Memory loss isn't always worrisome. But here's when it is, what to do.
But when forgetfulness progresses, becomes frequent or interferes with relationships or daily life, it may be a sign of something more serious.
At the same time, not all memory problems point to dementia, and many issues are preventable, treatable and even reversible. Here's how to recognize memory loss, what causes it and how to manage the problems it creates for yourself or someone you love.
What is memory loss?
Memory loss refers to the inability to remember information or events that should easily be retrievable. Some common symptoms include forgetting recent conversations or events, asking the same questions over and over, difficulty completing familiar tasks, frequently misplacing items, being unable to retrace steps, becoming confused about time or location or having difficulty following a conversation.
'Progressive memory loss extending over time is the key warning sign,' explains Mander. 'If someone starts forgetting entire experiences or things they were once clear about – like the route to a longtime hairdresser – that becomes concerning.' Ditto for if memory loss starts impacting relationships or impeding day-to-day life.
When memory loss progresses to states of dementia, "memory failures become so frequent a person eventually loses the ability to recall recent events or plans completely,' says David Diamond, PhD, a psychologist and neuroscience professor at the University of South Florida.
Noted: 1 in 3 older Americans take aspirin daily. What does it do?
What causes memory loss?
Some of the most common causes of short-term or long-term memory loss include:
What is sleep apnea? The sleep disorder you might have could be why you're sluggish
How is memory loss prevented and treated?
Memory loss treatments vary depending on the underlying cause of the problem. "If the memory loss is due to something reversible, such as poor sleep, medication side effects, a vitamin deficiency or a thyroid disorder, the treatment is pretty straightforward," says Budson.
Sometimes simple dietary or behavioral changes are all that is needed. 'There's no silver bullet,' Mander explains, 'but good sleep, exercise, maintaining a diet high in vitamin B12 and mental stimulation all support brain health.' Even something as common and feared as Alzheimer's disease "is not an inevitable result of advanced age,' adds Diamond. "Strong physical health is associated with reducing your risk and a very low rate of dementia."
And "for the best outcomes," stresses Yassa, "early intervention is key to living longer without cognitive decline."
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NBC News
31 minutes ago
- NBC News
A salty twist: Diabetes risk study says french fries are a culprit
Craving french fries? Dunking your spuds in a deep fryer might be a recipe for elevating your risk of Type 2 diabetes. According to a study published Wednesday in the journal BMJ, swapping out your weekly dose of frites for boiled, baked or mashed potatoes could lower your risk of this chronic condition. The authors examined the diets of more than 205,000 adults in the U.S. who responded to questionnaires about what they ate over nearly four decades. Among those who consumed potatoes, the authors looked at which people developed Type 2 diabetes, a disease that leads to persistently high blood sugar levels. Eating three weekly servings of french fries, they found, was associated with a 20% increased risk of Type 2 diabetes. But consuming the same amount of boiled, baked or mashed potatoes did not appear to be linked to the disease. The vast majority of the 1 in 10 people with diabetes in the U.S. have Type 2. The condition can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes or kidney damage. The findings underscore that the way foods are prepared is key to their overall health risks or benefits, said Seyed Mohammad Mousavi, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'Not all potatoes are created equal,' he said. 'Even a small amount of french fries, less than one serving in the week, is associated with a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes.' Unlike boiled or baked potatoes, french fries are deep-fried in oils that usually contain trans or saturated fats. The way the body metabolizes those fats can contribute to insulin resistance — when cells don't respond properly to insulin, a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. Regular consumption of fried foods can also lead to obesity and inflammation, both of which raise the risk of Type 2 diabetes. 'When you fry the potatoes, the energy content — calories — increases because of the fat they absorb. If you eat many servings of french fries, it predisposes [people] to weight gain,' said Candida Rebello, the director of the nutrition and chronic disease program at Louisiana State University, who wasn't involved in the study. The study relied on data collected between 1984 and 2021, when several different frying methods were popular. Most fast-food chains today prepare fries using vegetable oils like canola, sunflower, soybean or peanut oil. But during the 1980s, beef tallow was common. And in the early 1990s, restaurants shifted to partially hydrogenated oils. (The oils were a major source of trans fat in the U.S. diet and were largely phased out of the food industry by 2018.) Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said the seed oils used today are 'poisoning' Americans and contributing to high levels of obesity in children. He has advocated for restaurants to switch back to beef tallow, a recommendation that isn't backed by scientific research. 'Beef tallow is high in saturated fats and other harmful fats. We definitely don't recommend that,' Mousavi said. One limitation of Mousavi's study is that it did not account for people adding unhealthy ingredients to their boiled, baked or mashed potatoes. 