Introduction
This section will discuss the impact of Alzheimer's disease on racial, cultural, and gender variables, with the focus being on the various approaches to care of the disease. Developmental stages and tasks will be discussed for both the client and the caregiver.
Gender and Culture
Alzheimer's disease and related dementias affect all races, ethnicities and cultures equally. (Anonymous, 1998) Of people over 65 an estimated 6-10% will be affected by some form of dementia. (Hendrie, 1998) It is only in gender where we see slightly more women than men who are affected by this destructive illness. (Lautenschlager et al., 1996) The only controllable risk factor that is known at this point is cigarette smoking. In a large study in Germany smoking cigarettes doubled the risk of dementia in the older population. (Ott et al., 1998)
Alzheimer's disease patients can survive for 3-20 or more years. It is not the AD that kills the patient, rather it is diseases of aging and/or inactivity, with pneumonia being the leading cause at 70%. This is followed by heart disease, stroke, and cancer. (Thomas, Starr, & Whalley, 1997)
Cultural Differences
Race, culture, religion and ethnicity all play a part in how we care for our elderly. Each family makes decisions based on background, experience, expectations, knowledge base, and economics. Most people would like to be able to care for their aging parent or spouse with as little disruption to lifestyle as possible. Alzheimer's Disease, however, is a full time commitment, not just eight hours a day, but "24/7", as the current idiom implies, the patient needs continuous care. Sleep habits are disturbed, wandering is common, medications must be carefully controlled, safety is always important. Home care soon becomes frustrating and exhausting if left to one or two caregivers. When the primary caregiver has his/her own medical needs to see to, is also aged, or is the parent of young children as well, the burden can become overwhelming. In-home care is a possibility as is placement in a live-in facility, but both are expensive alternatives.
In California ethnic minorities make up a large part of our population. In the book Culture and Nursing Care: A Pocket Guide, there are characteristics of these groups and generalizations are made about how they care for their elderly. (Lipson, 1996) The following table highlights some of these groups that are represented in the Bay Area.
American Indian Status of "elder" begins in middle age.
Pah-Lavan, Z. (2006). Alzheimer's disease: the road to oblivion. Journal of Community Nursing, 20(5), 4. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Dementia is common among a large population of elderly people. The disease affects not only the individual diagnosed, but also the caregivers that work towards making their life comfortable in the end. Understanding and learning about the disease is crucial in helping those that experience or live with someone who has dementia. The services and support that are currently in affect for elderly people with dementia and the caregivers is poor, and ineffective because of the lack of research and information on the topic.
Alzheimer’s disease was first defined in 1906 by a German psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. It is a progressive brain disorder in which the nerve cells in the brain gradually die off. It is estimated that 26 million people world-wide are afflicted by Alzheimer’s and of those, approximately 4.5 million live in the United States. It is said to be the seventh leading cause of death in the USA and the fifth leading cause of death for those over age 65. Seventeen percent of women and ten percent of men age 55 and older can expect to develop Alzheimer’s (apa.org, 2009). Researchers report that this disease is more prevalent in African Americans and Hispanics than in whites (Crandell, Crandell, and Zanden, 2009, p. 578).
People with Alzheimer’s disease often suffer from fatigue, irritability, loss of appetite and visual impairment. They are more likely to develop infection, such as pneumonia and bladder infections. Suffering from AD means that it can be harder to deal with these infections and illnesses, which eventually make it more difficult to recover. When people die from Alzheimer’s disease, normally it is because of a related problem, such as an infection rather than the disease itself. However, if Alzheimer’s disease progresses to the point where the areas of the brain that control essential functions, such as breathing, swallowing and balance are affected, it will be fatal.
As I sit here writing this research paper on the fourth anniversary of my grandfather’s death to Alzheimer’s, I cannot help but to feel especially connected not only to the physical destructiveness of the disease, but also to the emotional tolls associated with having it affect a family member. When I was in my freshman year of high school, my grandpa (mother’s father) began his steady decline from his diagnosis of this ailment. A man who I knew my whole life to be strong and independent started to become physically fragile and even more mentally so; after some time, he began to show signs of drastic memory loss, constant confusion and a hazardous inability to perform tasks once done with minimal effort. The onset of these debilitations had an immeasurable impact on my family. My grandmother (his wife) possessed the largest burden of the constant care for my grandfather as he slid into a state of powerlessness and incapability for basic self-maintenance. However, since my grandma never learned how to drive, taking full care of my grandpa become a near impossible task. After nearly a year and a half of my family witnessing my grandfather losing himself to Alzheimer’s, my family decided to place him in a hospice care facility that could provide him with the proper care before his inevitable passing to the disease a few months later.
