Stressed out? No wonder you can’t remember…
I have a friend on Twitter who coined the phrase “can’t remember shit.” This phrase greets me throughout the day because I am constantly forgetting even the simplest things. Why did I enter this room? What was I going to look up? How did I get here? Why can’t I focus? And lists? Fuggedaboutit – they don’t do squat; even when I have them, I forget.
I blame my memory and focus problems on hormones all the time. However, if this were true, then the addition of hormones, in particular estrogen, would balance out the forgetting and boost my attention and focus, right?
Hence, I was intrigued when I ran across a small study in Menopause looking at cognition and stress, which seemed to back an earlier contention that stress plays a huge part in recall ability in menopausal women.
In this rather small trial, 22 postmenopausal women (50 to 83 years) took either placebo or an estrogen tablet (1 mg estradiol daily for one month and then 2 mg daily for two months). After three months, they were asked to ingest a substance that depleted certain compounds (called monoamines) that the body manufactures and uses to stabilize mood, perform a mildly stressful test, and then undergo a series of tests on stress levels, mood, anxiety and cognition.
It appears that at least in this small group of women, taken estrogen was actually linked with poorer cognition following a stressful event, including the ability to recall words and slower reaction time. Because this occurred independently of the depletion of mood compounds or negative mood, the researchers say that the effect of estrogen, which has been shown in some studies to improve cognition, is not as straightforward as previously believed. What’s more, the significant increase in stress and stress reactions during menopause may actually interfere with estrogen benefits in so far as memory and recall go.
Our lives are increasingly busier, especially now that we can be connected 24/7. Personally, I can’t even get a work out into my day without some sort of interruption. That’s why it’s so important to figure out how hormones interact with stress, so that we can make informed decisions — not only about menopausal decisions — but also about general life decisions.
Look, memory recall and attention are undoubtedly linked to aging, at least to some extent. But now? Stress may be playing a role in how hormones impact our reactions, focus and attention span, and memory. So the next time you can’t remember shit? Maybe a few deep breaths can help.
No wonder!
Read MoreWant your brain back? How about an exercise in sustainability? Andrea Learned explains…
Remember your Brain on Midlife? Perhaps not! But my pal Andrea Learned wrote a wonderful piece on her blog the other day that I’m stealing. (Well, not really stealing since Andrea, god bless her, has granted me permission to repost it on Flashfree). The theme is sustainability and the gist, that we might be able to boost our midlife brains and preserve all those precious bits of information that seem to swirl around endlessly and never land in the same place. Thanks for the post Andrea!
As a mid-40-something myself, I took heart in an interview Terry Gross did with author Barbara Strauch on NPR’s Fresh Air the other day. In talking about her new book, The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, Strauch mentioned a few brain science backed facts that bode well especially for those of us “middle-agers” entering into this whole new world of sustainability. It also made me think we have but one more case to make for any business that is lagging in their efforts on that front.
While I have not yet read the book, following are two points Strauch made in that interview, and why I think there may be sustainability implications:
1) Bi-lateralization. Younger people tend to use one side of their brain to learn and another to recall. But, as people age, their brains are more likely to use both sides of the brain to do both tasks. Along similar lines, research into how women make purchasing decisions, too, cite a more “holistic” process of integrating the linear (left hemisphere thinking) with the relational (right hemisphere thinking). The sustainability angle? To think and engage with sustainability, you’ve got to be able to get your brain thinking more bi-laterally.
2) Exercising your frontal cortex. One way to keep your brain highly functioning is to push it, by doing such things as: “creating a disorienting dilemma,” confronting ideas that are different from your own, or, talking with people with whom you disagree. All of these “challenges” sharpen your brain. The sustainability angle? For a lot of business types (and consumers, as well), thinking sustainably is indeed a “disorienting dilemma.”
The connections my own perhaps overly active brain made were these:
– While we’ve got to love what the younger generations bring to the table in terms of passion and enthusiasm for sustainability, we middle-agers may have brains that predispose us to better see all sides of the story and the mission. Like the younger generations, we are very excited about green for green’s sake and want it to happen NOW. However, we have the more holistic view that helps us step back and possibly make compromises in order to get to that longer term sustainable ideal. We are more allowing of the long journey, because we’ve been on it longer.
