We tell why you may have trouble remembering, what to do if you forget everything, and when to see a doctor.
“I always forget everything” is a fairly common complaint for people of all ages. You watched a great series with a gripping plot and after a couple of days you can’t remember its contents. Or you entered a room with a specific purpose, but in a minute you try to remember what it consisted of.
Home appliances forgotten on the net, apartment keys that were in the wrong place, missed vitamins and medications – you have probably already been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Although such serious illnesses do occur and memory problems are a significant symptom, the explanation may be much simpler. How to distinguish serious neurological problems from manifestations of stress, burnout or depression – we figure it out together.
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Recall everything: how human memory works
All human memory consists of four main systems. IN working or operational, memory stores information that is needed right now. Working memory expires in seconds. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for its proper work – the very part of the brain that makes a person a person, determines consciousness and behavior.
episodic memory – these are memories: both about what happened a couple of minutes ago, and about the events of twenty years ago. These memories are stored in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. Semantic memory is a kind of set of human knowledge about the world. Here are the words and their meanings, the names of objects. The temporal lobes of the brain are responsible for semantic memory.
procedural memory about the ability to do something. If a person remembers how to ride a bicycle, having once learned how to do it in childhood, then procedural memory works well for him. The basal ganglia, the cerebellum, and the motor cortex are responsible for body memory.
Memory can be very different – in terms of the duration of information storage and the content that it stores.
Try to keep track of what has been causing you inconvenience lately, what things are difficult to remember or do.
By formulating the symptom with the phrase “why do I forget everything,” you increase your own anxiety – most likely, you are not forgetting everything, but something very specific and in repetitive situations.
Moreover, such a wording is unlikely to help the specialist to whom you turn for help: for a doctor, loss of memory of a traumatic event, difficulty remembering daily routines, or the inability to reproduce a read text are very different symptoms.
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Periodic forgetfulness
Intermittent forgetfulness is a normal part of life and becomes more common as we get older. In most cases, this is not a cause for concern, unless it begins to interfere with daily activities. Forgetting where you left your car keys is one thing; quite another – to forget about why they are needed.
Over the past few years, scientists have learned a lot about memory and why some memory problems are serious and others are not. As we age, changes occur throughout the body, including the brain. As a result, you may start noticing that it takes longer to learn new things.
“I forget everything I read” – perhaps you can no longer remember information as well as before, or even confuse something. These small malfunctions in our memory may be signs of normal aging. But if increasing forgetfulness begins to bother you, it is recommended to consult a doctor.
The difference between simple forgetfulness and severe memory impairment is that a healthy person, although not immediately, can remember important facts and events from his life.
With memory impairment, patients forget the names of objects that they use every day, the names of loved ones – and even forget how to do simple household operations.
You may not immediately remember what you did last weekend, but if what happened five minutes ago fell out of your memory, this is a reason to be wary. If you can’t remember the name of a classmate you last saw 15 years ago, that’s fine.
If you forget your husband’s name or the way home, it’s a good reason to see a doctor—such symptoms could be a sign of amnesia associated with a stroke or head injury, alcohol or substance abuse, infection, or dementia.
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Eggs. Retinoids.
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Pumpkin. Carotenoids.
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Fish fat. Retinoids.
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Spinach. Carotenoids.
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Butter. Retinoids.
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Apricots. Carotenoids.
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Beef liver. Retinoids.
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Zucchini. Carotenoids.
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Milk. Retinoids.
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Broccoli. Carotenoids.
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Tomatoes. Carotenoids.
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Avocado. Carotenoids.
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Memory problems: relative norm
We can easily confuse some types of forgetfulness with memory problems, but this is not the case. Sometimes the loss of memories or the inability to retain them is not only a variant of the norm, but also a useful property of our brain.
Short term. This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You will most likely forget the information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a “use it or lose it” property: memories that are used frequently are less likely to be forgotten. While such forgetfulness may seem like a sign of memory weakness, scientists believe it is beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making room for new, more useful ones.