'What do people add to baked potatoes? Butter, bacon, cheese, sour cream,' said Shannon Galyean, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, who wasn't part of the research. 'Then we also don't know, did they eat it with the skins?' Galyean said potato skins contain nutrients such as fiber, which helps with blood sugar control. And potatoes, when they aren't deep-fried or slathered in butter, can be a useful source of potassium, which helps regulate blood pressure. 'Definitely, potatoes can be considered a healthy food when you don't fry it, or when you don't add lots of fat to it,' Galyean said. Mousavi said baking french fries at home with a healthier oil, such as olive or avocado oil, could help lower one's diabetes risk compared to eating them from fast-food restaurants. Swapping out potatoes with whole grains, such as farro or whole-grain bread or pasta, could make an even bigger difference. These foods have a lower glycemic index, meaning they're less likely to spike blood sugar levels. His study found that whole grains, when compared to all types of potatoes, were less likely to elevate one's diabetes risk. White rice, on the other hand, had a stronger association with Type 2 diabetes than either of these foods. Megan Mulcahy, the director of communications at Potatoes USA, a marketing and research organization that supports potato consumption, said fries can 'absolutely be part of a healthy eating pattern when enjoyed in moderation.' Galyean said it's important to consider a person's overall diet, which has a greater impact on their health than any individual food. Nutritionists generally recommend a colorful plate with a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and healthy proteins such as fish, beans or nuts. 'People don't eat just one thing, they eat meals,' Galyean said.
UPI
31 minutes ago
- UPI
French fries, but not mashed potatoes, linked to type 2 diabetes
1 of 2 | Consumption of french fries, but not potatoes prepared in other ways, was linked to increased levels of type 2 diabetes in a Harvard study released Wednesday. File photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo ST. PAUL, Minn., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- French fries, but not mashed, baked or boiled potatoes, were linked Wednesday to type 2 diabetes in a study whose authors say food preparation, as well as the kinds of foods eaten, makes a difference in reducing health risks. Researchers at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health also found that by swapping out French fries with whole grains, a person can reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes by 19%. The new paper, led by postdoctoral researcher Seyed Mohammad Mousavi and co-authored by prominent Harvard nutrition and epidemiology expert Walter Willett, was published in The British Medical Journal. After examining data about the diets and diabetes outcomes of more than 205,000 adults enrolled in a trio of major longitudinal U.S. studies spanning more than three decades, they determined that three servings weekly of french fries was associated with a 20% excess risk of developing type 2 diabetes, or T2D. Conversely, they saw no significant association between consumption of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes and risk of T2D, despite potatoes being "highly stigmatized" and dismissed as generally unhealthy by some in the nutrition world. The results led the authors to conclude that how foods are prepared matters just as much as what types of foods are eaten in the risk for diabetes, which last year affected 38.4 million Americans of all ages, some 11.6% of the population. The vast majority of cases are type 2 diabetes, which is highly associated with obesity and poor diet. "For consumers, the takeaway is simple: how you prepare a food can be just as important as what you eat," Mousavi told UPI in emailed comments. "A boiled or baked potato has a very different impact on health than the same potato deep-fried at high temperatures in unhealthy oils." He said he and his colleagues hope the results will help shift the conversation about healthy diets to into more "nuanced -- and useful" directions and away from blanket condemnations of certain foods, which usually are not "'good' or 'bad' in isolation -- it's always good or bad compared to what. "If you swap potatoes, especially fries, for whole grains, you gain health benefits; if you swap fries for another fried snack, you probably won't. Choosing cooking methods that minimize added fats, salt, and harmful compounds, and making thoughtful replacements, is key," Mousav said Deep frying is one of the unhealthiest ways to cook, according to the American Diabetes Association, which notes that frying creates trans fats that have been shown to cause heart disease and stroke. Often, frying requires the use of flour or breading, which also adds carbohydrates. The current study used a new kind of "meta-analytic" approach to estimate how swapping potatoes for whole grains could affect the risk of T2D. It involves two separate meta-analyses: one based on data from 13 cohorts examining potato intake and the other from 11 cohorts on whole grain intake, each involving more than 500,000 participants, including 43,000 with a T2D diagnoses, from across four continents. While french-fried potatoes and other types of deep-fried foods have long been suspected as a risk factor for T2D, the new study has deepened understanding of the link on several levels, such as by showing the risk is "dose-dependent" and begins at relatively low intakes -- even less than one serving of fries per week, Mousavi said. "Second, we confirm that not all potato preparations carry the same risk, highlighting that deep-frying is the key driver here," he added. "Third, we compared the effect of fries with other carbohydrate sources and found that, except for