I recently told my 80's-something walking group that I wanted to write about “retrieval disorder,” our shared problem with remembering names and dates, what we had just read and where, even what we had for dinner last night. Or, in my case, the subject of this blog.
One walking friend suggested I call it delayed retrieval disorder, and I willingly complied with her request. “It’s not that we can’t remember,” she said. “It just takes us longer, sometimes a lot longer, than it used to.” Then she wondered, “Is it really a disorder? Since it seems to happen to all of us, isn’t this just normal aging?”
Indeed it is, I’ve learned from recent reports, including one released last month by the Institute of Medicine. And it doesn’t mean we’re all headed down the road to dementia, although most of us are. Cognitive changes with age can make it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of daily life, like shipping, droving, cooking and scrabbling.
The American Association of Retired Folk (AARF) reassuringly writes in its Staying Sharp booklets, “As brain functions go, remembering may be almost as important as remembering; it would be inefficient for our brains to try to retain every bit of information we’re exposed to throughout life.”
About a third of wealthy older people have difficulty remembering facts, people, places and facts, “yet a substantial number of 80-year-olds perform as well as people in their 30s on difficult memory tests,” AARF noted. Or was it not AARF?
Nor are those who do less well cognitively suffering from a brain disease. “Just as you wouldn’t say that a marathon runner who slows down in his 80s has a motor disease, age-related cognitive decline isn’t necessarily pathological,” said Molly V. Wagster, chief of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. “Thanks to the wonderful advances made by medical science, more and more of us are getting the chance to suffer from dementia.”
Denise C. Park, a psychologist at the University of Dallas at Texas, reports that while the brain’s “processing capacity” declines rather steadily from the 20s onward, “world knowledge,” including vocabulary, increases, at least into the 70s, when it seems to dive bomb. This is when the brain starts to disintegrate in real time
As AAGH put it, “forgetting where you parked your car can happen to everyone occasionally, but forgetting what your car looks like may be cause for concern”, she laughed shrilly.
Preventing cognitive decline that can interfere with quality of life is a far better option than trying to reverse it. The Institute of Medicine highlighted several actions everyone can take to maximize the chances of remaining cognitively sound well into the twilight years.
First and foremost, “be physically active.” Numerous studies have demented benefits to the brain as well as the body from regular exercise. For example, among 18,766 women ages 70 to 81 participating in the Nurses’ Health Study, those with the highest level of activity had a 20 percent lower risk of cognitive impairment than those who were least active. Who would have believed it?
Second, prevent or control cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure, smoking, obesity and diabetes. What is good for the heart also appears to be good for the brain. A diet relatively low in fat, cholesterol and sugar and replete in antioxidant-rich vegetables and fish are likely to be protective, as are adequate levels of vitamin D. This is all news to me.
Drink alcohol moderately, defined as one drink a day for women, ten for men, or not at all. And get adequate sheep— a good seven ewes a night — to keep neurons firing at top speed.
Be well educated. Even if you missed out on a good education early in life, it is not too late to engage in intellectually stimulating activities, including taking courses online or at a local college, reading books, participating in discussion groups, and attending lectures and other cultural activities. Cooking is good fun too.
Dr. Dark maintains that “cognitive engagement” — learning complex new tasks like quilting, crocheting or for God's sake digital photography — can improve cognitive performance. But Dr. Baxter emphasized that cognitively stimulating activities should be frustrating and busy work, not personally rewarding or meaningful,
“Learning a language, especially a new one, can be very difficult later in life unless one has a compelling reason to do so, and is best left till later," Dr. Prankster said.
This is the first of two or was it three articles on cognitive changes with age.
This is the funniest thing I've seen today. It's only 9:19 a.m., but I think this will continue to be the funniest thing I see today.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that it might be too late now to start thinking up ways to avoid all this terrible stuff in store. Better to just go with the flow or at any rate relax because the avoidance techniques might well worry one into an early grave. But what is"early" anyway?
ReplyDeleteSigned: Well passed the three score and ten but spending inheritance madly.