11 Surprising Factors That Mess With Your Memory

September 18, 2014

---

By Dr. Mercola

Fear of losing your mind is a pervasive, fear. Among Americans, the notion of losing mental capacity evokes twice as much fear as losing physical ability, and 60 percent of US adults say they are very or somewhat worried about memory loss.¹
The good news is that your brain is a dynamic organ, constantly adapting and changing, for better or for worse. Many daily activities such as, lack of sleep can seriously interfere  with your memory the next day.
On the other hand, a healthy lifestyle will support your brain health and even encourage your brain to grow new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis or neuroplasticity.
Your brain's hippocampus, i.e. the memory center, is especially able to grow new cells and it's now known that your hippocampus regenerates throughout your entire lifetime (even into your 90s), provided you give it the tools to do so.
Many of the most powerful interventions for memory are also the simplest. So if you'd like to boost your memory, and protect it against negative changes, keep reading. The 11 factors that follow, as reported by TIME,² all have the potential to mess with your memory (some in a good way and others a bad way).

11 Surprising Factors That Affect Your Memory

1. Thyroid Problems

Although your thyroid doesn't have a specific role in your brain, memory problems are a hallmark characteristic of thyroid disease. High or low thyroid levels (hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism) may lead to difficulty with memory and concentration. If you suspect you have thyroid trouble, please read these natural protocols for addressing thyroid dysfunction.

2. Menopause

Hot flashes and insomnia are common during menopause, and both can impair your sleep and contribute to memory loss. This is temporary and should improve when your menopause symptoms subside (try thesesimple solutions for stopping hot flashes).

3. Lack of Sleep

The process of brain growth, or neuroplasticity, is believed to underlie your brain's capacity to control behavior, including learning and memory. However, sleep and sleep loss modify the expression of several genes and gene products that may be important for synaptic plasticity.
Furthermore, certain forms of long-term potentiation, a neural process associated with the laying down of learning and memory, can be elicited in sleep, suggesting synaptic connections are strengthened while you slumber.
Among adults, a mid-day nap has even been found to dramatically boost and restore brainpower.³ Most adults need about eight hours of sleep a night; if you wake up feeling fatigued or fall asleep easily during the day, you probably need more sleep. You can find 33 tips to help you get the shut-eye you need here.

4. Anxiety and Depression

Increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol brought on by anxiety and depression causes your brain cells to lose synapses (which connect brain cells). This, in turn, makes it more difficult to form and retrieve memories. Allen Towfigh, MD, medical director of New York Neurology & Sleep Medicine, told TIME:⁴

"We don't understand the exact link, but strong evidence indicates depression, anxiety, and bipolar disease disrupts the neural circuitry involved in developing and retrieving memories…
The severity of the memory loss often mirrors the severity of the mood disorder—severe depression brings about equally severe memory loss."

5. Certain Medications

Many prescription drugs interfere with your memory function. This includes anxiety medications (Xanax, Valium, and Ativan), which hinder your brain's ability to transfer short-term memories to long-term "storage."
Others include tricyclic antidepressants, statin drugs, beta-blockers, narcotic painkillers, incontinence drugs, sleep aids, and antihistamines (such as Benadryl).

6. Smoking

Smoking impairs the blood supply to your brain, leading to memory lapses. Studies also show that smokers have a more rapid decline in brain function, including memory, than non-smokers, while smoking leads to the accumulation of abnormal proteins in your brain that interfere with processing and relaying information.⁵

7. Stress

An animal study revealed that higher levels of stress hormones can speed up short-term memory loss in older adults.⁶ The findings indicate that how your body responds to stress may be a factor that influences how your brain ages over time. Previous research has also linked chronic stress with working memory impairment.⁷
My favorite tool for stress management is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It's an energy psychology tool that can help reprogram your body's reactions to everyday stress, thereby reducing your chances of developing adverse health effects.

8. A Higher "Infectious Burden"

People exposed to more germs, such as the cold sore virus (herpes simplex type 1), scored 25 percent lower on cognitive tests than those with a lower "infectious burden."⁸ Researchers concluded that past infections may contribute to cognitive impairment, perhaps due to damage to your blood vessels.

9. Green Tea

If you want to boost your memory, drink more high-quality green tea. In a study of 12 healthy volunteers, those who received a beverage containing 27.5 grams of green tea extract showed increased connectivity between the parietal and frontal cortex of the brain compared to those who drank a non-green tea beverage.⁹
The increased activity was correlated with improved performance on working memory tasks, and the researchers believe the results suggest green tea may be useful for treating cognitive impairments, including dementia.

