Forgetfulness

 Forgetfulness

Memory slips are aggravating, frustrating, and sometimes worrisome. When they happen more than they should, they can trigger fears of looming dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Lack of sleep. Not getting enough sleep is perhaps the greatest unappreciated cause of forgetfulness. Too little restful sleep can also lead to mood changes and anxiety, which in turn contribute to problems with memory.

Medications. Tranquillizers, antidepressants, some blood pressure drugs, and other medications can affect memory. That can make it difficult to pay close attention to new things.

Stress and anxiety. Anything that makes it harder to concentrate and lock in new information and skills can lead to memory problems. Both can interfere with attention and block the formation of new memories or the retrieval of old ones. Depression. Forgetfulness can also be a sign of depression or a consequence of it.

Memory issues are normal. We’ve all had moments when we couldn’t remember something simple, like someone’s name, only to have it come to us later.  “Memory slips are common. “The key is that it comes back to you eventually, and that you didn’t completely forget. If it’s harder to remember or think things through than it used to be.

Not being able to retrieve a memory in the moment. This happens when a memory is on the tip of your tongue. Also called “blocking”. It might happen if a stronger memory gets in the way.  This is called “misattribution.” It can be frustrating, but be open to someone else’s recollection of a particular event and try not to get frustrated with yourself for forgetting.

Memories are subject to suggestibility, meaning that something you learn after creating a memory can change how you recall it. People who have memory loss symptoms that affect their day-to-day function may have dementia.

Memory problems that impair daily living

Forgetting you just learned, needing to have things repeated frequently, repeating yourself frequently, or needing memory aides and notes to remember simple tasks when you never had to before… it can be frustrating.

When your memory impacts your daily life, finding a diagnosis may lead to treatment that can help.

Misplacing objects in unusual places

Frequently being unable to find an object even after retracing your steps, or finding something in an unusual spot (such as your car keys in the refrigerator), may indicate a memory problem that requires working with your doctor.

Talk about forgetfulness. “It allows you and the people close to you to have a framework for making decisions.” Some causes of dementia are progressive, meaning memory loss symptoms get worse over time.

Forgetfulness  - It's normal to forget things from time to time, and it's normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age. But how much forgetfulness is too much? How can you tell whether your memory lapses are normal forgetfulness and within the scope of normal ageing, or are a symptom of something more serious? Healthy people can experience memory loss or memory distortion at any age.  Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with age.

Frequent forgetfulness or memory lapses often leave people worrying about dementia, Alzheimer’s, or other incurable, progressive conditions. “Forgetting why you walked into a room on occasion, difficulty recalling the name of someone you just met, or having a word on the tip of your tongue that later comes to you is typically not concerning.

 

Many common conditions and even some substances can cause forgetfulness. Depression, anxiety, and stress – “These are common causes of forgetfulness. Stress and mood disturbances can act as a distraction and make it difficult to focus, which can lead to memory problems.

Medications – These can include, but aren’t limited to, over-the-counter sleep aids, allergy medications, overactive bladder medications, and pain medications (specifically narcotics).

Sleep issues – “Insomnia or untreated sleep apnea can affect thinking and memory skills.” “Healthy sleep practices, treating underlying causes of sleep problems, or being evaluated for sleep apnea might help these symptoms.”

Dementia is a loss of function that happens earlier or faster than what we see in normal ageing.” The most common cause of dementia over the age of 65 is Alzheimer’s disease.

Another common cause of dementia is cerebrovascular disease, or damage to the blood vessels in the brain. This damage can be due to strokes and many of the same things that cause heart disease, for instance, poorly controlled high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking.

Cognitive impairment

People with cognitive impairment can usually take care of themselves and are able to carry out their day-to-day tasks.

Dementia is not a normal part of ageing. Dementia includes the loss of cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, learning, and reasoning — and behavioural abilities to the extent that it interferes with a person’s quality of life and activities. Memory loss, though common, is not the only sign of dementia. People with dementia may also have problems with language skills, visual perception, or paying attention. Some people experience personality changes.

There are different types of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and vascular dementia, and symptoms may vary from person to person.

Factors that may cause memory problems include:

• Head injury, such as a concussion
• Blood clots, tumours, or infections in the brain
• Thyroid, kidney, or liver problems
• Medication side effects
• Mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety
• Alcohol or drug misuse
• Sleep problems
• Low levels of important nutrients, such as vitamin B12
• Not eating enough healthy foods

Major, traumatic, or stressful life events can also cause memory problems. For example, someone who has recently retired or who is coping with the death of a spouse may feel sad, lonely, worried, or bored. Stress and negative emotions are powerful. Trying to deal with such life changes and emotions leaves some people confused or forgetful.

