A) CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS:
1) Ageing:
One person starts having a bad memory when you lose cerebral cells, approximately 1% annual, after twenty-five years, what it means that at the age of 70 years probably you have lost a 30% of your memory. The organism also starts to manufacture less chemical substances of those that your cerebral cells need to work. While you are more advanced of age, your memory will be felt more affected for these changes. The ageing can affect the memory changing the form as your brain stores the information and doing more difficult to remember the stored information. The bad memory by ageing occurs only in 20% of the cases; the rest, that it’s, the 80% of the other cases doesn’t have to do with ageing but with problems of traumatism, depression, lack of vitamins, diseases, alcohol abuse, etc., a group of disorders that doesn’t have to do with the age.
Your short term and long term memories usually are not affected by ageing. But your recent memory can be seen affected. You can forget the people names you met recently. These are normal changes.
2) Nutritional Deficiency:
A thiamine deficiency (vitamin B1), vitamin B12, and proteins are one of the main causes of bad memory. With a good nutrition many people enjoy having a good memory, even after they are 90 years. The bad food of a person does that the blood, which arrives the brain, becomes heavy by the cholesterol and the triglycerides, decreasing the quantity of nutrients in the brain, doing of this a bad cerebral food.
3) Depression:
The depression can cause bad memory to any age, above all in old people (24%), inhibiting functions as the attention and the memory. It’s a disease that can be cured with a good treatment.
4) Diseases:
The memory lost can derive from chronic diseases, diabetes, or hypothyroidism.
5) Deprivation of Oxygen:
Disorders like serious cranial traumatism, surgery, vascular cerebral accidents, or heart attacks reduce drastically the supply of oxygen that arrives to the brain, causing the death of nervous cells and cerebral amnesia.
6) Injury for Free Radicals
The molecules of the free radicals destabilize the molecules that are around, giving rise a molecular organic injury. The free radicals can injury the hematoencephalic barrier, a membrane that splits up the blood of the parenchyma of the nervous system. When the barrier is weakened, it allows the entrance of toxic products to the brain. The cerebral injury accelerates the cellular death producing memory lost.
7) Chemical Poisoning:
The daily exhibition to toxic chemical products, alcohol, tobacco, drugs (heroin, cocaine, amphetamines) destroys cerebral cells to a quick rhythm. Other products like aluminum (Alzheimer’s disease), lead, and mercury can penetrate easily the hematoencephalic barrier, killing cerebral nervous cells.
8) Infections of the Central Nervous System and Inflammations of the Brain:
The encephalitis (cerebral inflammation), toxoplasmosis, neurosyphilis can cause death of the cerebral nervous cells, producing bad memory.
9) Stress:
The emotional or physical stress stimulates the liberation of hormones of stress, like cortisol and adrenalin, which can kill cerebral nervous cells and generate memory lost.
10) Sensorial overload:
When a person carries out many tasks at the same time or has many worries at the same time, overloads the brain and slows down the short term memory. When a person tries to remember a lot of information, tends to forget simple things like the house keys or an appointment.
11) Diminished Glucose:
The blood cells (brain) need glucose (sugar) to generate energy. When there isn’t enough quantity of glucose, they can die the cerebral cells. An excessively low concentration of glucose in blood causes collapse and coma. The glucose is very beneficial to activate the neurons, to nourish the brain, and to increase the memory. The candy can contribute 17 calories; the experts in diets assure that sweetened foods can represent until the 10% of the quantity of calories that a person needs daily.
12) Convulsions:
The convulsions of the epileptic can cause bad memory.
13) Serious Emotional Traumatism
It’s associated with the sudden amnesia. The brain tries to protect the person from a memory of an emotional traumatism that has affected enormously.
14) Low Estrogen:
During menopause, the numbers of the estrogen fall, generating a little of amnesia in women.
B) DIAGNOSIS OF BAD MEMORY:
The diagnosis of memory lost must be done by the geriatrician, by means of a good clinic history, where they are referred the pattern, symptoms, and the type of memory lost; as well as a research of the factors that makes easy the memory lost, doing a physical and neuropsychological exam of the memory. You can also request tests, like techniques of neuroimage, electroencephalograms, blood tests and cognitive tests to determine the lack of recent or long term memory; finally you can request tests of attention, reasoning, and understanding of words.