10. Exercise

Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections, and protecting them from damage. During exercise nerve cells release proteins known as neurotrophic factors. One in particular, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health, and directly benefits cognitive functions, including learning.
A 2010 study on primates published in Neuroscience also revealed that regular exercise not only improved blood flow to the brain, but also helped the monkeys learn new tasks twice as quickly as non-exercising monkeys. This is a benefit the researchers believe would hold true for people as well.¹⁰
In a separate one year-long study, individuals who engaged in exercise were actually growing and expanding the brain's memory center 1 percent to 2 percent per year, where typically that center would have continued to decline in size. To get the most out of your workouts, I recommend a comprehensive program that includes high-intensity interval exercise, strength training, stretching, and core work, along with regular intermittent movement.

11. Vitamin B12

B vitamins including vitamin B12 may slow brain shrinkage by as much as seven-fold in brain regions specifically known to be most impacted by Alzheimer's disease. In one study, participants taking high doses of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 had blood levels of homocysteine that were lowered as was the associated brain shrinkage – by up to 90 percent. The researchers noted:¹¹

"…B vitamins lower homocysteine, which directly leads to a decrease in GM [gray matter] atrophy, thereby slowing cognitive decline. Our results show that B-vitamin supplementation can slow the atrophy of specific brain regions that are a key component of the AD [Alzheimer's disease] process and that are associated with cognitive decline."

This makes a strong case for ensuring your diet includes plenty of healthful B-vitamin sources, such as meat, poultry, eggs, dairy products, and wild-caught fish. Leafy green vegetables, beans, and peas also provide some B vitamins, but if you eat an all vegetarian or vegan diet, vitamin B12 is one of the nutrients your body is most likely deficient in. Also, when you get older, the lining of your stomach gradually loses its ability to produce hydrochloric acid, which releases vitamin B12 from your food. If you're over 50, it's safe to assume you are not absorbing vitamin B12 at an optimal level and may be at risk of deficiency.
Because vitamin B12 is the largest vitamin molecule known, it is not easily absorbed from most oral supplements. Injections or a sublingual (under your tongue) spray work far better, as they allow the large B12 molecule to be absorbed directly into your bloodstream.

Three More Little-Known Tips to Supercharge Your Memory

If you're serious about improving your memory and your cognitive function, you'll also want to know about these three important variables for brain health.
Vitamin D

Activated vitamin D receptors increase nerve growth in your brain, and researchers have also located metabolic pathways for vitamin D in the hippocampus and cerebellum of the brain, areas that are involved in planning, processing of information, and the formation of new memories. In older adults, research has shown that low vitamin D levels are associated with poorer brain function, and increasing levels may help keep older adults mentally fit. Appropriate sun exposure is all it takes to keep your levels where they need to be for healthy brain function. If this is not an option, a safe tanning bed is the next best alternative, followed by a vitamin D3 supplement.

Intermittent Fasting

Your ancient ancestors never had access to food 24/7 so your genes are optimized for periods of feast and fasting. Problem is most of us are in 24 hour feast mode.  Intermittent fasting can help your body to "reset" itself and start to burn fat instead of sugar. Further, it will help you to reduce your overall calorie consumption, which promotes brain cell growth and connectivity.
As part of a healthy lifestyle, however, I prefer an intermittent fasting schedule that simply calls for limiting your eating to a narrower window of time each day. By restricting your eating to a 6-8 hour window, you effectively fast 16-18 hours each day. To learn more, please see this previous intermittent fasting article.

Gut Health

Your gut is your "second brain," and your gut bacteria transmits information to your brain via the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain stem into your enteric nervous system (the nervous system of your gastrointestinal tract). There is a close connection between abnormal gut flora and abnormal brain development, and just as you have neurons in your brain, you also have neurons in your gut -- including neurons that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, which is also found in your brain and is linked to mood.
Quite simply, your gut health can impact your brain function, psyche, and behavior, as they are interconnected and interdependent in a number of different ways. In addition to avoiding sugar, one of the best ways to support gut health is to consume beneficial bacteria. You can use a probiotic supplement for this, but I'm particularly fond of using fermented vegetables, because they can deliver extraordinarily high levels of beneficial bacteria. Most people aren't aware that in a healthy serving of sauerkraut – two to three ounces or so – you're getting the equivalent of nearly 100 capsules of the highest-potency probiotic you can buy. It's clearly one of the most cost-effective alternatives.

