Make Time For Exercise
Exercising your body can help, too.
Physical activity can help improve your mood, ease symptoms of anxiety and depression, and boost overall brain health.
Try starting with something simple, like a 15-minute walk after meals, a weekend hike, or a walk along the beach.
Another benefit? Exercise can help tire you out, so you might fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. When you get better sleep, you might begin to notice anxiety symptoms, including memory loss, begin to ease.
Taking time to relax and wind down before getting into bed every night can also help improve the quality of your sleep.
Causes Of Memory Loss In Depression
No one knows exactly why depression appears to cause memory loss, but several theories have surfaced. In previous decades, it was thought that people with depression experienced memory impairment due to age, psychosis or because they weren’t motivated to remember . However, these theories have now been mostly abandoned due to greater understanding of the brain and the specificity of the cognitive deficits present in depression.
It is now understood that the disease of depression actually causes the memory impairment. With more modern study, it has been found that some of the parts of the brain associated with memory are physically impaired in depression. It is also known that parts of the brain shrink in those with depression and this likely leads to cognitive impairment, producing problems with memory recall.
Impairments in concentration and sustained attention likely also influence memory deficits.
It’s also important to realize that some medications used to treat depression may also have memory impairment as a side effect. Additionally, drug and alcohol abuse can cause or worsen memory recall.
Concussions And Head Injuries
Concussions and traumatic head injuries can cause short-term memory impairment, but some research has found that they can also increase the likelihood for the development of dementia over the years.
Be sure to take steps like wearing protective headgear and helmets when playing sports. And, if you do sustain a concussion, it’s important to let your head fully heal before returning to regular activities and participating in sports. Discuss any headaches and concentration difficulties after a head injury with your doctor.
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New Molecules Reverse Memory Loss Linked To Depression Aging
- Date:
- Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
- Summary:
- New therapeutic molecules show promise in reversing the memory loss linked to depression and aging. These molecules not only rapidly improve symptoms, but remarkably, also appear to renew the underlying brain impairments causing memory loss in preclinical models.
New therapeutic molecules developed at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health show promise in reversing the memory loss linked to depression and aging.
These molecules not only rapidly improve symptoms, but remarkably, also appear to renew the underlying brain impairments causing memory loss in preclinical models.
“Currently there are no medications to treat cognitive symptoms such as memory loss that occur in depression, other mental illnesses and aging,” says Dr. Etienne Sibille, Deputy Director of the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH and lead scientist on the study.
What’s unique and promising about these findings, in the face of many failures in drug development for mental illness, is that the compounds are highly targeted to activate the impaired brain receptors that are causing memory loss, he says.
If successful, the potential applications are broad. Not only is there a lack of treatment for cognitive deficits in mental illness, but the brain improvements suggest the molecules could help to prevent the memory loss at the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease, potentially delaying its onset.
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How Memory Loss Affects Our Life
Poor memory can affect our lives in all sorts of ways.
Staying on top of household jobs can be difficult. We might start cooking, get distracted, forget that weve left something on the hob and end up with a blackened pan to clean. We could start cleaning and forget where we put the cloth we were using. Our plants might go unwatered, keys get lost multiple times a week, and bins start to overflow as we keep forgetting to put them out for collection.
Beyond housework, we might start to forget things like taking our medication, going to appointments, doing vital a report for our boss, or paying bills on time.
Reading can be difficult because if we cant remember what weve just read then we have to re-read the same page again and again. This can make books inaccessible to us.
Staying in contact with people can be hard because we forget to reply to messages, forget to ring people back, and forget things that people say to us.
Memory loss can affect our work life, social life, relationships, finances, family and health.
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Depression Anxiety And Memory Loss
Living with Depression | byBlurt Team|
Memory loss is a symptom of anxiety and depression that we dont always hear about. Despite this, it can cause significant distress and have a huge impact on our lives. Understanding the link between our mental health and our memory can help us to create strategies that work for us, and to be more compassionate towards ourselves .
Depression And The Hippocampus
Researchers in 2015 concluded that people with depression had lower hippocampus volume a key brain area devoted to memory.
They found this effect in people with recurrent depressive episodes, but not first-time episodes. The effect was stronger in people with early onset depression .
The researchers also point out that studies have linked depression to changes in the size of your amygdala, a brain region that deals with emotion.
One theory to explain these depression-related cognitive changes is that stress-induced chemical reactions may lead to a loss of neurons the nerves that carry information in the brain and suppressed growth of new neurons.
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Different Types Of Memory
On a daily basis, we rely on a variety of types of memory. Here are brief descriptions of the different types of memory, how long they last, and the brain regions involved.
