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Is Your Memory Normal?
Before you diagnose yourself with Alzheimer's disease,
take heart: Experts say some memory lapses are actually
normal.
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By Cherie Berkley, MS
A WebMD Feature
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They say that memory is the
second thing to go as you get older. So what's the first? Umm, I
forgot! And actually, by the time you reach the end of this
story, you may remember only a fraction of it. Not to worry,
you're not alone.
Experts say that mild memory
loss is perfectly normal -- especially as we age. That's right,
if you sometimes forget simple things, you're not necessarily
developing Alzheimer's disease. There is a gang of people
walking around just like you who occasionally misplace their
keys, have that deer-in-headlights look as they search for their
cars in parking lots, and can't recall the name of one new
person they met at their last office party -- yes, the one from
last night. And there's a reason for those character-themed
floors coupled with the happy-go-lucky music in Disney amusement
park parking garages.
"If we have forgotten an
appointment, we begin thinking, 'Uh oh, is this the first sign
of Alzheimer's disease?' and we become much more conscious, and
it gets kind of a disproportionate amount of attention when it
really may be something quite benign," Stuart Zola, PhD,
professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory
School of Medicine and director of Yerkes National Primate
Facility in Atlanta tells WebMD.
Memory is the ability to
normally recall the facts and events of our lives, and this
takes place in three stages:
Stage 1: Encoding. This
is when a person takes information in.
Stage 2: Consolidation.
This is when the brain takes the information it encodes and
processes it so that it gets stored in certain areas of the
brain.
Stage 3: Retrieval. When
a person recalls stored information in the brain.
But differentiating between
normal memory loss and Alzheimer's disease can be puzzling for a
layman; the kind of memory that is affected in day-to-day
situations is also the kind affected in the early stages of
Alzheimer's disease.
Time:
Memory's Worst Enemy
Fear not, memory loss and brain
aging are a natural part of getting older. "It is often the case
that people will start to report in their 50s that they think
their memories are slipping," says Zola, a research career
scientist who has dedicated his work to memory function. "They
seem to be consciously aware of that because they have to use
more kinds of reminders or more kinds of strategies to remember
things."
But memory loss can happen even
before we hit our 50s. Many people even in their 20s and 30s
have forgotten a name or an appointment date or some fact that
was on the "tip of their tongue." Memory is tricky, and time is
its worst enemy, says Zola. In fact, shortly after taking in
information, memory traces begin to deteriorate, he explains.
"Some things begin to fade right away, other things fade less
quickly, and they're a bunch of different forgetting curves with
different rates of forgetting depending the nature of the
material, depending on how important it is for you, depending on
your stress level, depending on ... all of the things that can
affect memory."
If you've ever gotten into
heated debate with someone about how a past event or experience
transpired, there's a likely reason. You may think you have a
vivid memory of an experience, but studies show that after
awhile, people probably don't remember events as they actually
happened. Memory distortion -- also a side effect of father time
-- explains this. This is the phenomenon where as time passes
our ability to accurately recall events becomes diminished --
and the longer the period of time that passes between the event
and trying to recall it, the greater the chance we're going to
have some memory distortions and forgetting. Sometimes time
distortion causes us to forget the event totally, Zola explains.
Other Causes
of Memory Loss
But even if you think your
slips of the old noggin aren't normal, there could be other
reasons for it short of Alzheimer's disease, including:
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Stress and anxiety
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ADHD
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Depression
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Metabolic diseases such as
thyroid gland diseases, diabetes, and lung, liver, or kidney
failure
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Alcoholism
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Vitamin B-12 deficiency
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Infections, most notably
meningitis and encephalitis, which affect the nerves
surrounding the brain
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Drugs, both prescription
and over-the-counter
The good news is, causes of
memory loss from many of these conditions are normally
reversible. Zola says depression and stress are the most common
reasons for temporary memory problems.
"If your encoding isn't good,
you're not going to get the information in properly, and so
you're going to have difficulty retrieving it because it isn't
there in good form to retrieve. So that's the kind of memory
problem associated with depression, or with attention deficit
disorder, as its name implies, you have trouble paying attention
and focusing."
Stress affects the way the
brain processes memory, Zola tells WebMD. "So it's not so
surprising that you have memory problems often during very
stressful states because part of the brain is not engaged in the
way it needs to ordinarily be in order to have good memory."
Page: 1 l 2
Next: Use It or
Lose It
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© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved. |
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