Sharon I can fully understand, appreciate and commiserate with your sense of "loss" of your ability to remember things. I actually laughed out loud when I read your “Returning to the room I was just in to get something because I couldn’t remember why I was in there the first time”. This happens to me more than I would like to admit at times!
Although Merriam and Bierema point out that memory tends to decline with
age, I tend to side with "Maxine" as she points out in the cartoon that a lot of my "memory loss" is not attributed to my age, but my inability to say "NO" to things in my life. I find myself multitasking way too many items at a time and somewhere along the way I will move from super efficient to "now what is it that I was needing to do?!" I joke with my colleagues that I need a T-shirt that says "Yes, means NO" since I can so easily say "yes" to request but usually do not say no when I really should.
According to the article Age-Related Memory Loss, we've all misplaced keys, blanked on an acquaintance's name, or forgotten a phone number. When we’re young, we don’t tend to pay much mind to these lapses, but as we grow older, sometimes we worry about what they mean. While it’s true that certain brain changes are inevitable when it comes to aging, major memory problems are not one of them.
The brain is capable of producing new brain cells at any age, so significant memory loss is not an inevitable result of aging. But just as it is with muscle strength, you have to use it or lose it. Your lifestyle, health habits, and daily activities have a huge impact on the health of your brain. Whatever your age, there are many ways you can improve your cognitive skills, prevent memory loss, and protect your grey matter. Furthermore, many mental abilities are largely unaffected by normal aging, such as:
- Your ability to do the things you’ve always done and continue to do often
- The wisdom and knowledge you’ve acquired from life experience
- Your innate common sense
- Your ability to form reasonable arguments and judgments [1].
So maybe there is still hope for those of us who "think" that we are loosing our memory! For me, the answer is to learn to say "no", reduce the number of things on my "to-do list" and then hopefully I will be more efficient at remember just why it is that I walked into a room to get something!
Resources
1. Smith, M., Robinson,L. & Segal, R. (2016). Age-related memory loss: What's normal, what's not, and when to
seek help. Retrieved from http://www.helpguide.org/articles/memory/age-related-memory-loss.htm
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