Huntington Disease Vs Alzheimer's Disease

Huntington’s Disease or Alzheimer’s Disease? As the body ages through time, many of the functions will slowly begin to diminish and deteriorate, including the nervous system. The nervous system is made up of your brain and the many different neurons that transmit signals to and from the body. One of the most common ways the nervous system deteriorates is when the connections between two neurons diminish, or build plaque. The brain uses neurons to send signals to each other, in order to get our bodies to move, think, and react to different situations. As people age, the neurons lose their normal functioning quality. Some neurons will deteriorate and be called Huntington’s disease, while others will grow plaque in between the connections and
Although scientists cannot state the direct cause of Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s disease develops due to aging and a combination of genetic, environmental and behavioral factors. Huntington’s disease is a dominant genetic disorder that has a defected protein called, “huntingtin” on chromosome four of your DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Having a dominant gene in the family clarifies that children will develop the disease as well. Huntington’s disease being a genetic disorder, an adult will be aware of this health information his or her whole life and be mentally and financially prepared. Alzheimer’s disease will dawn upon you without warning as you age and is more prevalent in women. Being a female you have a higher chance of developing Alzheimer’s, since I am a female I would not choose this disease over Huntington’s. Being aware and prepared for an illness will be much easier to face the symptoms that will affect daily living. Family will also be prepared and if additional assistance is needed for a caretaker can also be arranged in advance. One of the reasons that I would rather chose to have Huntington’s disease is the cause of the disease is more known earlier on in life and thus gives me time to prepare mentally and financially. Huntington’s disease has symptoms that are more manageable and affect mostly the physical movements rather that mental
Symptoms of Alzheimer’s include starts with mild dementia and progress to more severe dementia. According to the University of Maryland Medical System research, dementia is defined as a, “significant loss of cognitive functions such as memory, judgment, attention, and abstract thinking.” Huntington disease involves symptoms of involuntary jerking movements, muscle degeneration and difficulty producing speech or swallowing (mayoclinic.org). Mentally, some symptoms of Huntington’s also include, “intense emotion, irritability, and aggression” (stanford.edu). Family would be more understanding to someone who had Huntington’s disease with emotional outbursts. It would be more hard to cope with someone who has complete memory loss and be more emotionally exhausting for the family members. The individual’s reaction to the diagnosis of the two diseases is different. Since Huntington’s is a genetic disease people are already aware since it runs in the family. The reaction to Alzheimer’s may be severe depending on the person. Many times when a patient gets notified that they are developing Huntington’s disease the shock is nonexistent because the patient was aware. When someone gets the news of Alzheimer’s disease, the individual develops stress, anxiety and depression.