The injury that sleep apnea causes can show up as a variety of memory loss symptoms, he adds. “The brain is stressed by the oxygen disruption, so people wake up,” he says. One explanation is that for people with sleep apnea, oxygen delivery to the brain is interrupted several hundred times during the night, explains Lyketsos. This type of memory includes being able to remember directions and where you put things, like your keys, Dr. When not treated, sleep apnea affects spatial navigational memory, found a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2021. In a study published in May 2022 in the Journal of Sleep Research, people with insomnia and sleep apnea were less likely to perform well on assessments designed to measure memory, compared with people without those conditions. Lack of sleep causes fatigue, which, in turn, can lead to brain fog and memory problems, it says. Sleep problems, including insomnia, or the chronic inability to fall or stay asleep, as well as sleep apnea, a disorder that causes breathing to stop briefly and frequently throughout the night, have been linked with memory loss and dementia, according to Harvard Medical School. However, a mood disorder such as depression may improve with medication and counseling, notes the National Institute on Aging. Untreated chronic stress can lead to depression, which could also affect brain function, including some measures of memory, according to a study published in May 2022 in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Usually, easing stress can improve memory, he says. This is particularly common among people who may be juggling home and work responsibilities and are not sleeping well. Significant stress or anxiety can lead to problems with attention and memory, says Constantine Lyketsos, MD, director of the Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine and professor and chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview. In some cases, one or more of the following issues could be playing a role: 1. Discussing your symptoms and taking various tests, including possibly an MRI, may help your doctor determine what is affecting your memory, Gale says. Talk with your doctor about concerns you may have about your memory, so that the condition responsible for your symptoms can be addressed. For example, it’s common for people to still have the capacity to learn and store information, but because of their overloaded mental resources at this time of their life, they have trouble doing it well,” Dr. “When you drill down and find out what’s actually happening with someone’s mental functions, you can reassure them. “Patients might experience memory loss and describe their symptoms similarly, but a doctor can tease apart what parts of the brain are affected,” says Seth Gale, MD, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. And when the underlying cause is treated, the memory problems often improve as well. Memory lapses can happen at any age and for a number of reasons. For many people in middle age or older, simple acts of forgetfulness like these are scary because they raise the specter of Alzheimer’s disease.īut Alzheimer’s is not the only health problem that can lead to forgetfulness, says the National Institute on Aging. If caused by other factors, tackling the factors help to improve memory.You can’t find your keys, or perhaps you forgot an appointment. If it is caused by a disease, treatment for the disease cannot recover lost memory, but can prevent further loss. Treatment of memory loss depends on the cause. Lack of proper and complete sleep can also cause memory loss. Some diseases like Alzheimer’s Syndrome, Dementia, etc. Improper nutrition, as well as some medications can cause memory loss. Stress and depression can lead to memory loss. A stroke interrupts blood supply to an area of the brain, stopping oxygen and nutrient supply leading to memory loss. Excessive smoking reduces oxygen supply to the brain leading to neuron death and loss of memory. Drinking excessive alcohol can damage the neurons of the brain leading to memory loss. It may be caused by accidental trauma to the head which damages the brain. Memory loss may be caused by a variety of factors. It may be mild as occasionally forgetting names or misplacing small things, or severe like forgetting long periods of time or simple day to day activities like tying shoelaces. Memory loss is the condition where a patient is unable to recall the long term, short term, or both types of memories.
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