Why Your Forgetfulness May Be More Than a Memory Lapse

Recently I had the unique good fortune to be able to talk with a group of people about 40 years my senior. This was a group of “elders” (this was the formal name of the group) from a local church. Their average age, as I mentioned, was about 75 or so. I was there to talk about the importance of physical activity and to give them some information about our program for people in their retirement years called Thrive65 (yes, I was giving a sales-pitch to a group of seniors in a church…is that sinful?).

Being the spry, 35 year that I am, I was excited to tell them the importance of physical activity as it pertains to the strength of the body. The body, as you may know, deteriorates as we age. Unless, of course we do something about it. And regular physical activity, paired with proper strength training, is the perfect remedy for this aging onslaught.

None the less, of course I took time to hit on how physical activity impacts the heart and mind, as well. But, as I naively thought, this group was going to be much more concerned about the strength of their body’s. Until I finished my presentation and opened the room for questions.

As a presenter, I can’t imagine not spending time at the end of a talk to answer questions. It’s only in these times that you’re able to truly see what is important to your audience. Because, as you’re about to find out, what YOU think is important to them and what reality says is important are likely 2 different things.

We probably spent about 20 minutes chatting back and forth over the course of the Q&A session. And the #1 thing that they asked about during that time? Not building strong muscles, like I had hoped. Not even a peep about cardiovascular health. The #1 topic during that session was mental wellbeing. More specifically, this group of people, mostly over the age of 75, were more concerned about how physical activity had an impact on dementia and Alzheimer’s development.

Why? Because, as it turns out, when you’re young (as in a 35-year male, like me) you tend to take your mental faculties for granted. On the other end of the spectrum though, as you age and get nearer your retirement years, you have a strong urge to keep your wits about you. You see other people around you losing their minds, and you know that you don’t want to be the one who wakes up every morning and can’t remember where they are.

This revelation led me to immediately start a deep dive into the workings of Alzheimer’s and dementia to see what these diseases were all about. I knew the basics of each one, that they had to do with memory loss, but I didn’t fully understand the implications that each one had on the life of a person (and, for that matter, their loved ones). What I found was a bit eye opening, which is why I want to share those findings with you today. Fair warning: do not take this information lightly. Unlike other chronic diseases, diseases of the brain, most notably Alzheimer’s, begin their development decades before a diagnosis is made. Which is why we’ll spend most of our time talking about the development of Alzheimer’s disease and how you can stall progression in its tracks.

The Stages of Alzheimer’s: It Starts Before You Realize

As I mentioned above, Alzheimer’s disease starts well before an official diagnosis is made. The disease has 3 stages that it goes through before becoming diagnosed as full-blown Alzheimer’s. It’s important to note that not everybody who is within one of these stages will progress to having Alzheimer’s disease. Likewise, having Alzheimer’s disease does not mean that you progressed through each one of these stages as I’ll describe them below.

The path that we’re going to talk about today is the general path that most people who develop Alzheimer’s will go through. And, the earlier you can detect that you’re in a certain stage, the more likely you’ll be to stop, slow, or possible reverse the progression overall. While there are very specific strategies that you can incorporate to stop or reverse this progression, they are beyond the scope of this article. I’ll give some general recommendations, as always. However, I’ll leave the specifics for another day.

Stage #1: Subjective Cognitive Impairment

In his great book, The End of Alzheimer’s, Dale Dredesen, MD, lays out the stages that most people go through on the path to Alzheimer’s disease (referred to as AD moving forward). Stage one is called Subjective Cognitive Impairment, or SCI. As you might guess, the “subjective” part of this stage gets its name from the subject (that’s you) being the only person that notices any cognitive impairment happening.

This means that test to diagnose AD, such as a memory test or even a PET scan or MRI, show little to no evidence that cognitive decline is present. However, the person in question can notice that they may be forgetting things more often or having a harder time retaining new knowledge.

This stage typically lasts a decade or more before progressing to the next stage. As you can start to see, since most people aren’t diagnosed with AD until their 70s or later, that means you may be seeing signs of the disease much earlier than expected.