And Remember the Most Important Factor of All... Your Diet

The foods you eat – and don't eat – play a crucial role in your memory. Fresh vegetables are essential, as are healthy fats and avoiding sugar and grain carbohydrates. You can find detailed information about nine foods for brainpower here. For instance, curry, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and walnuts contain antioxidants and other compounds that protect your brain health and may even stimulate the production of new brain cells. Increasing your animal-based omega-3 fat intake and reducing consumption of damaged omega-6 fats (think processed vegetable oils) in order to balance your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is also important.
I prefer krill oil to fish oil, as krill oil also contains astaxanthin, which not only protects the omega-3 fats from oxidation but also is particularly to support brain health. Coconut oil is another healthful fat for brain function. According to research by Dr. Mary Newport, just over two tablespoons of coconut oil (about 35 ml or 7 level teaspoons) would supply you with the equivalent of 20 grams of medium-chain triglycerides (MCT), which is indicated as either a preventative measure against degenerative neurological diseases or as a treatment for an already established case.

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/18/11-factors-affect-memory.aspx?x_cid=20150316_tweet_11-factors-affect-memory_twitterdoc

M.S In Construction

Construction is the field with scope right now, every city and country is developing and for this purpose it needs construction to build new buildings and departments. Construction is quite wide field and it needs designers as well as builders. This field is bringing advancement in the field, new technologies and designs for the development of new building and to make the construction setup strong. For this industry there must be knowledge of finance, entrepreneur skills and technical things. Business plan and leadership qualities are the most required abilities in order to do construction. Now students are coming towards this field and studying about advance developments in construction industry. 

Students are studying abroad for the M.S in the construction industry to bring new developments and ideas in this field, and to open new opportunities for the next generation. The course in M.S construction will teach you about the handling of multiple task, how to schedule the finance and to make new strategies. In this study they can learn about the safety and prevention control, new technologies, project planning and how to make good relationships with labor to encourage them for their work.The M.S in construction industry will basically teach students about the management.To maintain the high standards of the education regarding construction industry there must be high faculty staff to help student to manage the skills they need to manage their job. Students will get new ideas during this education and will know about the different aspect of the field. By sharing different ideas and by making friendly relationship with the labor they will bring new developments to the field. By building correct strategies in this field new ideas and development will be in the construction field and as new comers will come in this field, this industry will be more strong.

Jason Geschwind 

Finance For The Construction Development

Finance is the life of the construction and development industry, to give hand to industry and to help them in finance for building the new building and to make the industry strong. Every industry need financing to establish themselves and to produce new projects for development. Many companies are working to give finance in order to build new projects and to make their profit as well. This work needs powerful resources and reliable firms to work with. Some of the laws have been generated to have finance. People now have enough awareness that how to manage the finance and how to resolve the issue at the time of taking finance from some firm.

Banks do work for the major projects no matter how much they need to buy, they give loan by guessing the approximate value of the project and after completing all the paper work they give loan to the company for development. For commercial property types there are number of types of loans and it depends upon the project and time period they need to return the finance back

1. Construction and Re habilitation loan: In this kind of loan company can have loan for the commercial properties and all the major and small companies may have loan for the development of new projects. This kind of finance is usually short term and within the specific time company need to return back finance to the bank.

2. Structural: This type of loan covers the broad properties and gives finance solution on the balance sheet to let the client understand about the terms.

3. Special Finance: This finance is for the new constructions and for the development of the home and healthcare projects. These are for the residential and apartment finance. These kind of loans are special and for multi-purpose.

Jason Geschwind

Right Assisted living Services | Jason Geschwind

A residential option for elders and senior while making themselves entertain in their daily routine, like cooking meals, making appointments to different locations, going to bathroom at different intervals as in the middle of nights, keeping house. An assisted living strategy, is a great choice when you live lonely, when you need more personal care like in retirement age and better treatment than you were at home. Simply it is stated as nursing treatment at your living place. Assisted living facility offers you a safety and security for 24-hours and provide you all kinds of support. Whether it will be day or night, help is just one call away, however, independence will be encouraged. A Good facility will make perfect relationship and accommodates your all weaknesses and disabilities.


How to decide, an assisted facility will be right decision for us?

Some of the questions that will spark in your mind when you are switching your decision to assisted living facility.:

Will this system give you more help that you were getting from your family and friends?
This question will come first because due to that activities of daily life will get stressful and overwhelmed. If family and your friends are not bridging the gap of your requirement, then it will definitely a good idea to switch.

Will you feel lonely, as you were feeling at your place earlier?
Having fresh and active social life always be very beneficial for happy life and great health. When you get alone for much of the time , this will lead to producing a depression in your life. Social aspects of assisted living have a great benefit on daily life, the best part is that community environment will produce new and better friends.

Will that place be safe for you?
Your mobility will be difficult wherever you are switching, so it must be very safe in these industries to switch.

Will transportation make an issue while switches places?
Perhaps, it will be very difficult to travel or doing daily routine works that needs transportation, Assisted Living Industries also offers you transportation facility.

 Jason Geschwind

When is it time that you are receiving too much healthcare?

