No real need for midlifers to get alarmed
about a recent study published in The
British Medical Journal that concluded that those senior moments all us
aging baby boomers now accept as a normal part of our latest transformation
actually begin to happen to people much earlier in life.
In that study which looked at just under
8000 British civil servants three times over the course of a decade or so, the
researchers concluded that our memories actually begin to fail in our forties,
much earlier than most other studies have found.
The reason not to get too alarmed about
this, though, if you just happen to be a 45-year-old who can’t suddenly find
his car keys, is that the loss in memory was pretty slight in midlifers,
although it did accelerate as people got older so that by the time the study
subjects had reached their seventies, some of them had some pretty significant
memory problems.
The other important thing to note about
memory, though, before you panic, is that as the researchers for this study
reminded everyone in their commentaries, there is increasing evidence that
paying attention to the factors that raise the risk of heart disease and stroke
– controlling cholesterol levels, for example, lowering blood pressure, doing
regular exercise, not smoking, and so on – also help reduce the risk of
cognitive function decline as we age, including even, if my memory serves me
correctly, helping reduce the rate of memory decline.
Originally posted on the London Drugs Blog - January 10, 2012