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Absent-mindedness. This type of forgetfulness is associated with a lack of 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 about something else (or perhaps nothing in particular), so your brain didn’t “encode” the information securely. “I forget what I wanted to do” is just about absent-mindedness: for example, taking medicine or making an appointment at a certain time.
Blocking. Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue – you know you know it, but you just can’t remember it. A blockage is a temporary inability to recover memory. In many cases, such an obstacle is a memory similar to the one you are looking for, and you get the wrong one. This competing memory is so intrusive that you can’t think of the memory you want.
Scientists believe that such memory blocks become more common with age and that they explain the problems older people have with remembering other people’s names.
Studies show that people can recover about half of their blocked memories in just a minute.
Invalid attribution. It occurs when you remember something exactly partially, but incorrectly attribute some details: time, place or person. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you think that a thought you had was completely original, when in fact it came from something you previously read or heard but forgot.
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Suggestibility. The power of suggestion can trick our minds into thinking that this is a real memory. In fact, it may be a fact about some situation that you learned after it happened and included in your understanding of it.
Bias. Even the sharpest memory is not a perfect snapshot of reality. Experience, beliefs, knowledge, and even mood – everything affects how the brain encodes a memory.
Obsession. The psychic trauma suffered can be reminded of itself through invading memories, dreams and flashbacks. They cause suffering and anguish to a person who does not want to relive situations of violence, grief or life-threatening situations. Moreover, such persistence and obsession with memory is not always associated with the reliability of memories – some details may be distorted or reproduced in an exaggerated form.
Causes of memory problems: checklist
If you find yourself increasingly forgetting what you wanted to do, check if your forgetfulness is due to one of the 6 common reasons.
Lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is one of the most underestimated causes of forgetfulness. If a person does not get enough restful sleep, this can lead to mood changes and anxiety, which in turn contributes to memory problems.
Medicines. Tranquilizers, antidepressants, some blood pressure medications, and other medications can interfere with memory. Often they provoke drowsiness or confusion. Both conditions do not promote mindfulness and the ability to focus on new things or processes. If you have a suspicion that memory loss may be related to a particular drug, you should talk to your doctor – he will replace the drug with a more suitable alternative.
Hypoactive thyroid. A malfunctioning thyroid gland can cause memory problems, as well as sleep problems and depression, which also contribute to forgetfulness. If you want to know the cause for sure, just take a blood test at the nearest diagnostic laboratory.
Alcohol. Drinking too much alcohol can affect short-term memory, even after the effects of alcohol have worn off. While “too much” is a relative term, it’s best to stick to the recommendation of no more than two servings a day for men and no more than one serving a day for women. One drink is usually defined as one glass of spirits (about 40 g), a glass of wine (about 150 ml) or a small glass of beer (0.35 l).
Stress and anxiety. In this state, it is difficult to concentrate and absorb new information. Stress and anxiety take a lot of energy, and also block the formation of new memories, prevent the restoration of old ones. This is why those of us who experience intense public speaking anxiety literally forget what we want to say.
Depression. Common signs of depression include sadness, depression, lack of energy, weakness, and decreased enjoyment of things you normally enjoy doing. Forgetfulness is another sign of depression or its consequence.
How to save memory
Train. Regular exercise causes a rush of blood to those areas of the brain that are responsible for good memory. Three months of training is enough to notice that you forget less and less details.
Meditate and relax. Meditation can also help with memory loss. In one study, people aged 52 to 77 with memory impairment meditated for 12 minutes daily. It was not an ordinary meditation – the participants did not just sit in the lotus position, but sang certain sounds and repeated different actions in a given order. After eight weeks of this practice, the subjects began to significantly improve performance in tests that require good memory, attentiveness and concentration.
Take breaks. An express method for remembering important information after a lecture or important negotiations is to take a coffee break. And it’s not about coffee at all – you can drink tea or plain water, the main task is to leave the brain alone for a while. While you are resting, your hippocampus and cerebral cortex are actively working, assimilating the information you have just received.
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2023-06-27 15:02:29
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