The Memory Cure: The Safe, Scientific Breakthrough that Can Slow, Halt, or Even Reverse Age-Related Memory Loss - Softcover

Chapter 1 What Is Memory?

The dimension of the problem

What causes memory to decline?

Memory loss classified

The structures of the brain

What is memory?

What type of age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) needs to be cured?

Retrieval versus recall

Summary

Janice was upset and embarrassed. She frequently forgot appointments, and sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, she forgot what she was going to say. Only 58 years old, Janice worried that she was in the first throes of Alzheimer's disease.

Norman, in his early sixties, was concerned because more and more he found himself saying, "I know it; I know it...Give me a minute and it will come to me."

Typically, memory loss starts gradually. We slowly become aware that we aren't remembering as well as we used to. As time passes, however, we begin to forget important things so frequently that we can no longer ignore it. Yet none of our other faculties are impaired. We still have no problems walking, holding intelligent conversations, or enjoying concerts. So why are we having this increasingly frustrating and deeply worrying experience?

When it works well, remembering seems almost instinctual, something we take for granted. We tend to think of it as always with us, ever reliable, until that disconcerting moment when it betrays us: We're at an exciting party. Having had a couple of drinks, we turn to a new acquaintance to introduce our best friend, whom we've known since college, and -- can't remember her last name. It's never happened before; it may not even have happened to you...yet.

However, the fact that you purchased The Memory Cure says that you have some concern about the workings of your memory or that of someone you love. Rest assured, you are not alone. A brief review of the term "memory" on the Internet shows hundreds of sites concerned with various topics related to memory. Most have "brain-boosting" courses, tapes, or software they want to sell you. Others advocate herbs or supplements that purport to improve your memory. But only a few have any up-to-date information on memory research, and none that we have found bring you the full body of accurate information you need to deal with this problem.

A memory that is starting to fail is not something most of us are able to shrug off as "just one of those things" that happens as we get older. On the contrary, memory is vital to our lives. Its decline is both annoying for the things we forget, and, for most people, very disturbing for the serious problems it may portend. Without a doubt, memory loss is one of the most terrifying aspects of aging.

If you feel you are starting to lose your ability to learn and remember, you're not alone. Millions of aging Americans have similar experiences and similar concerns. Until recently, virtually no one believed that there was a serious, practical, effective treatment for a failing memory. Even today, few people know that such a treatment does, in fact, exist, although many European doctors have been using it for more than a decade.

Many physicians will tell you there's nothing you can do about aging and accompanying memory loss. But that is incorrect. In fact, it can be delayed or even restored by using a safe, scientifically proven, clinically tested natural food supplement that is available without a prescription in most health food stores in the United States.

The Dimension of the Problem

How big a problem is age-associated memory impairment (AAMI) really? Whom does it affect? How much does memory decline? And is it a precursor to Alzheimer's so that we can all expect to descend into that gray world of dementia if we are "lucky" enough to survive cancer, heart attacks, and assorted accidents and thus manage to live to an otherwise healthy old age?

These are vitally important questions to which almost everyone reaching or passing middle age wants answers. For those answers will, after all, have a determinant influence on the rest of our lives.

Until recently, memory loss was something we recognized intuitively but had not measured. However, in the last few years, research conducted by Dr. Thomas Crook (the coauthor of this book) and others has made accurate answers available. No longer do we have to rely on our feeling that our memories are declining; now we know the quality and dimension of that decline. And, in knowing those facts, we are at last able to do something about them.

Baldly stated, in the absence of any curative solution, the steady decline in memory in otherwise reasonably healthy people as they age is very substantial. While that sounds depressing, there are three pieces of very good news:

* Below advanced old age, say age 85 or more, the incidence of memory declining so far as to be classified as Alzheimer's disease (AD) is low. Probably less than 10 percent of the 75- to 85-year-old population suffers from AD; less than 5 percent of 65- to 75-year-olds show symptoms of the disease; and only a tiny percentage of people under 65 can be diagnosed as having AD. And even above 85 years, when, after all, for most people nearly all physical and mental systems weaken and break down, at least two-thirds of us do not have and will never get AD.

* Even more fortunately, the nutritional supplement on which this book is focused will substantially reduce ordinary memory loss. It will do this both by delaying the loss so that it happens at a later age, and by reducing the absolute amount of memory capacity that is ever lost. Indeed, for many people, this supplement will significantly reverse memory losses that have already occurred. We cover this remarkable supplement and the results it achieves in full detail in Chapter 3.

* Finally, the other five steps of the memory cure described in this book will further reverse the absolute loss of memory at any age, and/or help readers to improve their memory so much that, for alt practical purposes, their total effective memory need not decline at all. Indeed, in many cases, it is likely to be significantly enhanced.

Thus, the overall message of this book is that you can largely or entirely overcome the problem of AAMI with a nutritional supplement coupled with an easy-to-implement plan we call the Memory Maximizer.

Before we deal with the methods of how to overcome AAMI, however, we should first define the dimension of the problem we are seeking to solve. For, while it was generally recognized until the early 1990s that there is a decline in memory performance associated with normal aging, there was considerable disagreement about how severe this decline was. However, today we have a variety of detailed long-term studies to tell us more precisely the dimension of the problem we face.

* In 1991, Youngjohn, Larrabee, and Crook tested 1,535 healthy, normal subjects on their ability to learn and remember written information. The chart shows that, in this respect, there is a decline from age 25 to age 40-49 of 21 percent, and that this decline continues, so that by age 70-79, the decline has reached 43 percent.

* In 1993 a team of nine researchers under the guidance of Dr. Crook published the results of a definitive study on how age affects memory, testing 908 subjects for 90 minutes each with a sophisticated computerized test battery and organizing the mountain of data they obtained so that it could be thoroughly analyzed. The subjects were chosen from a random sampling of the population of the Republic of San Marino on the Italian peninsula.