Have you ever heard people debating about how much health care a patient should be allowed to receive?  This has been an ongoing debate for some time now.  There are some patients who people would claim that there may be an excessive amount of time spent on their medical treatment.

Granted some people are very seriously ill and may require more medical care than others.  However there comes a point in time where some of the medical care becomes questionable.

There will always be those patients who receive an endless amount of medical tests.  Now, the real question to ask is whether or not those medical tests are absolutely necessary. 

If tests are repeatedly being done on a patient without a definite answer from the tests.  Medically, it would make sense that you should keep doing tests to help determine what illness is causing problems for the patient.

Procedures are another main concern when it comes to patients being over serviced.  Surgery after surgery, or any small procedure can become very costly for both the medical facility and the patient. 

If a procedure is not absolutely necessary there should be a limit on whether or not to conduct another procedure on that patient.  The problem that arises when some patients are being over served is that that are other sick patients who are not getting the necessary time spent on their illness because all the medical staff is waiting on other patients who may be receiving care more often.

This is a problem because other patients need procedures and or appointments to consult their illnesses with a doctor.  However, doctors are becoming unavailable to them because they are so busy with the over treatment of the other patients. 

Some of the patients who have yet had a formal diagnosis from a doctor may be at a higher risk than the patients who are known to be very ill.  The patients who are lacking the necessary care may have symptoms of cancer or a disease but cannot get to a doctor fast enough to get it checked out. 

Doctors who are waiting longer than they should be on other ill patients could be causing more damage than they think.  If there are patients who are not living independently and have chosen to live at assisted livings, they may have a better advantage than those living at home independently. 

The reason is because these patients have other medical staffing that could at least provide a general idea of what may be going on with their bodies.  They will then need to schedule an appointment with a doctor to confirm a diagnosis.

Jason Geschwind

Buying a house? What to look for? Decisions, Decisions!!

Making the decision to purchase a new home can be extremely challenging and can come with a lot of consequences.  This could be one of the biggest decisions you will have to make in your lifetime. 

As with any decision there are both benefits and expenses that come along with it.  There are a few things that you could look into when trying to make this decision for you and or your family. 

The first thing that may come to your mind is how you are going to finance your new home.  There are options to pay cash right up front or take out a loan. 

The loan could be through your bank or the home owner development may have their own finance department that you can go through.  Either way you will need to do your own research on the side to make sure that you are using the best financial option for you.

You will need to discuss  this  with  your home owner’s development to find out their best options and then contact your bank to see what they would be willing to give you for a loan.  Once you determine how much you could get approved for on your loan then that is when you can begin your house hunting process.

If you chose to pay for your house for cash that could be a little less stressful for you because you know you have the amount of money that you want to spend on your new home so you will be getting a new home and still having no debt.

When you begin the house hunting process the most important thing to take note of is the location.  Not only does the location matter for you but for the value of the home.  You may have a beautiful home but if it is in a location with a lot of crime, or the surrounding homes have a much lower value that will then decrease the value of your home as well. 

This will matter when it comes time for you and your family to move and you are wanting to sell your house.  There are more things that go into the value of your home than just the appearance

Jason Geschwind

Animal Assisted Therapy

There is one particular type of therapy that majority of the population forgets about.  This  type of therapy is pet therapy.  Pets have the ability to make the human race feel a sense of happiness  that they may not be able to find anywhere else.

If you grew up with pets of your own you may know exactly what we are talking about.  Associating humans with pets can increase the chemical chain of reactions to their brains. 

Assisted living often allow pets to be brought into their facility for occasional pet therapy.  The residents and staff may appear to love this, however it is doing much deeper therapy for each individual. 

According to research, if humans have approximately fifteen minutes of association with a pet then the signals that are sent to their brains with ignite the feel-good hormone.  This hormone is commonly referred to as serotonin.

When the production of this hormone is increases then the body’s internal functions are altered.  This means that the individuals who are interacting with the pet will experience lower heart rates, a stress relief and their blood pressure levels will decrease. 

There are also long term effects that can have a major impact on the health of the individuals.  The humans will show a lasting effect of a lower cholesterol level as well as making their overall mood happy.

 In return, if you are in a positively happy mood then this lowers your chances of becoming depressed or suffering from anxiety.  When a body is experiencing depression, anxiety, or stress your body can become more prone to heart complications or strokes. 

If humans suffering from any of these disorders receives regular pet therapy their chances will likely decrease over time.  In the long run it could prevent them from any further disorders happening in the future. 

Assisted living facilities will allow pet therapy for these various reasons.  Just like any other public facility, the pets that are brought in for the therapy sessions are required to be up to date on shots and well behaved animals.

Jason Geschwind