Alzheimer's disease is an illness that sneaks in and attacks a victim without warning. Once it establishes its foundation it slowly robs the victim of time, energy, function, and perhaps the most precious thing of all, memories.

It seems the old adage, "No one can take this from you," doesn't hold true anymore. Alzheimer's disease starts with mild symptoms, and slowly progresses and interferes with everyday functioning and even impairs simple judgment and movement.

The seven stages of Alzheimer's disease have been documented in correspondence directly with underlying nerve cell degeneration. The damage to nerve cells began to affect the victim with memory and learning. Nerve cell damage gradually affects every day thinking, judgment, and behavior. Alzheimer's disease is unique in that it does not manifest itself with the same symptoms in every victim. Many times, a person diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease will not show signs of their illness for years after diagnosis. Survival of victims once diagnosed, can be anywhere from three to twenty years. Medical science has established a Global Deterioration Scale, which corresponds directly with underlying nerve cell damage that takes place with Alzheimer's disease.

Global Deterioration Scale

Stage One

No signs of impairment. During this stage, individuals will typically show no signs of memory or impairment of judgement. They present no evidence of Alzheimer's disease to the health care professional.

Stage Two

Mild cognitive impairment. Individuals in this stage will typically present with very mild symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Symptoms during this stage will typically manifest themselves with short memory lapses, such as forgiving everyday items such as car keys, and television remotes. It is difficult to detect symptoms at this stage for the health care professional.

Stage Three

This is the stage where individuals began to show consistent signs of Alzheimer's disease to family, and may be easily detected by the health care professional. Detecting Alzheimer's disease during this stage will usually be noticed by close family members, or the closest of friends of the individual. Common symptoms during this stage may be forgetting simple short passages of reading material, misplacing common everyday items, decrease in ability to organize and plan events, difficulty in remembering names of new people, and not finding the right words during discussions with other people.

Stage Four

Moderate cognitive deficits. This is also called mild or early stage Alzheimer's disease. During this stage a health care professional will detect deficiencies and knowledge of recent current events, difficulty to perform easy mental arithmetic, decreased ability to plan events such as dinner, decreased memory of personal history, and social withdrawal from close friends.

Stage Five

Moderate to severe cognitive decline. This is also called moderate or main stage Alzheimer's disease. Memory deficits are much more severe during this stage. The health care provider can usually detect Alzheimer's disease very easily during this stage. Common symptoms include inability to recall important details in personal life such as address or phone number, counting backwards, difficulty in choosing clothing for the season or current weather conditions, forgetting where common items are placed such as car keys, television remotes, and other items used commonly.

Stage Six

Severe cognitive deficits. This is also called moderate to severe or main stage Alzheimer's disease. Memory difficulties are worse than stage five. Individuals' personalities are affected and they may begin to withdraw or manifest severe personality changes or disorders. The health care professional will commonly detect inability to recall current events and events that took place in the last three months, inability to recall personal history, inability to recognize close family members consistently, inability to dress for current weather conditions, and difficulty or inability to perform personal hygiene tasks. The individual may also show signs of wandering, or hallucinating intermittently.

Stage Seven

Very severe cognitive deficits. This is also called severe or late stage Alzheimer's disease. This is the final stage of Alzheimer's disease and manifests itself in individuals with inability to respond properly to their environment, inability to speak properly, inability to complete coordinated muscle movements. The health care provider will also commonly detect an individual's inability to speak clearly, recall current events, recognize close family members consistently, inability or severe difficulty with walking or transferring, and inability to swallow.

The Global Deterioration Scale is a system developed by medical professionals and helps to categorize each individual in a certain stage of this unique disease. Proper diagnosis and determination of which stage an individual may be in is critical to the proper care of the individual. The improvement and rehabilitation of each individual is dependent upon proper diagnosis and placement within the proper stage. Some individuals have been documented to show some level of improvement with proper intervention.

William Riopelle, MS PT, is a senior physical therapist with over twelve years experience working with people in the area of Home Health. His popular website provides more information, in downloadable audio format, for family and care providers on Alzheimer's Disease: => http://www.audiomedicalscience.com