white rice, all other carb sources were healthier choices than fries. "By combining decades of detailed dietary data with a meta-analysis across multiple populations, we provide stronger evidence that it's not just the food itself, but also the frying process -- and what you choose to replace it with -- that matters for diabetes risk." Some other researchers have suggested that potatoes have gotten a bad rap when automatically lumped in with foods that are considered a risk for diabetes. Dr. Hana Kahleova, director of clinical research for the Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for healthier foods, agreed it's wrong to dismiss potatoes as unhealthy without regard for how they're prepared. Rather, some studies "suggest that potatoes, particularly boiled potatoes, may have beneficial effects on body weight and reduce the risk of diabetes," she told UPI. "Potatoes can be consumed in many ways," Kahleova said. "The data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey show that french fries are the most consumed vegetable in the U.S. When Americans eat away from home, french fries make up almost two-thirds of all consumed potatoes. "At home, most potatoes are consumed as potato chips. The cooking method and the foods people consume potatoes with seem to be responsible for the bad rap of potatoes." Some research shows that potatoes can reduce the risk of diabetes and lead to weight loss, including a 2022 study on behalf of the Alliance for Potato Research and Education that found consuming baked white potatoes produced no harmful effects on measured health outcomes and actually provided some cardiometabolic health benefits when substituted for foods such as long-grain white rice. Similarly, Kahleova cited Finnish and Dutch cohort studies that span a 20-year follow-up period that reported a lower risk of T2D was associated with increased consumption of potatoes, along with an increase in vegetables and legumes. "In a cohort study conducted in almost 2,000 adults in Iran who were followed for six years, the risk for incident diabetes was 54% lower in people with higher intakes of total potatoes, and 53% lower for high intake of boiled potatoes, compared with those who had the lowest intakes," she said. The latest french-fry findings "contribute to the totality of the evidence on eating patterns and their association with health risk," concurred dietician Stacey Krawczyk, director of nutrition and wellness for the American Diabetes Association. "Eating patterns that have several weekly servings of fried foods, potatoes in this case, may also have other lifestyle and meal choices that could also contribute to a person's overall health," she told UPI. "We encourage people to choose a variety of foods when building ADA's Diabetes Plate," in which potatoes earn a spot on the dish as a "quality carbohydrate" along with starchy vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fruits, milk and yogurt. "We encourage people to use a foundation of whole and less-processed forms of foods as they build their balanced plate," Krawczyk added. "In general, using methods of cooking that do not involve frying are preferred." Study co-author Mousavi said his study underscores the need to "move beyond" the broad food categories now found in typical nutrition guidelines. "Lumping all potatoes -- or all grains, for that matter -- into a single group can hide important differences in health effects," he said. "Policy recommendations and public health messaging should highlight not just the food itself, but also its preparation and what it's replacing, as these factors can dramatically change its nutritional quality and long-term health impact."
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Lucian Leape, whose work spurred patient safety in medicine, dies at 94
He was chief of pediatric surgery at Tufts University in the 1980s when he noticed frequent mistakes leading to significant patient harm, even death. In a bold move late in his career, Dr. Leape left his full-time surgical practice and began collaborating with colleagues at Harvard University on a study that chronicled for the first time the number of injuries and deaths that resulted from medical error. Known as the Harvard Medical Practice Study, it examined a large population of injured patients in New York state. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up That study led to a landmark report, 'To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System,' published in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine). Advertisement In the report, Dr. Leape and his co-authors estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans died each year from medical errors, a majority of which arose from dysfunctional systems -- not flawed individuals, as the medical profession and public had long believed. The idea of systemic error, though widely accepted in industries such as aviation and nuclear power, was an unfamiliar concept in medicine, and it rubbed against the grain of the dominant medical culture of individual accountability, as well as the malpractice system's tradition of seeking a culpable clinician. Advertisement The report, however, galvanized health care regulators and accreditors to enact tighter standards for hospitals, limit work hours by medical residents, and require public reporting of serious errors. As a result of regulations and public pressure, health care systems around the country began to tackle medical mistakes as a system-level problem, launching patient safety departments and hiring patient safety officers. 'He did more than make some critical insights,' Dr. Atul Gawande, a prominent surgeon and author who was assistant administrator for global health at the US Agency for International Development in the Biden administration, said in a 2023 interview for this obituary. 