The results showed a comparable major decline. For example, respondents were tested on their ability to remember names immediately and then one hour after introduction. In immediate recall, as compared to age 25, there was a 29 percent decline by age 40-49 and a remarkable 65 percent decline by age 70-79. An hour later, the situation had become even worse, with declines from age 25 to age 40-49 of 35 percent and 74 percent to age 70-79.

In all, Dr. Crook et al. have conducted more than twenty major studies of various types of memory decline and they all show a similar pattern. Moreover, these findings are consistent with the observations of virtually every other researcher in the field and with the more subjective experience of almost every practitioner who deals regularly with the elderly.

The sad fact is that, left unattended, our memories decline substantially with age. And that decline can cause a serious reduction in our effectiveness as we get older, hence in the quality of our lives. Happily, however, as we shall show in this book, today that problem can be largely or entirely eliminated.

What Causes Memory to Decline?

In order to solve the problem of memory decline, we first need to understand its causes. Until recently we knew surprisingly little about them. However, today our knowledge and understanding of how memory works -- and why it declines -- has been greatly advanced. Although we don't yet have all the answers, we do know that, contrary to what you may have heard, aging and memory loss do not depend solely on how long our parents rived nor on any preset, mystical time line. Rather, a variety of factors impinging on our busy lives, such as stress, disorganization, and lack of concentration or attention, interfere with our ability to remember important facts. Indeed, part of the reason that our memories worsen with age is that these outside factors become stronger and more disruptive. We have more to do, more pressures upon us, more information to sift, store, and recall. But that is clearly only part of the problem. The chemical changes that cause our memories to decline exist separately from any outside factors. They are real. (If they were not, no cure would be possible.)

We think it is important to emphasize that AAMI (now often also called Age-Related Cognitive Decline or ARCD) is not itself a disease and is not caused by a disease. Rather, it is a condition caused by aging. It is part of the normal process of aging and, in fact, memory loss occurs with increasing age in every type of mammal studied in the laboratory.

Memory Loss Classified

A declining memory means that you forget your friend's e-mall address, or the name of that movie you saw last week and want to recommend to someone. While these are not trivial, they are merely annoying lapses you can learn to live with. For example, you can carry your ATM number with you, appropriately concealed, of course. In fact, most of us take these small pieces of forgetfulness for granted. If that were all there was to memory decline, it wouldn't be such a worry. Far worse, however, are the memory lapses that reduce our ability to live our lives as we wish.

"I have to read every book twice to recall it," a 60-year-old woman, who recently returned to college to study history, complained. "When I was younger, one good skim through was enough."

Similarly, as we age we do less well on "source memory," remembering where we got certain information. Thus, we have more trouble than younger persons in distinguishing whether some facts are true or illusory. Cognitive psychologist Daniel Schacter and his colleagues made up some juicy tidbits of gossip. They told old and young participants that some were secrets that should not be disclosed and that others were common knowledge. Older adults had more difficulty remembering which were the secrets and which were not.

Brenda Adderly (the other coauthor of this book) remembers the experience of a close friend with a virtually infallible memory, whom we will call Kenneth. As a college student, and later as a businessman, Kenneth never took notes. He simply remembered everything he heard. As he explains it, "I couldn't understand how anyone could forget things."

Then shortly after his fifty-fifth birthday, he had an experience that was terrifying for him. "As usual," Kenneth says, "I had attended several meetings the prior day, and I recalled that one in particular required me to follow up on it. But I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do. I was horrified. I thought I was losing my mind," he recalls.

Although reassured by others, including his own doctor, Kenneth had slammed against a wall he feared was mental decline. "I was afraid it was all downhill from there," he says, "and I was terrified to think where it would end."

Kenneth was about to learn that to compensate for their reduced memory, older people can simply work a little harder. They can take more notes, write more detailed lists, and confirm everything in writing. Of course, while these techniques are useful to compensate, they cannot cure AAMI.

Kenneth's memory today, 15 years later is still strong. But it is noticeably weaker than it was. If Kenneth had been experiencing this problem now instead of a decade ago, this would not be the case. His memory would have declined far less, if at all. And today, we can stop his memory declining further -- and perhaps even help him to reverse some of the extant decline.

Indeed, the astounding truth is that a failing memory is no longer an inevitable fact of aging. It can be halted, reversed, and even effectively cured, and The Memory Cure will show you how. The findings reported in this book reveal that, for healthy people whose memory decline is due to aging, and not caused by a stroke or some other illness, taking the nutritional supplement recommended in Chapter 3 and following the memory maximizing plan recommended in Chapter 4 will help maintain or even regain a high measure of cognitive brain function, including the ability to:

* remember names of persons to whom you are introduced
* recognize faces
* remember easily forgotten details such as names and telephone numbers
* recall accurately the content of conversations and professional discussions
* learn and remember new information
* maintain a high level of concentration
* improve verbal ability

Memory is not a simple "thing." It is Complex, multifaceted, and fascinating, as is the brain itself.

The Structures of the Brain

There are many subdivisions of the brain, and it may perhaps be helpful to review some of them briefly to fully understand how the brain works. This will, of course, have a bearing on how memory and age-related forgetting occur. However, some of you may already be familiar with the structure of the brain, and others may lack a bent for anatomy and may be intimidated. In either case, please feel free to jump ahead to the section, "What Is Memory?"

Scientists believe that the oldest parts of our brain, the brainstem and midbrain, developed more than 500 million years ago. They are the first parts of our brain to be formed in the womb. Because they resemble the entire brain of a reptile, they are sometimes called the "reptilian brain." Sitting atop our spinal column, they determine our level of alertness, and handle such automatic and basic bodily f...