Alzheimer’s disease: what, why and how!

Most people who end up caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease never planned to. It starts with small changes that are easy to explain away: a missed appointment, a repeated question. By the time there’s a diagnosis, the family is already learning on the job, usually without anyone explaining what is happening or what comes next.

Who I am

I’m Sepehr Sheykhzade Kermani, a science communicator and the founder of Amurdat. The question behind this campaign is a practical one: what does a carer need to know to look after someone with Alzheimer’s?

Why Alzheimer’s

Because caring for someone with Alzheimer’s is hard in ways that are rarely explained in advance. Carers face the same challenges again and again: repeated questions, confusion late in the day, refusing help, changes in mood or behavior. Most of these have practical, well-studied ways of being handled, but few families are ever shown them.

Carers also have to work out which changes matter and which don’t: which signs call for a doctor, and which are an expected part of the condition. And they are often left guessing about medication: what it can realistically do, and what it can’t.

There is also the scale. An analysis from the Global Burden of Disease study estimated that about 57 million people were living with dementia in 2019. It projected that the number could pass 150 million by 2050, mostly because populations are ageing. Behind each of those people is usually at least one carer.

And there is a gap in what people can access. Accurate information sits behind paywalls or technical language. Inaccurate information, such as supplements sold as “cures” or memory tests marketed as diagnoses, is free and everywhere.

Amurdat exists to close that gap.

Why “from the ground up”

You can’t make sense of a new drug trial, a blood test in the news, or advice about how to talk to someone who no longer recognizes you without the basics underneath. So starting from November, we’ll build it in order, one step a week:

1. What neurodegeneration is, and why forgetting isn’t always dementia

2. The types of dementia, and how common they are

3. What happens in the brain in Alzheimer’s, and what raises or lowers risk

4. Early detection, and why “screen everyone” isn’t the answer evidence supports

5. The treatment landscape, from older medications to the new antibody drugs

6. Where the research is genuinely uncertain, and what’s changing

7. Caring for the person: communication, behavior, daily life, safety

8. Caring for the carer: burden, burnout, and support that works

Along the way, we’ll summarize individual research papers so you can see the evidence itself, not just our account of it.

How we’ll handle evidence

A few rules will run through every piece:

• Words matter. “Dementia,” “Alzheimer’s disease” and “mild cognitive impairment” are not the same thing, and mixing them up causes real confusion.

• One study is one population. A finding from one country or sample doesn’t automatically hold everywhere.

• Population risk isn’t individual prediction. For example, the 2024 Lancet Commission estimated that nearly half of dementia cases might in theory be prevented or delayed by addressing modifiable risk factors. That is a statement about populations, not a promise to any one person.

• Where scientists disagree, we’ll say so.

Who this is for

Families and carers, students, and anyone curious about the brain.

If you’re a clinician or researcher and you spot an error, please tell us. Correction is part of how this works.

Please note

Nothing in this campaign is medical advice. If you’re worried about your own memory or someone else’s, the right next step is a doctor, ideally one experienced with cognitive assessment.