'He took on the entire medical profession.' Lucian L. Leape (he had no middle name, though the 'L' was included on his birth certificate) was born Nov. 7, 1930, in Bellevue, Pa. His father, Lucian Leroy Leape, was a purchasing agent for a small steel company. His mother, Mildred Grace (West) Leape, was a schoolteacher who later taught piano. After receiving his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Cornell University in 1952, he served as a lieutenant in the Navy, and in 1955 entered Harvard Medical School. He met Martha Kinne Palmer in 1951, when both were undergraduates at Cornell, and they married in 1954. Martha Leape, who held master's degrees in guidance counseling and psychology, became a premedical adviser at Harvard University and later ran the university's office of career services. She died this year. In addition to his son James, Dr. Leape leaves two other sons, Jonathan and Gerald, and seven grandchildren. Advertisement After receiving his medical degree in 1959, Dr. Leape trained as a pediatric surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and Children's Hospital in Boston. In 1973, he became professor of surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine and chief of pediatric surgery at Tufts-New England Medical Center (now Tufts Medical Center). 'Children are the world's best patients,' he said in an interview for this obituary in 2015. 'They're honest, and they don't have an overlay of neuroses.' In 1986, at age 56, Dr. Leape grew interested in health policy and spent a year at the Rand Corp. on a midcareer fellowship studying epidemiology, statistics, and health policy. Following his stint at Rand, he joined the team at Harvard conducting the Medical Practice Study. When Dr. Howard Hiatt, then the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health), offered Dr. Leape the opportunity to work on the study, 'I accepted,' Dr. Leape wrote in his 2021 book, 'Making Healthcare Safe: The Story of the Patient Safety Movement,' 'not suspecting it would change my life.' The most significant finding, he said in the 2015 interview, was that two-thirds of the injuries to patients were caused by errors that appeared to be preventable. 'The implications were profound,' he said. In 1994, he submitted a paper to The New England Journal of Medicine, laying out the extent to which preventable medical injury occurred and arguing for a shift of focus away from individuals and toward systems. But the paper was rejected. 'I was told it didn't meet their standards,' he recalled. Dr. Leape sent the paper out again, this time to The Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. George Lundberg, then the editor of JAMA, immediately recognized the importance of the topic, Dr. Leape said. 'But he also knew it could offend many doctors. We didn't talk about mistakes.' Advertisement Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president emeritus at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston and a longtime colleague of Dr. Leape's, agreed. 'To talk about error in medicine back then was considered rude,' he said in an interview in 2020. 'Errors were what we call normalized. Bad things happen, and that's just the way it is. 'But then you had Lucian,' he added, 'this quite different voice in the room saying, 'No, this isn't normal. And we can do something about it.'' Dr. Leape's paper, 'Error in Medicine,' was the first major article on the topic in the general medical literature. The timing of publication, just before Christmas in 1994, Dr. Leape wrote in his 2021 book, was intentional. Lundberg knew it would receive little attention and therefore wouldn't upset colleagues. On Dec. 3, 1994, however, three weeks before the JAMA piece appeared, Betsy Lehman, a 39-year-old health care reporter for The Boston Globe, died after mistakenly receiving a fatal overdose of chemotherapy at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. 'Betsy's death was a watershed event,' Dr. Leape said in a 2020 interview for a short documentary about Lehman. The case drew national attention. An investigation into the death revealed that it wasn't caused by one individual clinician, but by a series of errors involving multiple physicians and nurses who had misinterpreted a four-day regimen as a single dose, administering quadruple the prescribed amount. The case made Dr. Leape's point with tragic clarity: Lehman's death, like so many others, resulted from a system that lacked sufficient safeguards to prevent the error. Advertisement The report 'To Err is Human' was released in 1999, noting that the 44,000 to 98,000 annual deaths from medical mistakes were the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every day. That alarming comparison drew significant media attention, and the report led to substantial new federal funding to address the problem of medical errors, along with efforts to educate providers and administrators about the new systems approach to errors. 'There might have developed a patient safety movement in health care without Lucian, but he made it happen years before it otherwise would have,' Berwick said. 'He was probably the first pedigreed specialist from the mainstream of health care to give this problem a name.' Gawande said he believed it was the confidence Dr. Leape had acquired as a surgeon that girded him in the face of strong resistance from colleagues. 'He had enough arrogance to believe in himself and in what he was saying,' Gawande said. 'He knew he was onto something important, and that he could bring the profession along, partly by goading the profession as much as anything.' In 2007, the National Patient Safety Foundation, which Dr. Leape had helped found in 1997 to support the growth of the nascent field, created a patient safety think tank, the Lucian Leape Institute, which is now part of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. This article originally appeared in
