Many people will experience some level of age-related cognitive decline sometime between ages 40 and 60. Age related cognitive decline is the normal and subtle deterioration of thinking and memory abilities that occur due to aging. Signs may include things like slowness in thinking, difficulty paying attention or multitasking, retaining information, word finding, and recalling names. This is different from mild cognitive impairment which leads to dementia yet may still interfere with daily activities of life. After reading a recent post on Facebook where someone was expressing frustration at an elderly woman she perceived as being rude, I felt it would be helpful to write about this important subject.
Changes in brain processing speed is the rate at which a person takes in new information, reaches a judgment regarding it and formulates a response. Our information processing speed changes as we age, in the shape of an inverted U curve. From childhood to adolescence, our speed of thinking is relatively stable leading up to middle age, and from late middle age onward it starts to decline. There are many causes like high blood pressure, diabetes, vascular changes, strokes, medications. The list is endless and may not be obviously visible to anyone.
Memory loss can come from a surprising but common problem called sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a treatable disorder where a person stops breathing intermittently during the night. As the oxygen delivery to the brain is interrupted several hundred times during the night, it affects the spatial navigational memory. This, in turn, makes it difficult to remember important information like you may not be able to recall where you put the keys after locking the doors the previous night. Many medications taken for pain, sleep, depression, or anxiety can also cause memory loss in many seemingly healthy adults.
Another common age-related change in the brain is called brain fog which makes it difficult to do simple tasks such as writing a letter or making a grocery list. Thinking quickly, remembering swiftly and even holding a conversation can become a challenge when brain fog sets in. A simple trip to the grocery store for an elderly person can produce feelings of anxiety and stress; will they remember where things are, will they forget things, can they navigate the store alone? Decision making can be so challenging that a choice between beef or chicken can cause distress.
Imagine experiencing some of these frightening things as part of everyday life. Not any of them are visible to someone on the outside like a physical disability. What if the elderly woman who seemed to behave rudely in the store was in a private state of panic over a trip to Publix? Would you still feel the need to “check your grandma” then? We really need to be a kinder society in general, but our elderly definitely deserve some compassion and empathy. Changes are happening to them they cannot control and honestly, if we are fortunate enough to live into our 80’s, 90’s, or 100’s it will be us someday too!
