken, so you aspirate some food and get a bad case of pneumonia.
Chances are in these instances that the fairy light for your immune system is dead or dying meaning the drain on the full system eventually just causes them all to turn off.
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