- Sensory memory: This lasts less than 1 second and is usually lost since it is not encoded. It is associated with the visual-sensory cortex in the parietal/occipital lobes of the brain.
- Short-term memory: This lasts less than 60 seconds, such as remembering a phone number, and involves the prefrontal cortex.
- Working memory: This lasts seconds to hours, such as cramming for an exam and is associated with the prefrontal cortex.
- Long-term memory: This lasts hours to months and involves the hippocampus. Long-term memories pass through the hippocampus then are stored in various regions throughout the brain. For example, visual cues are stored in the occipital lobes, sensory cues are stored in the parietal lobes, sounds are stored in the temporal lobes, and so on.
- Long-lasting memory: These memories last months to a lifetime and are processed in the hippocampus before being stored all over the brain.
Causes Of Anxiety Memory Loss
The main cause of memory loss is a hormone known as cortisol. It’s the hormone released during stress, which is why those with severe anxiety are more at risk for developing memory loss problems. Numerous studies have confirmed that cortisol contributes to memory loss, especially short term memory loss, because it is a toxin to the cells of the brain.
The longer you deal with anxiety, the more cortisol you’ll have in your system, and that means that you’re more likely to continue to suffer from memory loss in the future. But cortisol is not the only culprit. Other reasons for trouble remembering include:
Memory loss may be its own cause of anxiety. People are afraid of getting older and forgetting things, so when they forget anything they start to feel as though their minds are failing them.
All of these examples of memory loss are normal, and simply a part of dealing with anxiety. In order to overcome that memory loss, you need to do two things:
- Learn Memory Improvement Tricks
- Control Your Anxiety
Memory improvement tools are always important, and when you have anxiety they’re even more so. You should be focusing on new and interesting ways to keep your memory active.
Daily blogging is one useful way. Give yourself a personal recap of your day. You don’t need to go into great detail, but you should take relevant notes of things that you want to remember and then re-read those notes often in order to keep those memories alive.
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When Should You Get Help For Memory Problems
Are you not remembering things that happened recently? Perhaps forgetting conversations? Do you also lose things and have difficulty speaking or finding the right words?
No matter your age, if you have any concerns about your memory its best to speak to a medical professional, whether thats your GP or a memory specialist. Here at The London Psychiatry Centre, youll be seen by a psychiatrist who will assess your memory and ascertain if there are any psychological issues that may be affecting your brains ability to function and remember.
We are known for our thorough and multifaceted approach if we diagnose a condition affecting your memory youll have the full support of our mental health team which is comprised of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, physicians, nutritionists and more.
As A Care Worker How Can You Help
There are many conditions and circumstances where you may see signs and symptoms that may be confused with dementia. As a care worker, it is not your responsibility to try to diagnose the condition. However, as you may be the one person who sees the individual on a regular basis, you are well placed to notice any changes. Encouraging an older person to visit their GP on a regular basis can help them to maintain their general health and wellbeing.
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The Deeper Your Understanding Of Anxiety The Deeper Your Connection To What Is True Within Your Mind And Body
Anxiety is a mental and emotional condition that has adverse effects on both the body and the mind. The presence of anxiety causes abnormal chemical alterations in the brain as well as changes in hormone levels which can then subsequently trigger different issues like concentration difficulties and loss of memory.
Some of the major factors that are linked from anxiety to memory and concentration issues are mentioned below:
1. Increased production of stress hormones
Anxiety is known to trigger the flight or fight stress response in the body. This response exerts increased stress and workload on the body and may lead to abnormal effects on the functioning of the brain. Cortisol is a stress hormone which gets secreted in large quantities whenever an anxiety sufferer experiences an episode. Cortisol tends to adversely affect brain function and can cause recall issues and memory loss.
Experts are currently unaware of the manner in which cortisol causes memory and concentration problems, but research shows that anxiety sufferers are at greater risk of facing difficulties in creating memories or they have a higher tendency to forget life events and other memories over time.
Coping With Memory Loss
There isnt an overnight anxiety cure yet. Treating anxiety takes time. But there are plenty of things you can do to help your memory recover more quickly in the meantime.
For starters, there are plenty of mental exercises you can carry out to improve memory. There are also loads of foods available that nourish the synapses and nerves responsible for remembering.
Some of the best tips to accelerate taking back control of your memory include:
- Writing stuff down. It can be helpful to make notes of important stuff you want to remember. But its important to not get hypervigilant about this and let it spiral into an obsession.
- Spend time with friends and family. Spending time with loved ones makes you less anxious, in theory. So long as your family are people you feel safe with, being around them fora while could lower your anxiety levels and clear away some of that brain fog.
- Exercise. Studies have shown that physical exercise may benefit your cognitive processes and memory . Doing some sudoku and hitting the gym wont give you photographic recall, but they do make your brain better at storing and retrieving information.
