Am I Losing My Mind?
A Doctor’s Funny and Informative Story About Forgetfulness
I thought I was losing my mind.
This happened several years ago, when I had a busy medical practice and two really little kids.
It was a holiday long weekend and I wasn’t on call, so I had a few free hours to myself.
What did I choose to do with my precious time? Being an overly practical working mother, the one thing that I had been really wanting to do was to search through all our hoarded coupon flyers, clip a bunch, and use them in a big shop.
So I gathered up all the colorful glossy booklets I’d been saving, spread them out on the kitchen table, and studied and clipped and snipped and organized.
Then I drove to the wholesale store and got down to shopping for all the pricey things we needed (that I had coupons for!) like baby diapers and formula and paper towels and toilet paper and contact lens solution and shampoo.
I loaded up the cart…and loaded… and loaded… until I was pulling that thing like I was coaxing a stubborn pack donkey to the checkout.
It was only well after I got home with my booty that I realized:
I had never given the goddamned coupons to the checkout lady.
How on earth could a highly educated professional forget something so simple? I almost started crying. Heck, I probably did cry… All that time and effort, wasted!
I was also genuinely concerned:
Am I losing my mind?
Then, I thought about my medical practice.
It was a pretty common occurrence that patients would come in to see me, also genuinely concerned that they were losing their minds.
They’d say things like:
“I went to a room to get something, but when I got there I forgot what it was I was going to get!”
Or:
“I went to the store, and I walked out without the one thing I went in to buy!”
And broadly speaking, there’s good reasons for worry.
According to the World Health Organization, over 55 million people worldwide have dementia, an astronomical number that is projected to triple by 2050.
For the many of us who have witnessed the devastation of dementia and may be at genetic risk, any memory lapse can trigger outright panic.
But it’s common to have the occasional memory fart, and things like misplacing glasses, putting the milk in the pantry, or forgetting why we went upstairs do not automatically mean that we’re losing it.
So how do we know when to worry, and what can we do about it?
There are several ways to test memory, from brief screenings that a doctor can do right in the office, to formal neuropsychiatric testing. These tests will show if dementia is a possibility.
There are many other potential medical contributors that can be checked for as well, including psychological issues such as depression, or endocrine issues such an underactive thyroid, or nutritional issues such as vitamin B12 deficiency.
In practice, it was rare that I had a patient who turned out to have early dementia or a medical issue.
The most common diagnoses by far were sleep deprivation and stress.
Which is what I had. I was a chronically sleep-deprived working mom with many heavy responsibilities and loads of unmanaged stress.
So how do sleep deprivation and stress cause memory problems?
Inadequate sleep hampers cognitive function. Studies show that sleep-deprived people perform as badly as drunk people on simulated driving tests!
Stress has well-known negative impacts on the brain, including impaired cognitive functioning and memory.
I realized that I needed to sleep and (healthfully) relax more. It took a lot of fiddling with my schedule and some failed experimentation to get to a better place, and honestly, the one thing that helped the most was that time passed and my kids got older. (Of course, they’re pre-teens now, associated with a whole different set of issues…)
The takeaways here are:
- If you have concerns about your memory, it never hurts to talk to your primary care provider about it. They will (for sure) have that evaluation down pat.
- Your memory may not be as bad as you think, and even if it is, there are many possible reasons for what you’re experiencing. You need to know what’s going on in order to be able to do something about it.
- If poor sleep and chronic stress are impacting your memory and thinking, simple things that might help include scheduling more time for sleep, or regular meditation.
Or, the kids growing up…
Note: This piece was based on posts I wrote on my personal blog in 2012 and 2019.
