More than 5 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease and more than 15 million Americans provide unpaid care for those people living with the disease and other forms of dementia. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “Alzheimer’s disease is a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior.” The primary cause is believed to be the development of abnormal structures in the brain called plaques and tangles, which damage and kill nerve cells in the brain. Plaques are “deposits of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid that build up in the spaces between nerve cells” and tangles are “twisted fibers of another protein called tau that build up inside cells.”While the role that plaques and tangles play in the development of Alzheimer’s isn’t fully understood, scientists believe that these structures “play a critical role in blocking communication among nerve cells and disrupting processes that cells need to survive.”