Stress and Alzheimer's Disease in Elderly Patients

Introduction

Nowadays, people from different age groups are suffering from various kinds of diseases ranging from mild to severe mental health issues which sometimes become the major cause of their death. Among them, due to a very nature of psycho-physiological deterioration, elderly people are always on higher risk of mental health disorder, Immunity disorders or other Neurodegenerative disorders. As per the current researches revealed that, Alzheimer’s is one of the most frequently seen disease in elderly patients and it’s become more troublesome if it’s appears with other co-morbidities like diabetes, hypertension, CAD or other major health disorders in elder patients. Geriatric population are more prone to mental health related issues e.g. Stress disorder, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and dementia etc. while going through this kind of diseases, they become gradually depend on other people for special care and change in life style to prevent these types of complications. Apart from the care from others there are also some protective factors that can be important for the betterment of their life. Further, it has been proven by different research studies that proper sleep, diet, exercise and positive thinking can significantly change the prognosis of disease. A meta-analysis based on the factors related to depression, revealed that it may be responsible and become the cause of probability of hypertension, furthermore, the chances have also been found significantly associated with the development of symptoms of depression at baseline (Meng, et al., 2012). Since long various psychologists have been trying to figure out the major causes of psychological disorders and the factors which are responsible for elimination these disorders. Hence, among all studies variables, recent researches have presented a view that stress related problems are generally appear more in elderly peoples who have some negative factors in their life, and these negative factors are because of many reasons e.g. loneliness, fear of death, over thinking or major diseases that cause pain which may be physiological or psychological in nature.

On the basis of large theoretical work available on stress and its effect on human being, it has been found out that stress is one of the major factors in the development and progression of diseases. Stress is a reaction that occurs in response to a perceived threat or challenge, affecting both physical and psychological aspects of an individual. If not managed, stress can result in various health issues such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, heart disease, and weakened immune system function. In the context of palliative care, stress also encompasses the emotional and psychological burden that patients and their caregivers experience when dealing with a terminal illness. The main objective of palliative care is to alleviate suffering and enhance the quality of life for patients and their loved ones, which includes addressing stress and its associated symptoms. Palliative care interventions can take various forms, such as medication, counselling, and support groups, to help manage the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of stress and its related co-morbidities.

While considering the role of stress, it is identified that the physiological processes that cause stress have a detrimental negative impact on various psychological aspect such as emotional state of individual, psychological wellbeing, interpersonal relationships, and anxiety, healing, coping, and maintaining a prolonged positive quality of life. Among these entire psychosocial disturbances in people’ life, majority of psychological disorders have been thus becoming increasingly pronounced in neurodegenerative diseases. If going through the conceptual framework of neurodegenerative disorders, these have been found responsible to impair mainly brain circuits that regulate stress related responses in addition to causing the tragic loss of cognitive and motor function among people, which is stressful in itself. The disruption of these circuits turns into an abnormal emotional and aggressive behavior that produces a very long-term care particularly in a challenging manner. In addition, high level of stress might make symptoms generally worse and can increases the probably of the occurrence of severe disease. The researchers have introduced that the neuronal and endocrine mechanisms that are engaged by both clinically and experimentally, stress usually interacts with a neurodegenerative illness that is already present.