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Worried About Cognitive Decline? Study Offers an Indicator That May Help
People often incorrectly label simple slips of memory as impending dementia, but there are diagnostic things that we need to know.
Where did you put your keys? Whose birthday is coming up? What’s that movie star’s name? All these questions we can easily and quickly answer, except when we can’t, and then it’s what my patient asked, “Doc, do you think I’m getting “old timer’s disease?” Well, I knew he meant Alzheimer's, and, no, I didn’t think he was getting it, and too many people are jumping to conclusions when they have one of these slips of memory.
Do you know I sometimes can’t remember a friend's name when needed? Or that I once sat on a TV set with Bill O’Reilly for his show and I wanted to ask him a question, but I couldn’t remember that his name is “Bill?”
Know how I felt? I didn’t think it was Alzheimer’s because I’ve had this problem for my entire life. Despite having solid clues that I use, my clues still fail me, just like when I try to recall the name of a publishing company that published one of my books. I tell myself, “What do you do when you jump up?” The answer, of course, is "spring,” but it doesn’t always come so quickly.
But things like this, especially for anyone who's had it for their entire lives, don't mean that I or anyone…
