I just read the doctor’s report-my mother has Alzheimers. The doctor ran several tests, including a brain scan-the tests all point to the same thing. My mother has been very quiet since last year, and sleeps a lot.
Naturally, I am scared-it Alzheimer’'s associated with heredity? My poor mother is coping…but the obvious personality changes are there.
I wouldn’t count on reaching 91 with no major health issues.
91 is hardly early onset.
You may well die before you ever show symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
It depends, do you plan to live longer than 85? Your odds of getting it are much greater if you live that long (about 50%) than the odds of getting it due to genetics (1.3 times as likely to get it as a person without a parent who has it).
Half of people 85+ have alzheimers. That isn’t really a big genetic red flag if a 91 year old has it.
There are various things you can do to reduce your risk if you are worried.
Will inescapably, no.
But you’re at a higher risk for dementia than someone without a family history of it. “Alzheimer’s” has actually become the shorthand for a whole range of age-related dementias some of which, including Alzheimer’s, can only be diagnosed with certainty during an autopsy; depending on what kind she actually has, your risk level will be higher or lower, but in any case higher than for someone with no family history of it.
Yes, there is a genetic component to it. If you rmother has it, that makes it more likely that you will get it (sorry). It by no means makes it inevitable that you will get it, however, and, as others have said, considering her age of onset, chances are that even if you do have a genetic predisposition, you die first of something else.
My mother’s older sister and younger brother both had Alzheimer’s, the sister getting it at quite a young age, in her 60s, when she was otherwise quite healthy and sprightly. My mother herself, however, lived to 95 and never got it. Genetics is a lottery.
Since the vast majority of people die before reaching 91, we can’t know whether they would have developed Alzheimer’s had they lived that long. I wouldn’t worry much about a strong genetic predisposition.
With the way you type…
Not everyone who gets Alzheimer disease has the high risk gene for it, and not everyone who has the gene inevitably has AD. As already pointed out, your mom’s case is not early onset and Alzheimer disease becomes increasingly common as you get into extreme old age, so if I were you, I would not panic about this.
Genetic testing for AD isn’t routinely done by doctors at this point (though you could try asking). If you think it would make you feel better, there are now private companies that do genetic testing and can tell you if you have the high risk gene for Alzheimer disease if you want to know.
My husband and I were tested through https://www.23andme.com/
My father was diagnosed in his mid-70s, and lived to be 81. About half of his siblings had it too. I just turned 68, and am having memory problems, especially with vocabulary, and most especially with names. I do what I can to keep mentally active, but I refuse to indulge in pointless worrying.
Alzheimer’s used to be the shorthand for dementia. Currently, Alzheimer’s is a subset of dementia and “dementia” is the catch-all. Alzheimer’s has specific characteristics that aren’t necessarily exhibited by all people that have dementia.
A person of 91 having Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia is not uncommon. It’s almost, but not necessarily, a fact of a long life. It is early onset of Alzheimer’s that is the worry. People in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s are increasingly showing the symptoms of the disease. That is very disturbing. There is no explanation for the cause and there is no cure. To make it more confounding, every case is different. The disease is not well understood.
If you said this person was in their 60’s it would be a real concern. At 91 that doesn’t necessarily put you at risk. You can try to do some genetic testing (which is quite expensive) but even so, it might not indicate anything one way or the other.
What?
Poor diet, drug use, high-risk sports, reckless driving… There are any number of ways to reduce the risk of being alive long enough for Alzheimer’s to kick in.
That is the most entertaining health advice I’ve seen recently 