Stage #2: Mild Cognitive Impairment

After being in the SCI stage for about 10 years, the next stage is Mild Cognitive Impairment, or MCI. Once you’ve taken the progression to MCI, the disease has gone beyond just you noticing that you’re forgetting things. Now the people that you see on a regular basis are starting to become aware of your forgetfulness.

To go along with this, tests will show that your memory, organizational skills, planning abilities, and even speaking are becoming impaired. Electronic tests such as PET scans and MRIs will show significant changes in the brain which link to cognitive decline. While not everyone who moves to the MCI stage is bound to develop AD, if memory loss is a big part of the issue, then this stage may last about 5 years.

Stage #3: Alzheimer’s Disease

The last stage, of course, is Alzheimer’s Disease. While diagnosing AD through imaging and scanning is difficult, most diagnosis are made on the ground of having certain symptoms. Those symptoms, as you may guess, include significant memory loss, a cognitive deficit so severe that self-care, talking and eating become difficult.

How to Decrease Your Chances of Developing Alzheimer’s

If you look at the first stage of AD, subjective cognitive impairment, you may think that it seems ridiculous to worry about being forgetful. After all, we’ve all been forgetful at some point in our lives. However, the point, of course, is not to be on alert for every moment that you forget a name or lose your keys. The point is to pay attention to trends and notice with things are not as they usually are.

Or, if you want to be proactive, you can decide to take the necessary today so that your likelihood of developing any type of dementia as you age is drastically reduced or eliminated. After all, much of the research shows that, beyond genetic factors of course, the lifestyle that you live is the biggest determinant of whether or not you keep your wits in your later years. So, let’s take a look at 3 strategies you can utilize to have the greatest impact on your long-term mental health without too much effort:

#1) Eliminate Processed Sugar

Two markers that have been closely linked to the increased risk of developing AD are insulin resistance and blood glucose levels. Most people linked these markers to type 2 diabetes, which would be correct. However, not only do diabetics develop AD 1.6 times faster than normal, they also have a higher risk of developing the disease in general. The link that brings this all together? High insulin and sugar levels.

So, eliminating processed sugar from your diet as much as possible will significantly decrease your risk of developing AD moving forward. Not only because it will allow insulin to do more of what it’s supposed to do (such as clean up particles that are linked to the development of AD), but also because it will reduce inflammation. Which brings us to our next idea…

#2) Change Your Stress Mindset to Reduce Inflammation

As you well know, stress has been a major cause for concern for many people lately. However, stress, in and of itself, is not bad. What’s bad is both the amount of stress and, as I wrote in a previous article (and Kelly McGonigal showed in her book The Upside to Stress), your attitude toward stress.

Chronic stress leads to chronic inflammation in the body. And inflammation in the body leads a host of issues, both long-term and short-term, not the least of which an increased risk of AD. As a matter of fact, inflammation is one of the 3 subtypes of AD that Dr. Dredesen talks about in his book. In other words, there is a type of AD that is directly linked to chronic inflammation.

So, decreasing your stress is important, needless to say. However, as you might think, you certainly don’t have to worry about eliminating stress. Because, as you know, stress is also how you grow. Therefore, you should instead shoot to change your mindset about stress from a “stress is harmful” mindset, to a “stress is enhancing” mindset. Also, implementing meditation on a regular basis wouldn’t kill you, either.

#3) Develop Your Movement Hygiene Practice

A recent study on AD and physical activity showed that those who got low levels of physical had a decreased risk of developing AD of 32 to 40%, while those that had higher levels of physical activity showed a 37 to 50% decrease. Needless to say, movement is something you need to start incorporating into your day if you want to improve your chances of remembering your own name at age 80.

An easy way to get movement into your day on a regular basis is what I like to call your Movement Hygiene Practice, or MHP. Essentially, your MHP is the practice of getting up every 25 minutes and performing an exercise for a certain number of reps. Why every 25 minutes? Because it’s around this time that the mind starts to lose focus and the body starts to tighten up. This will also allow you to break your movement up into little chunks instead of worrying about doing a single 2-hour workout. Trust me here, this can change your life!

If you put these simple strategies into practice, there’s no doubt that you’ll be on the road to a stronger brain. And while you may not be able to directly see your decreased risk of developing AD, you will most certainly be able to see your boost in energy, thinning waist line, and increased mental clarity!