These memory problems from negative emotions are usually temporary and will improve as the stress and emotions fade. Being active, socially engaged, and experiencing a sense of accomplishment by learning new skills can help with both memory and mood.

Unproven memory enhancements

Some people may be tempted by untried or unproven over-the-counter drugs and other products that claim to make the brain sharper or prevent dementia. Be cautious of pills, supplements, brain training computer games, and similar treatments that promise to improve memory or prevent brain disorders. These might be unsafe, a waste of money, or both. They might even interfere with other medical treatments.

Causes of forgetfulness

Memory slips are aggravating, frustrating, and sometimes worrisome. When they happen more than they should, they can trigger fears of looming dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Lack of sleep. Not getting enough sleep is perhaps the greatest unappreciated cause of forgetfulness. Too little restful sleep can also lead to mood changes and anxiety, which in turn contribute to problems with memory.

Medications. Tranquillizers, antidepressants, some blood pressure drugs, and other medications can affect memory. That can make it difficult to pay close attention to new things.

Stress and anxiety. Anything that makes it harder to concentrate and lock in new information and skills can lead to memory problems. Stress and anxiety fill the bill. Both can interfere with attention and block the formation of new memories or the retrieval of old ones. Depression. Forgetfulness can also be a sign of depression or a consequence of it. Consider trying something like getting more sleep, switching to a different medication, or participating in a stress reduction program to get your memory back on track.

It’s common to forget things now and then, but here’s how to know when to call your doctor. It’s always good to keep an eye on your health and ask questions, and while certain things are normal to forget, other signs should prompt you to call your doctor.

Normal memory issues. We’ve all had moments when we couldn’t remember something simple, like someone’s name, only to have it come to us later.  “Memory slips are common,” “The key is that it comes back to you eventually and that you didn’t completely forget. If it’s harder to remember or think things through than it used to be, even when you give yourself all the time you need with no distractions, you may need to see your doctor.”

Forgetting facts over time. For example, if it’s been a while since you’ve done complex math, it might be hard to remember how to do it. This is called “transience.”  “Researchers speculate it may be the brain’s way of making room for new information or memories.”

Absent-minded V/S Forgetfulness

 Forgetting for a moment because you went into a room or misplacing items (like your car keys) in a common area.  This happens when a memory is on the tip of your tongue. Also called “blocking”. It might happen if a stronger memory gets in the way.   “When this happens, try to relax. Then, usually, the memory will come back to you.”

Memories are subject to suggestibility, meaning that something you learn after creating a memory can change how you recall it. If this happens only once in a while, it’s not a cause for concern.

Absent-mindedness 

Absentmindedness is often caused by things such as boredom, sleepiness, rumination, distraction, or preoccupation with one's own internal monologue. When experiencing absent-mindedness, people exhibit signs of memory lapses and weak recollection of recent events.

Absent-mindedness can usually be a result of a variety of other conditions, often diagnosed by clinicians, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. In addition to absent-mindedness leading to an array of consequences affecting daily life, it can have more severe, long-term problems.

Absent-mindedness seemingly consists of lapses of concentration or "zoning out". This can result in lapses of short or long-term memory, depending on when the person in question was in a state of absent-mindedness. 

Absent-mindedness is also noticed as a common characteristic of personalities with schizoid personality disorder.

Consequences

Lapses of attention are a part of everyone's life. Some are merely inconvenient, such as missing a familiar turnoff on the highway, while others are extremely serious, including failures of attention that cause accidents, injuries, or loss of life. Sometimes, lapses of attention can lead to a significant impact on personal behaviour, which can influence an individual's pursuit of goals. Beyond the obvious costs of accidents arising from lapses in attention, there are lost time, efficiency, personal productivity, and quality of life. These can also occur in the lapse and recapture of awareness and attention to everyday tasks. Individuals for whom intervals between lapses are very short are typically viewed as impaired. Given the prevalence of attentional failures in everyday life and the ubiquitous and sometimes disastrous consequences of such failures, it is rather surprising that relatively little work has been done to directly measure individual differences in everyday errors arising from propensities for failures of attention. Absent-mindedness can also lead to bad grades at school, boredom, and depression.