– It isn’t just me and my marketing to women background. It makes sense that the way women more naturally think aligns with how we sustainability-advocates would like all business people to start to think – more holistically and more EVERY stakeholder-aware. What can we all learn from that realization to move sustainability forward? I believe that women’s buying ways are a great filter both for understanding the sustainably-minded consumer and for training business brains to integrate sustainable practices.
– Finally, being IN the sustainability field is great exercise for our brains! It automatically puts us in disagreement with a whole host of conventional business thinkers. It forces us to learn new things almost moment to moment. If we’ve got long experience in business done the old way, sustainability can be incredibly disorienting . If all the other fascinating ideas and solutions that come from thinking sustainably weren’t enough, we can selfishly and simply give our own brains major frontal cortex exercise! (Maybe Barbara Strauch will write her next book about the amazing ways our brains end up changing culture?)
Needless to say, those of you who have been reading my work for years know that my throwing out something new to ponder is par for the course. I wonder if my brain knew I needed to get into sustainability long before I actually acknowledged it? Anyway – your counterintuitive “Learned On” lesson for the day is that middle age may well help you engage with and understand sustainability better. Now, go out and use that oh-so wise brain to make your company smarter too!
Read MoreWednesday Bubble: this is your brain on midlife
Got brain? If you still have yours’, maybe you’ve seen mine also.
I’ve noticed that as the days and weeks pass, my recall seems to be declining. I remain uncertain as to the cause – is it overload, life or declining hormones? Has middle age truly taken my brain? If so, I’ve got a small but important request for the universal goddesses: I’d like it back.
Just last week I received an important notice from the New York State Division of Taxation with approval to dissolve my Corporation. Any of you who know me or know of my former company know that this has been a drawn-out and arduous process. But I got the letter! And permission for closure. The thing is…I lost it.
Perhaps it’s in the black hole of all things Liz, amongst single earrings, lone socks and that piece of family jewelry that I’ve been looking for for over a year now. Maybe I threw it out; I have a genetic disease that I refer to as ‘anti-hoarder syndrome or AHS,’ as in, “I must discard any bit of clutter that enters my humble abode.” (My father has this illness so it resonates deeply with me, irritatingly so I might add.) Or maybe, it’s sitting in that pile that I’ve gone through about 15 times and will bare its ugly head once I receive its replacement.
If you’re wondering what this has to do with bubbles or bursting illusions, well I’d like to take a stab at one that’s been bothering me for some time now; memory in midlife (aka, your brain on midlife). Researchers who specialize in women’s health and menopause have been consistent in their attempts to decipher the ever-present mind meltdown, attributing it to declining testosterone, a loss of the brain’s gray matter or as I suspect, stress. Yet, regardless of its cause, I am becoming increasingly aware of its presence and the fact that its become a part of who I am.
Whether I am entering a room with a mission or surfing the web, I seem to constantly arrive without my original purpose and then stand (or sit) there desperately seeking the key as to why I went there in the first place. Typically, that key reappears during inopportune times when the goal has lost its relevance, or when I am nowhere near a computer or a room to complete the task.
This is my brain on midlife. Forgetful, spacey, devoid of information. A blank bubble lingering above my head.
Truly, if you run across it, can you send it home?
Read MoreBattle of the middle-aged bulge: pick your poison
That age old battle of the bulge just got more challenging.. Researchers are saying that middle-aged women who store fat around their mid section are twice as likely as their peers to develop dementia in old age. Yikes! More reason than ever to lose that belly fat, right?
Starting in 1960, researchers looked healthy and lifestyle risk factors in 1,462 women and then at various intervals for 32 years. They found that women who were broader around the waist than the hips by the time they reached middle-aged more than twice the odds of developing dementia if they lived beyond 70 years. However, a higher body-mass index did not infer a similar risk.
