All of us are forgetful from time to time and increasingly so as we age. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have dementia. So, when is it forgetfulness or dementia? When should you be concerned about age-related memory loss?
Dementia-related memory loss has different characteristics than occasional brain fogginess which interferes with instant recall.
“Our first instinct might be that it’s due to deterioration in our brains,” say Assistant Professor Oliver Baumann and Associate Professor Cindy Jones.
“And it’s true that like the rest of our body, our brain cells shrink when we get older. They also maintain fewer connections with other neurons and store less of the chemicals needed for sending messages to other neurons.
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“But not all memory lapses are due to age-related changes to our neurons. In many cases, the influencing factors are more trivial, including being tired, anxious, or distracted.”
Some forgetfulness is normal. Maintaining memories can be a drain on your mind and body. Retaining unnecessary information can also hinder more important memories. Memory loss only becomes concerning when it affects your daily living.
An example of forgetfulness is walking into the kitchen and not remembering why you went there. Or something as simple as misplacing your car keys. It doesn’t mean you have dementia. A person with dementia, however, may lose the car keys and then forget what they are used for.
Some repeating forgetfulness may, however, mean you have some form of mild cognitive impairment. That’s what researchers say is the space between age-related memory loss and major memory loss. Some cognitive impairment can remain stable. You may find, with age, you’ll often forget your keys or find it difficult to retain some information. And that may end up being the case for the rest of your days.
However, this mild cognitive impairment does increase your risk of dementia or neurodegenerative disease by three to five times. In fact, each year, 10-15% of people with mild cognitive impairment will go on the develop dementia.
An early sign of this is ‘losing your way’.
“Impairment in navigation is thought to be an early marker for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia,” say Assoc. Profs. Baumann and Jones. “Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have shown the areas that crucially underpin memories for our spatial environment are the first to be affected by this degenerative disease.”
Some conditions – vitamin and hormone deficiencies, depression, medication clashes, overmedication, infections and brain tumours – can also produce symptoms similar to dementia.
Dementia Australia says some memory loss is a normal part of healthy ageing, so long as the lapses are not frequent and do not interfere with daily life.
However, if a person forgets part or all of an event they have attended or witnessed, this could be a tell-tale sign of early dementia.
Another clue that suggests forgetfulness as a precursor to Alzheimer’s is a person’s constant inability to follow a conversation or a simple set of instructions.
It’s not so uncommon for memory loss or a case of forgetfulness to cause people to question whether they have early onset dementia.
When should I worry about forgetfulness?
The biggest giveaway is the inability to perform everyday tasks around the home. This would include activities such as cooking and keeping up with personal hygiene.
There are a number of brain diseases that come under the umbrella term, dementia. These include vascular dementia, Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration, Huntington’s disease, alcohol-related dementia (Korsakoff’s syndrome) and Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
Dementia Australia strongly recommends that if you are concerned about your memory loss you should consult your doctor.
“It is essential that a medical diagnosis is obtained at an early stage when symptoms first appear, to ensure that a person who has a treatable condition is diagnosed and treated correctly,” the association says.
Repeating memory lapses may not be something that concerns you. But if it starts to happen everyday, it may pay for you to seek professional advice. Early detection may help you plan for treatment or management of any cognitive disorder.
Is your memory loss worrying you? Do you forget things more often than you’d like? What is the funniest thing you have forgotten to do?