Measurement and treatment

Absent-mindedness can be avoided or fixed in several ways. Although it cannot be accomplished through medical procedures, it can be accomplished through psychological treatments. Some examples include: altering work schedules to make them shorter, having frequent rest periods, and utilising a drowsy-operator warning device.

It's normal to forget things from time to time, and it's normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age. But how much forgetfulness is too much? How can you tell whether your memory lapses are normal forgetfulness and within the scope of normal ageing, or are a symptom of something more serious?

Healthy people can experience memory loss or memory distortion at any age. Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with age, but — unless they are extreme and persistent — they are not considered indicators of Alzheimer's or other memory-impairing illnesses.

Seven normal memory problems

1. Transience

You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones.

2. Absentmindedness

This type of forgetting occurs when you don't pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn't focus on where you put it in the first place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn't encode the information securely. Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do something at a prescribed time, like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment.

3. Blocking

Someone asks you a question, and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know that you know it, but you just can't think of it. This is perhaps the most familiar example of blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. In many cases, the barrier is a memory similar to the one you're looking for, and you retrieve the wrong one. This competing memory is so intrusive that you can't think of the memory you want.

Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other people's names. Research shows that people are able to retrieve about half of the blocked memories within just a minute.

4. Misattribution

Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you believe a thought you had was original when, in fact, it came from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This sort of misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a writer passes off some information as original when he or she read it somewhere before.

As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution becomes more common with age. As you age, you absorb fewer details when acquiring information because you have somewhat more trouble concentrating and processing information rapidly. And as you grow older, your memories grow older as well. Old memories are especially prone to misattribution.

5. Suggestibility

Suggestibility is the vulnerability of your memory to the power of suggestion — information that you learn about an occurrence after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory of the incident, even though you did not experience these details. Although little is known about exactly how suggestibility works in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it's a real memory.

6. Bias

Even the sharpest memory isn't a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, your perceptions are filtered by your personal biases, experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your perceptions and experiences when they're being encoded in your brain. And when you retrieve a memory, your mood and other biases at that moment can influence what information you recall.

Although everyone's attitudes and preconceived notions bias their memories, there has been virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind memory bias or whether it becomes more common with age.

7. Persistence

Most people worry about forgetting things. But in some cases, people are tormented by memories they wish they could forget, but can't. The persistence of memories of traumatic events, negative feelings, and ongoing fears is another form of memory problem. Some of these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be negative distortions of reality.

People suffering from depression are particularly prone to having persistent, disturbing memories. So are people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD can result from many different forms of traumatic exposure, for example, sexual abuse or wartime experiences. Flashbacks, which are persistent, intrusive memories of the traumatic event, are a core feature of PTSD.

Absent-Mindedness and Memory Problems in Younger People

Forgetfulness is common as we age due to changes in the brain. Decreased blood flow and fewer hormones and proteins used to repair brain cells and advance neural growth are very common in older individuals. While there are many tricks and best practices older people can use to improve cognitive skills, some of it is out of their control.

But what if you are a younger person who struggles with memory problems? Maybe you’ve been called absent-minded or a “space cadet”. You forget your keys and your purse, or constantly seem to lose things. You may have great long-term memory, but struggle to remember things that happened just a few minutes ago. Is there something wrong with you? Or is absent-mindedness something that can be fixed?

What Causes Absent-Mindedness and Memory Problems?

There are many different mental health issues and personality traits that cause a person to become absent-minded. Psychologists believe the primary causes are a low level of attention, which may be a form of ADHD.

People may also be hyper-focused on a single object. This makes them unaware of other things going on at that moment. This also occurs when individuals are under stress or if they are suffering from ADHD.

Finally, absent-mindedness may be caused by irrelevant thoughts that we have. A person may be focused on what he/she read in the news or an upcoming event while putting their keys down. Later, he cannot find his keys because he was not paying attention at that moment. Instead, he was focused on the news, his daughter’s birthday party, and other thoughts.

Absent-mindedness can also be correlated to those with schizoid personality disorders, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Most individuals who are absent-minded are not unintelligent. They usually have high IQs, are highly creative, and tend to be on the intellectual side. They may be well-read, emotionally intelligent, and have a particular skillset. Their brains are just “on-go” at all times. They have a difficult time slowing down.