Living With Alzheimer's: Resouces Guide for Families and Caregivers. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services, 2009.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, terminal, degenerative brain disease. It is the fourth leading cause of death in adults and currently affects over four million people in the United States. This number is expected to increase over the next several years as the baby boomers age, until it reaches fourteen million by the year 2025.
Chemistry is in everything that we do. We need chemistry to survive, and our future depends on it.Without chemistry the world would not be as advanced as it is today. Chemistry and all other sciences are the building blocks of life.
periodic table is arguably one of the most important developments in the history of all science. Development of the table spanned over more than 2000 years beginning with the proposal by Aristotle around the year 330 BC that there is limited number of elements (though at the time he referred to them as roots) that make up everything in the universe, though he believed these elements to be simply "water, fire, earth, and air" and made no further contributions to the development and understanding of the table and its properties.
Dalton’s atomic theory says that each element contained its own number of atoms. Each element had its own size and weight. Dalton’s idea said that all things are made of small bits of matter this bits of matter where too small to be seen even with a microscope. Scientist began to think these small bits of matter where responsible for chemical changes. They thought that when these bits of matter combined a chemical change took place. Dalton assumed that there was a special pattern in the elements and was partly responsible for the periodic table.
Before chemistry, I would say society was a mess. We did not know of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Which is quite frankly mind blowing considering the fact that elements make nearly everything there is around us up. People living today will live much longer lives than they would have back then because Chemistry is what helps us discover all of our medicines, vaccines, and etc. We did not know of DNA. This is the carrier of all of our genetic information. Without chemistry, we wouldn’t have had liquid oxygen, which is rocket fuel. Without that the space race would have never happened. This means, we would not have satellite TV or internet. Without internet I would not be typing this chemistry paper right now. Without chemistry we wouldn’t have cell phones. Without cell phones, teens today would simply not know what to do with themselves. It is one thing after another. The world needs chemistry!
Chemistry has evolved a lot over the years. The history of chemistry shapes what it is today. Just about everything you touch, wear, or even eat is related or affected by chemistry some kind of way. In the future, I think chemistry will continue to evolve even more, and will eventually become a more diverse field.
Then both Meyer and Mendeleyev built periodic tables alone, Meyer more impressed by the periodicity of physical properties, while Mendeleyev was more interested in the chemical properties. Then Mendeleyev had published his periodic table and his law in 1869 and forecasted the properties of the missing elements, and chemists then began to be grateful for it when the discovery of elements was predicted by the table that had taken place. Although, periodic tables have always been related to the way scientists thought about the shape and structure of the atom, and has changed over the years exactly for that reason.
The periodic table, used worldwide by scientists, teachers and students, for quick location of information about elements. The periodic table did not come by overnight though, the periodic table is a table formed from years of work, on the atomic structure. It all started years back with Democritus and his discovery of the atom. This was followed up by John Dalton many years down the track, after elements had been discovered Dalton attempted to create a way to make the elements easier to remember. 84 years later, JJ Thomson discovered electrons, which were key to the periodic table, and in 1889, Dmitri Mendeleev invented the periodic table. Years later Henry Moseley worked out how to measure atomic numbers of elements, and just 9 years after Neil Bohr explained the structure of the atom which further explained why Mendeleev had placed each element in a specific row or column. Finally James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1922.
Our first benefactor of atomic theory was John Dalton, a man later nick-named the "Father of atomic theory" for his contribution of many theories and laws to modern atomic theory. His theories answered many questions of skeptical scientists: elements combine with one another to form chemical compounds and the atom doesn't change, atoms link together in definite proportions, all atoms of any element are all the same, the law of multiple proportions which states that a given mass of one element can combine with various masses of another element (or elements) but always in small whole number ratios, and the law of conservation of matter, matter can neither be created or destroyed, but it can change form.