Depression and Anxiety

Both depression and anxiety cause an increase of cortisol, a stress hormone, which makes the cells of the gray matter lose synapses. This lowers the ability to not only create memories and store them but also to recall them. The more severe the depression and anxiety, the higher it can impact your memory.

Being anxious can impede your ability to think, leading to poor decision making, likewise with a depressive state, which can significantly impact how you take in information and process it. Being fearful of doing things wrong or making the wrong decision is hugely common, and nowadays, there isn’t the same stigma applied to mental illness such as depression and anxiety, so it is a lot easier to seek help.

Medications

Many medications can affect your memory, including those used to treat mental health diseases. Other medications such as beta-blockers, incontinence medicines, antihistamines, and strong analgesics also

affect memory. These drugs interfere with the transfer of short-term memories into the long-term storage part of the cerebrum.

Narcotic pain killers are perhaps the worst culprit for affecting your memory. To relieve severe pain takes severe chemicals, and these will affect your ability to think, your ability to stay awake, and overall your daily functioning. If you have to take these drugs, make sure you don’t make any critical decisions just after taking a dose!

Cigarette Smoking

There are a lot of medical issues blamed on smoking, and it might surprise you to learn that it can also cause problems with your memory. Smoking can reduce the supply of blood to the brain, and it can also cause a collection of abnormal proteins, all of which affect the ability to process information and recall it.

Alcohol Consumption and Addiction

The consumption of alcohol can lead to short-term memory loss if it is only occasional or binge drinking. It’s common to wake up after a big night out and have entirely blank spaces in your head. But alcoholism can have a more severe long-term effect.

Some alcoholics develop a state of amnesia and confusion called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome because they often suffer from malnutrition and deficiency of thiamine. Memory, attention, and orientation deteriorate due to this form of dementia, and it is irreversible. However, if the person stops drinking, some of the mental functions may come back in some cases.

Stress

It is believed that high levels of stress can increase the loss of short-term memories in older people. Chronic stress can cause impairment in how memory works in the brain, including retaining, storing, and recalling information abilities.

Stress is a significant factor in how people function. The more pressure you are under, the harder it is to do anything, especially think clearly.

If your stress is only temporary, try some meditation or mindfulness techniques to help get you back in balance. If it’s a serious problem, seek medical advice.

Diseases Causing Dementia and Memory Loss

There are more than 50 different medical conditions and diseases that can cause memory loss and dementia, with varying degrees. Some states are short-lived, and the brain returns to its normal function.

However, some diseases have a long-term impact and are not treatable, which leads to a steady decline in mental functioning. Below are some of the more common medical causes of dementia and memory loss.

Thyroid Disease

The thyroid gland doesn’t have a particular job in the brain, but if you are suffering from issues with your memory, it is often a symptom of thyroid disease. Hyperthyroidism (high thyroid levels) and hypothyroidism (low thyroid levels) can affect your concentration and memory.

Vitamin B12 Deficiency

A vitamin B12 deficiency, or pernicious anemia, is more common in older people and is most definitely treatable, usually with a series of injections to boost the B12. Common symptoms of this deficiency include confusion, irritability, and slowness. There is a myth that the deficit comes from an inadequate diet, but the real cause is that the body develops an issue with absorbing the B12.

Alzheimer’s disease

Probably the most feared of all the medical causes of memory loss, Alzheimer’s is, unfortunately, an intractable disease that, although there can be treatments to help with some symptoms, the disease cannot be cured. The symptoms include memory loss, a decline in cognitive function, changes in personality or mood, and problems with fine motor skills.

Alzheimer’s can occur in males or females, and interestingly, it usually shows up in women a lot earlier than in men. Many drugs are being trialed to try and stop the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Vascular Dementia

This disease is due to reduced blood flow to different areas of the encephalon. The reduced flow of blood usually is due to atherosclerosis, a condition where fatty deposits accumulate on the walls of arteries. When the blood doesn’t reach the brain appropriately, it causes the death of the gray matter tissue.

When vascular dementia occurs, it is like a series of small strokes, and you generally won’t notice them. On their own, they don’t generally cause long-term damage, but when there are a number of them, it can

be more debilitating. Symptoms typically involve confusion, difficulty with thinking, slurring of speech, and in some cases, a level of paralysis.

Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration

This is a group of diseases that were once known as Pick’s disease.

Parts of the front of the brain become atrophic, dead, particularly in the temporal and frontal lobes. Sometimes it is confused with Alzheimer’s because of the similarity in the presentation.

Parkinson’s disease

Perhaps the second most well-known of the diseases that affect the mind is Parkinson’s disease. It is due to a deficiency in dopamine, which is vital for memory function and coordinating the activity of muscles. Typical symptoms include dementia, tremors, difficulty with movement, and rigidity.

Alzheimer’s can sometimes be associated with Parkinson's, and when the two appear together, there is a higher risk of dementia developing.

Parkinson’s is a debilitating disease that progresses, and despite a vast amount of research, there currently is no cure.

Huntington’s disease

Huntington’s is a genetic disorder that is quite rare, and it is associated with a gene abnormality on chromosome 4. Tragically this disease usually develops between the ages of twenty and forty, and often dementia occurs before the physical attributes of the disease.

People with Huntington’s can become aggressive, irritable, and erratic.

Although medicines are often used to treat the symptoms, the condition is incurable and inevitably leads to death.

Tumors

Any tumor in the cerebrum, whether it is malignant or benign, can affect the thought processes and the memory, depending on where in the brain the tumor is located. Personality changes are frequent with these types of tumors, and cognitive function is interfered with.

Infections and Viruses

Just about any infection in the head can and will cause some level of dementia. The worst of these diseases is Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease.

This dementia progresses rapidly, and there are often slight changes in a person’s behavior and fatigue. Eventually, the person develops seizures, coma, and death within a year of the onset of infection.

Thankfully this disease is rare.

There is also dementia associated with AIDs infection that can rapidly develop and progress occasionally within a few weeks. The main symptoms demonstrated thinking difficulties, insufficient attention, and forgetfulness.

The severe third infection causing dementia is Neurosyphyllis. Back in the days of the World Wars, this infection was rather prevalent, and it wasn’t until dementia showed itself that many diagnosed. Dementia occurs around 15 years after the person contracted the illness.

Nowadays, it isn’t as expected because it is identified a lot quicker and treated with penicillin.