Improve Absent-Mindedness

Absent-mindedness can hurt our productivity, self-confidence, and relationships. It can be frustrating to constantly lose things, forget what people said, or scramble to catch up later. Thankfully, there are some best practices you can put in place right now to become more organised and improve your memory. Here are some top tips:

. Make Lists: Don’t count on your memory for everything. Write down lists of things to do or goals to meet. Cross them off as you go along.

· Set Alarms: Set an alarm for each item on your to-do list so you remember when to start the next one. This will also help to jog your memory if you accidentally forget something.

· Slow Down and Delegate: Feeling overwhelmed is often a result of doing too much. Pick and choose which activities you will do and learn how to say no. Delegate, if possible, to avoid burnout.

· Don’t Multi-Task: Multitasking is not as great as everyone thinks it is. Doing one thing at a time is much more effective. And your quality of work will improve too.

· Meditate and Lower Anxiety Levels: Absent-mindedness can be a result of high levels of stress. Find ways to minimise stress and take breaks. Meditation is also a must. This will help you get back to the present moment.

· Seek Help: Find a therapist or life coach who can help you organise your life. See if any underlying mental health issues are contributing to your absent-mindedness.

Worried about your brain? >

Common causes

Many common conditions and even some substances can cause forgetfulness.

Depression, anxiety, and stress – “These are common causes of forgetfulness.”

·        Medications – These can include, but aren’t limited to, over-the-counter sleep aids, allergy medications, overactive bladder medications and pain medications (specifically narcotics).

·        Sleep issues – “Insomnia or untreated sleep apnea can affect thinking and memory skills,” she said. “Healthy sleep practices, treating underlying causes of sleep problems or being evaluated for sleep apnea might help these symptoms.”

·        Vitamin deficiencies or thyroid abnormalities

·        Excessive alcohol consumption

·        Chronic pain

·        Vision or hearing loss

The next common cause of dementia is cerebrovascular disease, or damage to the blood vessels in the brain. This damage can be due to strokes and many of the same things that cause heart disease, for instance, poorly controlled high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and smoking.

While there is no way to reverse the damage that has been done, working to manage these conditions and healthy lifestyle changes can help minimise the risk.

Sudden memory loss or confusion could also indicate a more serious problem, such as a stroke or serious infection 

Whether it’s concern for yourself or for a loved one, having another person at the appointment can help you share needed facts.

Preventing memory loss and forgetfulness

Living a healthy lifestyle is important for brain health. Some ways that you may be able to slow memory loss and cut down on forgetfulness are:

Healthy eating – The MIND diet is beneficial for brain health. The MIND diet incorporates the DASH and Mediterranean food plans, which encourage eating brain-protecting foods such as fish, chicken, nuts and green leafy vegetables while avoiding processed foods and foods high in sugar and saturated fat.

Exercise – Even low-impact exercise like walking 30 minutes a day, five times a week, can help.

Staying active cognitively – Try mentally stimulating activities like reading, playing games, solving puzzles or learning a new hobby. The more challenging, the better.

Socialising (safely, of course) – Social isolation can cause unhealthy stress and lead to depression. Forming and maintaining strong connections helps reduce stress and improve mood.

“I would encourage anyone concerned about forgetfulness or any other change in their ability to function normally to see their primary care provider,” “Taking the steps to identify and manage reversible or treatable causes may improve memory and provide better health in general.”

Memory Problems, Forgetfulness, and Ageing

Older adults may worry about their memory and other thinking abilities, such as taking longer to learn something new. However, more serious memory problems could be due to mild cognitive impairment, dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, or other factors beyond normal ageing.

Memory changes with age

As people grow older, changes occur in all parts of the body, including the brain. As a result, some people notice that they don’t remember information as well as they once did and aren’t able to recall it as quickly. They may also occasionally misplace things or forget to pay a bill. These are usually signs of mild forgetfulness, not a serious memory problem.

It’s normal to forget things once in a while at any age, but serious memory problems make it hard to do everyday things such as driving, using the phone, and finding the way home.

Signs that it might be time to talk with a doctor include:

Asking the same questions over and over again

Getting lost in places you used to know well

Having trouble following recipes or directions

Becoming more confused about time, people, and places

Not taking care of yourself — eating poorly, not bathing, or behaving unsafely

Talk with a doctor if you are experiencing noticeable changes in your memory. A doctor can perform tests and assessments to help determine the source of memory problems.

Your health care may also recommend that you see a neurologist, a doctor who specialises in treating diseases of the brain and nervous system.