Identify A Health Issue And Provide Innovative Solutions

Mei Wu
Dr. Karlin
A4 Assignment
December 1, 2017
Health Issue and Innovative Solutions
Sitting in a wheelchair and dazing through the day was the typical lifestyle for Henry for the past ten years. The documentary Alive Inside reveals the living condition for Alzheimer’s patients in one of the nursing homes. A cold sandwich with milk would be served to him for lunch. Henry is one of the nursing home residents that has dementia, and need total assistance for all his activities. When his nurse tried to get him to talk and asked him to tell her his full name, he would not bother to give a response. He could not even recognize his daughter when she comes to see him (Palicame, “Alive Inside”). Without sufficient interactions with the world or any excitement for life, Henry’s life at this nursing home was miserable and depressing. However, other than care and food that would keep Henry’s physical body stay alive, the nursing home did not seem to provide special treatments that would better Henry’s Alzheimer symptoms. With the loss of memory, Henry was losing his identity and the ability to make judgments.
Like Henry, approximately 60% of the nursing home residents had Alzheimer’s disease in the United States, and the condition may become worse with the current condition for some of the nursing becoming less desirable than they are supposed to be every day thus losing their connection to life and the outside. However, regardless of the drop in quality of services offered by nursing homes, Alzheimer’s patients still need them because of the extensive care and supervision that they need on a continuous basis especially when their spouses or children are unable to spend enough time and energy to provide such care. The US Census Bureau predicted that there would be 71 million people aged 65 years old and older when all the baby boomers are at least 65 years old in 2030. One in nine people aged 65 and older, which is approximately 11%, has developed the Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, it is imperative to call for advancement in effective prevention and treatment modalities in nursing homes in the next decades so that the generation that is growing older with Alzheimer’s disease can enjoy a higher quality of life in nursing homes.
Alzheimer’s is medically challenging to diagnose or develop medication. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, the main contributing cause for this is dementia feature in the brain: neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques. Alzheimer’s association further introduce that neurofibrillary tangles consist of protein tangles located within the cytoplasm. While amyloid plaques are regions comprising of scar tissue in the inflicted an individual’s brain. Amyloid plaques are a combination of amyloid protein and degenerating neurons according to Alzheimer’s Association. These complicated symptoms in the brain. However, they have made, and continue to make, scientific advances relative to understanding the etiology and progression of this debilitating disease. These advances have resulted in a breadth of possible treatment and prevention options that are currently undergoing scientific and experimental investigation, with the ...