YOUR 40s: HAVE I GOT ALZHEIMER’S?

HAVE you ever stood in line at the cashpoint, only to forget your PIN when you reach the front?embarrassing as this may be, it isn’t a sign of approaching dementia. You are just normal for your age.

A study by the Mayo Clinic in the u.S. of more than 1,200 people between the ages of 30 and 95 found that a lmost a ll u s h ave e xperienced declining memory by the age of 40.

The most likely reason is that the hippocampus, a horseshoe-shaped lobe c lose t o t he m iddle o f t he b rain, slowly shrinks from the age of 30 through to the mid-60s.

There is also a loss of nerve c onnections stretching between brain cells, which means that while information i s s till l ocked i nside y our skull, it takes longer to retrieve.

By t his a ge y ou a re l ikely t o h ave s o many memories stored in your brain that retrieving them is like trying to find the right book in a vast library.

It’s at this age that people increasingly start to worry they are showing signs of Alzheimer’s.

Figures from the royal College of Physicians show a four-fold increase in the number of patients worried they have degenerative brain d iseases, even though tests find that most are simply absent-minded. So why do so many fortysomethings find it difficult to remember simple facts? The problem islikely t o b e d ata o verload brought on by modern l ife, i n w hich we are continually besieged by theinternet, smartphones a nd c ountless Tv channels. We all have to discard unnecessary i nformation from o ur s hort-term m emories i n o rder t o s tore m ore, so some things are forgotten. The fact that many of us use k eyboards and not our hands to write things down also means that those things are not being stored deeply into the brain in the first place. researchers at the university of Stavanger, in Norway, found that when we write by hand, memory formation is reinforced by the physical movement. Facts were not retained as well when people typed the same information.

Professor Michael Saling, of the university of Melbourne, in Australia, who has researched PIN amnesia, says: ‘This expansion of information i n o ur a ge h as h appened so fast, it’s bringing us face to face with our brain’s limitations.

‘The w orking m emory c an h old o nly about seven things at one time.

‘Because devices we use have p erfect m emories, t here i s a lmost a n expectation building that we, too, should have perfect memories.’

It’snotallbadnews,though,asyour brain is adapting.

Scientists have found that in middle a ge p eople s tart u sing b oth s ides of the brain more efficiently — and one t heory i s t hat t his h elps t o m ake up for the shortfall.

our habits can also help. Dr Alexa Morcom, a lecturer in human cognitive n euroscience a t t he u niversity o f edinburgh, told the Mail: ‘Your