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Reaching Out For Support
While mild anxiety symptoms might lift on their own, persistent anxiety generally wont improve without support from a trained mental health professional.
To find therapists in your area who specialize in anxiety, consult a therapist directory or try a quick Google search.
Interested in giving online therapy a try? Start with our recommendations for the top online therapy services.
Let your therapist know about all of your symptoms, not just memory loss. Make sure to let them know if memory problems dont improve with treatment.
Already receiving some kind of treatment for anxiety and still have symptoms? Its worth talking to a professional about other approaches.
Not all treatments work for everyone, and it may take time to find the most effective approach for you.
Some people benefit from therapy alone, while others find a combination of medication and therapy most effective.
How Does Depression Affect Memory
16 June 2015
Depression causes many unpleasant symptoms and memory loss is one of the lesser known of them. Find out why this happens and what you can do about it
If you are suffering from depression you probably expect to feel sad, hopeless or tearful. But finding it also affects your memory might come as a nasty surprise. Yet researchers are in agreement that depression can lead to memory loss, so why exactly does this happen?
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The Toll Of Anxiety And Stress On Memory
Similarly, anxiety and chronic stress have been associated with memory problems, according to research in Neurology and BMJ Open. Brain circuits involved in chronic anxiety and fear overlap those seen in Alzheimers disease. In addition, chronic stress shrinks volume in the hippocampus. One study in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that anxiety is inter-related and inseparable with loss of memory. The researchers suggested that anxiety is an early predictor of cognitive decline. Whats behind this strong link?
In general, anxiety requires a lot of mental horsepower and steals mental energy from the memory formation process. Spending so much time stressing about things means you may not have the brainpower to effectively process incoming information for storage as memories. For example, a 2008 study found that short-term, acute stress interferes with cell communication in the brains memory centers.
Because of this, it is critical that you learn to control anxiety and stress. Take note that brain SPECT imaging studies show that some anti-anxiety medications, such as benzodiazepines, are actually harmful to the brain. In fact, a 2019 review in the Journal of Clinical Neurology found that long-term use of these prescription drugs increases the risk of dementia by more than 50%. For better brain health, look for natural alternatives to anti-anxiety pills to calm anxiety and stress.
Does A Person With Dementia Know They Are Confused
In the earlier stages, memory loss and confusion may be mild. The person with dementia may be aware of and frustrated by the changes taking place, such as difficulty recalling recent events, making decisions or processing what was said by others. In the later stages, memory loss becomes far more severe.
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Research On Depression And Memory Loss
Almost 40% of people with depression report difficulty with cognitive function. One large meta-study on depression and memory found a significant association between depression and impaired memory.
Theres also evidence that depression distorts memories. Studies have shown that people with depression recall autobiographical events with a negatively skewed perspective. Plus, the same research shows that depression can make positive memories feel less accessible and impactful.
Memory changes can also occur as a response to very emotionally intense and impactful situations. You may have experienced this yourself. Many people who have endured a physical or emotional trauma can remember that powerful, historical event with unusual claritywhats referred to as a flashbulb memory.
Unlike what you may have seen on TV, comprehensive memory loss syndromes are very rare. However, you might notice brief or thematic memory gaps in relation to intensely distressing situations. In some cases, a person can disassociate due to trauma and forget key details of the moments of duress.
Can Depression Cause Memory Loss
Asked by Laura, via e-mail
My husband, age 39, was diagnosed with manic depression/bipolar disorder approximately two years ago. He suffers from recurrent bouts of depression and is currently in a depressive phase. He does not have very many manic phases at all. His short-term memory is getting progressively worse. Lately he cannot seem to remember how to get to places that he had just visited two or three days before. This has happened three times in the past week alone. Is there a correlation between recurrent bouts of depression and memory loss? I would question the medications as a factor, but he has not changed meds in many months and the episodes of memory loss have been in recent weeks. I would appreciate any information you can give me, as the primary caregiver you can imagine that this whole ordeal is very difficult.
Mental Health ExpertDr. Charles RaisonPsychiatrist,Emory University Medical School
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Depression And Risk Of Dementia
Most previous studies have examined late-life depression or depressive symptoms and risk of dementia, while a few studies have considered earlier-life depression. Given the variable nature of depression onset, the high occurrence of depression in young adulthood and middle age, and the long preclinical period of dementia, studying earlier-life depression may offer an opportunity to determine if depression is a risk factor of dementia, years before the syndrome starts. On the other hand, a significant relationship of late-life depression and dementia may allow for better study of depression as part of the prodromal stage of dementia. As such, studies focusing on both earlier- and late-life depression may provide complementary evidence.