Whether it’s associated with aging, testosterone or declining physical activity, weight gain around the midsection has been linked with the metabolic syndrome, which increases your risk for heart attack and stroke.
So, we’re left with a choice – heart attack, stroke or losing our minds….Or, better yet, move your body. Exercise, start eating healthier and being more mindful of what’s going in and what you are putting out. Granted, we may not be able to fight the inevitable but we can at least try to stave it off or control it as much as possible. The bulge around the middle is the hardest area to attack. But it’s not impossible.
I’d love to get some fitness experts to weigh in on this. Anyone?
Read MoreWednesday Bubble: What did I forget/hear/see/say…
If you’re anything like me, you are starting to forget things. Things you need to do, why you walk into rooms, shopping lists, things you said, the whole nine yards. For me, it’s become the norm, not the exception and while I spend a lot of time making jokes about it, it also drives me crazy.
Yet, today’s Bubble is not one that I’m likely to forget. I’d like to think of it as one part inspiration and one part WTF? And it leaves me with a whole lot of questions to boot.
Study findings suggest that gaining weight during menopause may increase the risk for loss of gray matter. Gray matter refers to the cortex of the brain, which contains nerve cells. It is involved in muscle control, sensory perception (seeing/hearing), emotions, speech and finally, memory.
In this study, which was published in the online edition of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, researchers evaluated brain imaging data, demographic information (height, weight) and behavioral measures (perceived psychiatric stress) obtained from 48 healthy postmenopausal women. Data were collected over a 20-year period.
The findings showed a unique association between increase in body weight during the transition from peri- to post-menopause (as measured by body mass index or BMI) and a 22% reduction in grey matter volume. These findings occurred in women who were otherwise healthy, had no history of heart disease or psychiatric illness and did not meet the threshold for obesity (>30 BMI). All women had also undergone natural menopause.
The researchers suggest that weight gain during menopause is a “highly modifiable risk factor” that may help to prevent or slow “potential alterations in brain function that are important to quality of life.”
I’ve written previous posts on cognitive issues during menopause, whether they be linked with life stressors, HRT or aging. Now it seems that researchers are telling us that weight gain may also be a risk factor.
Less clear is how much weight gain and what we should do about it. In general one solution to combating weight gain in midlife is restraint. Coupled with exercise, this may just be the magic formula. In the meantime, I think that we need a few more studies to take a closer look at brain matter changes in midlife.
What do you think?
I just forgot why I’m asking you that…!
Read MoreA B C…
Study results reported in the May 26 issue of Neurology suggests that the menopause transition negatively affects women’s ability to learn.
Researchers evaluated 2,362 women between the ages of 42 and 52 for verbal memory, working memory and the speed at which they proceesed information. All study participants were tested through the four stages of the menopause transition:
- premenopause (no change in menstrual periods)
- early perimenopause (menstrual irregularity, no gaps in period for 3 months)
- late perimenopause (having no period for 3 to 11 months)
- postmenopause (no period for 12 months)
The results showed improvements in processing speed during pre- and early perimenopause and postmenopause that were 28% larger compared to those in late perimenopause. Improvements in verbal memory were 29% larger in permenopause than in early or late perimenopause, and and become 36% larger compared with postmenopause.
The researchers said that it appears that during the late and early menopause, women do not learn as well as they do during other stages. What’s more, these findings support prior self-reports that suggest that as many as 60% of women have memory problems during the menopause transition. (Notably, there have been some studies that suggest that this is a fallacy.) The study authors add that this lapse in learning ability tends to be temporary and returns during the postmenopause stage. They also point to findings that show that taking estrogen or progesterone before menopause may help to improve verbal memory or processing speed but this effect can be reversed if hormones are taken after the final menstrual period.
This is an interesting study and the findings seem to jive with personal experience, especially with regards to what sometimes appears like a diminishing abilty to process information. It makes me wonder if taking classes as I go through menopause is a good idea or not! And it equally makes me question the endless havoc that hormones appear to take on our bodies and our minds.
What about you? I’d love to hear your experiences and where you are in the transition, that is, if you can remember to comment after reading this (!)
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