Hot MedFax

Uh oh.  I knew it.  New studies are showing that people who think they might -- or develop -- Alzheimer's may be right. According to newswise.com, "A  recent study suggests that self-reported memory complaints might predict clinical memory impairment later in life." For the study, a researcher asked over 3,000 men 60 and older, " Have you noticed any change in your memory since you last came in?" Now I'm not 60 yet but if you asked my son how many times I forgot to bring his strawberries after I cut them to him, well, never mind.  Let's just say it's a lot. "It seems that subjective memory complaint can be predictive of clinical memory impairment," said  one of the study authors. In other words, if you think you do, you just might. The memory and thinking lapses people notice in themselves could be early markers of risk for Alzheimer’s disease, says experts, adding that perhaps there's hope in that because doctors might be a...

I knew it!  I'm not nearing dementia with my inability to remember where my keys are or where I  left my glasses or OMG, I forgot to get Phillip! I just have too much stuff in my brain. Just as toddlers whose parents speak to them a lot tend to talk earlier because of all the words they hear (though I did get some pretty weird looks walking through Lord & Taylor and asking the infant Phillip what I should make for dinner), we folks of a certain age have our heads stuffed with all those words and the billion more of a lifetime. Where is the room in our heads for all those words? The NYT's Benedict Carey postulates that older minds may just be fuller minds. Carey attributes this idea to data mining, of all things.   Based on theories of information processing, researchers in Germany " used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases," he writes.  " Since educated older people generally know more words than younger peop...

Wow.  Imagine this.  Scientists have discovered that men are more forgetful than women.  According to Medical News Today, during an experiment testing memory, for eight out of nine questions, men had a harder time remembering the answers (probably the question they got right was, would you like a beer?). And it doesn't matter how old you are.  If you're a man, you will never remember things as well as a woman. Is it laziness, as some have suggested, or, as, often, in the case of my husband, convenience? Or is it really that our brains are just different? Researchers did not delve into that, although they considered whether, since cardiovascular events like heart attack and stroke afflict more men than women, that could be it. But that turned out not to be the case, too. Maybe it's just that, as moms, we have to know where the kids are, where they left their shoes, what time is dinner, what is dinner, visit the orthodontist, schedule teacher conference. Oh y...

If you know where this comes from ("Lost in Space," remember?), this epidemic applies to you. Listen all you Baby Boomers out there.  The next epidemic won't be measles or mumps.  Experts are predicting it will be Alzheimer's. That's because the disease primarily hits people in their 70's and older, and we're getting there.  A story at USA Today notes that by 2050, the affliction rate will have tripled, striking 1 in 85 people by this date.  (Of course, how many of us will be alive then?!) But it's something to think about, for our children.  Though doctors know how it develops, and now may be able to definitively diagnose it when we're still alive, no one knows why.   The symptoms are more than forgetting your keys, which I do all the time, or forgetting a word, like fork, which I also do.  Amnesia, the inability to communicate, difficulty with tasks, confusion about time or place, are all part of the disease. It's important to remembe...