It’s natural to feel nervous when you forget something, knowing that Alzheimer’s disease now affects 5.3 million Americans. But a memory slip doesn’t always mean the worst. According to KPHO, the following five situations point toward normal, age-related memory loss.

1. Lapses Don’t Interfere With Everyday Life

Slowed recall of information from time to time is normal — erverybody forgets stuff. What’s not normal is when memory impairment interferes with your ability to get through the day.

2. You See an Improvement After ‘Brain Training’

Dementia is not a problem of retrieving old memories so much as it is is an inability to form new ones. If you can still learn new things, you’re still forming new memories.

3. You’ve Just Started A New Medication

Drug side effects are one of the more common causes of memory trouble.

4. Nobody Else Seems To Notice Anything’s Amiss

Usually, there’s a lot of family friction around the kind of memory loss that predates a diagnosis — arguments over who neglected to do something, missed appointments, or forgotten messages.

5. You’re Forgetful When Stressed, Sleep Deprived or Multitasking

A stressed brain is not the same thing as a demented brain.

For the entire article go toKPHO.com

Too little of one type of cholesterol has been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists studied more than 3,500 civil servants to investigate how levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol were associated with memory. HDL cholesterol can influence the formation of the beta-amyloid “plaques” that are a distinctive feature in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

Higher levels of HDL are also believed to protect against damage to blood supply caused by the narrowing of the arteries.

After the five-year study period, the researchers found that people with low levels of HDL were 53 percent more likely to suffer memory loss than people with the highest levels of HDL.

Those with impaired memory are at an increased risk of developing dementia later in life.

Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and?Vascular Biol. 2008 Aug;28(8)

High blood pressure is defined as a reading equal to or higher than 140/90 or taking medication for high blood pressure. According to research published in the Aug. 25 print issue of Neurology; high blood pressure is linked to memory problems in people over 45.

The study found that people with high diastolic blood pressure, which is the bottom number of a blood pressure reading, were more likely to have cognitive impairment, or problems with their memory and thinking skills, than people with normal diastolic readings.

For every 10 point increase in the reading, a person?s risk for cognitive problems was 7 percent higher. The results were adjusting for other factors that could affect cognitive abilities like age, smoking status, exercise level, education, diabetes, or high cholesterol.

The study involved nearly 20,000 people 45 and older across the country that participated in the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke Study and had never had a stroke or mini-stroke. A total of 1,505 of the participants, or 7.6 percent, had cognitive problems, and 9,844, or 49.6 percent, were taking medication for high blood pressure.

“It’s possible that by preventing or treating high blood pressure, we could potentially prevent cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia,” said Dr. Georgios Tsivgoulis of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one of the study authors.

Newsmax.com Health Alerts 10/25/09