These changes in brain function, which can range from mild to severe, are called vascular cognitive impairment. Mild memory problems can also develop gradually after “silent strokes” - or those that occur without any noticeable symptoms - which affect smaller blood vessels, the American Heart Association says.

Obvious changes in the ability to think and move normally can come from a stroke that blocks major blood vessels that feed the brain, Gale says. Taking certain medications, include metformin, proton pump inhibitors or H2 blockers (both are drugs that decrease stomach acid), and birth control pills.

Following a strict vegan or vegetarian diet.Risk factors for developing a vitamin B12 deficiency include: Nutritional DeficiencyĪ lack of sufficient levels of B12, one of the B vitamins essential for normal nerve function, can lead to confusion and even dementia, according to the Cleveland Clinic.Įach day, adults should get about 2.4 micrograms of B12 in their diet from foods such as dairy products, meat, and fish, or from foods fortified with vitamin B12, such as fortified cereals, according to the National Institutes of Health. Food and Drug Administration also cautions that the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins could slightly increase the risk of reversible cognitive side effects, including memory loss and confusion. Several types of drugs can affect memory, according to the American Association of Retired Persons, including: Memory loss or forgetfulness could be a sign that your medication needs to be adjusted. The injury that sleep apnea causes can show up as a variety of memory loss symptoms, he adds. “The brain is stressed by the oxygen disruption, so people wake up,” he says. One explanation is that for people with sleep apnea, oxygen delivery to the brain is interrupted several hundred times during the night, explains Lyketsos. This type of memory includes being able to remember directions and where you put things, like your keys, Dr. When not treated, sleep apnea affects spatial navigational memory, found a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2021. In a study published in May 2022 in the Journal of Sleep Research, people with insomnia and sleep apnea were less likely to perform well on assessments designed to measure memory, compared with people without those conditions. Lack of sleep causes fatigue, which, in turn, can lead to brain fog and memory problems, it says. Sleep problems, including insomnia, or the chronic inability to fall or stay asleep, as well as sleep apnea, a disorder that causes breathing to stop briefly and frequently throughout the night, have been linked with memory loss and dementia, according to Harvard Medical School. However, a mood disorder such as depression may improve with medication and counseling, notes the National Institute on Aging. Untreated chronic stress can lead to depression, which could also affect brain function, including some measures of memory, according to a study published in May 2022 in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Usually, easing stress can improve memory, he says. This is particularly common among people who may be juggling home and work responsibilities and are not sleeping well.

Significant stress or anxiety can lead to problems with attention and memory, says Constantine Lyketsos, MD, director of the Memory and Alzheimer's Treatment Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine and professor and chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview. In some cases, one or more of the following issues could be playing a role: 1. Discussing your symptoms and taking various tests, including possibly an MRI, may help your doctor determine what is affecting your memory, Gale says.

Talk with your doctor about concerns you may have about your memory, so that the condition responsible for your symptoms can be addressed. For example, it’s common for people to still have the capacity to learn and store information, but because of their overloaded mental resources at this time of their life, they have trouble doing it well,” Dr. “When you drill down and find out what’s actually happening with someone’s mental functions, you can reassure them. “Patients might experience memory loss and describe their symptoms similarly, but a doctor can tease apart what parts of the brain are affected,” says Seth Gale, MD, a neurologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. And when the underlying cause is treated, the memory problems often improve as well. Memory lapses can happen at any age and for a number of reasons. For many people in middle age or older, simple acts of forgetfulness like these are scary because they raise the specter of Alzheimer’s disease.īut Alzheimer’s is not the only health problem that can lead to forgetfulness, says the National Institute on Aging. You can’t find your keys, or perhaps you forgot an appointment.

Drugs that cause temporary amnesia