I spend most of my weekends visiting my family.

Last week, I popped in to see my grandparents who live less than a block away–right around the corner.

As I walked up the driveway I ran into my grandfather, who I call dědeček, loading something into his van. (“dědeček” is actually pronounced more like “zhedecheck.”) He had a brown grocery bag containing several bottles of Slivovitz–an Eastern European plum brandy. It was his stash from Czechoslovakia–bottles I hadn’t seen in years.

When I asked him what he was doing, he told me, “I’m going home. There’s an annoying lady in this house.”

Sure, my grandmother could nag paint off the wall, but I had never heard him call her annoying.

Maybe they had an argument, but was it really bad enough for him to take his possessions and move back across the Atlantic?

I took the Slivo from him, and he begrudgingly came back inside the house.

Turns out, my děde (zhjedda) didn’t realize that it was even his home. He didn’t know why he was in this place.

He didn’t realize that the “annoying lady” was his wife, or that the year was 2015.

To be honest, that was what we’d consider a good day.

If my grandfather knew I was telling you this, he would blow a gasket. He’s a very private man.

But I think it’s important. And to be completely honest he’d likely forget about it by the time he woke up tomorrow morning.

Because he has Alzheimer’s Disease, and it’s rapidly progressing.

His physicians believe it has a direct correlation to his Type 2 Diabetes.

My family isn’t the only one with stories like this…

“In the United States, more than 5 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s, a number expected to grow to 16 million by 2050.”

“The number of people living with dementia worldwide is currently estimated at 35.6 million. This number will double by 2030 and more than triple by 2050.”

“The cost of care for dementia patients worldwide consumed an estimated 1% of the global GDP ($604 billion) in 2010 and is expected to exceed $1 trillion annually in the US alone by 2050.”

The driving factor is our aging demographic.

In the early 1900s, tuberculosis and pneumonia ravaged the population. Life expectancy averaged around 55 years. 30% of infants died before their first birthday.

Infrastructures like sewage systems and clean water access, and education about basic hygiene practices and nutrition removed those infectious diseases as the leading killers.

It’s the demographic transition: from high birth and death rates, to low birth and death rates.

Now, we have a larger population of elderly people, and it’s still growing.

The U.S. population of individuals age 60 and older was around 45 million in the year 2000.

By 2030, that population is expected to increase to over 90 million.

By 2050, over 110 million.

There’s just one problem:

We’re living longer, but that doesn’t mean we’re living healthier.

Instead of rapid and infectious diseases like the flu, smallpox, or cholera that plagued previous generations, we’re dealing with long-term, chronic noncommunicable illnesses.

In the United States, 82.6 million people are currently living with cardiovascular diseases.

It’s still the number one cause of death in the United States, but we’re seeing improvement.

The CDC reports a more than 30% decline between 2000 and 2012 in the death rates for cardiovascular diseases.

But it the battle against chronic illness doesn’t end there.

There’s an entire lineup of diseases primed to replace heart disease as the leading killer, just as it once replaced tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Dementia accounts for a 60% increase in neurological deaths among adults over 55.

In the United States, rates of neurological deaths have tripled for men over 75. For women, it’s multiplied by five.

We’ve all heard morbid stats like his before. Clearly, the health of our aging population is an issue.

But, it’s not just about the populating getting older and living longer.

Dementia used to be a disease diagnosed for individuals in their late 60s. Now, it’s regularly diagnosed as early as late 40s.

Most researchers attribute the early onset to environmental factors like pollution and poor nutrition which, through education and research, can be mitigated. Lifestyle factors like smoking, drinking, and obesity are other contributing factors to the disease.

“When diseases tend to run in families, either heredity or environmental factors or both may play a role…air pollution is associated with insidious effects on structural brain aging,” says a recent issue of Stroke.

For the most part, we as individuals can control those lifestyle factors–we have direct control over whether or not we smoke or consume alcohol.

But that isn’t enough to eliminate the disease prevalence.

To truly combat these debilitating illnesses, we need the medical community to make dementia, Alzheimer’s, and degenerative mental illnesses a health priority.

Unfortunately, medical progress is not keeping pace with the disease burden.

The United States established the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease in 2012, expanding research and moving promising drugs from discovery to clinical trials. The initiative intends to prevent and treat a range of dementias by 2025.

Still, the government support of dementia is minimal in comparison to other illnesses. Dr. Ronald Peterson, director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center states, “The United States spends $5.4 billion on cancer…but only about half a billion on Alzheimer’s disease, which may be the defining disorder of our generation.”

Don’t get me wrong–researchers are trying, and we have seen some developments in diagnosis techniques and drugs to treat symptoms.

Between 1998 and 2012, there were over 100 attempts to develop drugs for Alzheimer’s disease–either to prevent or slow it. Only three of these showed enough promise to secure further research. However, these three drugs only proved successful at treating symptoms–at helping already damaged brain cells function.

Solanezumab, developed by Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), slows the degeneration of brain cells by a third.

Biogen Idec (SWX: BIIB) announced successful research for a similar drug, Aducanumab, which attacks the amyloid plaques believed to be the cause of Alzheimer’s. Patients on higher doses of the drug showed 70% less mental decline.

Both drugs must still undergo vigourous trials and further research, which could take years. The drugs may be able to mitigate the progression of the disease, but neither will ever be a cure.

There has never been a patient to recover from Alzheimer’s. There has never been a patient whose condition has improved.

The medical community doesn’t even have a concrete formula to explain how or why the disease develops.

Alzheimer’s and dementia medicine have the potential to be a several billion dollar industry, especially with the unprecedented growth of our senior population and the increase in life expectancy.

Unfortunately, repeated failure creates what researchers call “funding fatigue,” causing l companies to reduce financing for their research programs by half.

Experts in the field of degenerative mental illnesses strongly emphasize that a severe decline in mental capacity, such as that seen in Alzheimer’s and other dementias, is not a “normal sign of aging.”

These diseases are more than ‘senior moments.’ They steal memories, and erase identities.

Financially, these are the most expensive diseases in America. Emotionally, they are the most costly.

It’s only a matter of time until degenerative mental illnesses overtake heart disease and cancer as the leading cause of death. To meet the growing need for Alzheimer’s and dementia treatment, they must be declared a global health priority, sooner rather than later.