Why do we forget

All of us have probably found ourselves in a situation when remember too late about our friend’s birthday. We may also have forgotten (not once) about exact time of a meeting or to pay some of our bills. It also sometimes happens when a name of a person we meet at a party just gets stuck somewhere in our subconscious mind or we do not remember how a certain object is called. We often try to excuse ourselves for that blaming those things on hard work, absence of sleep and rest and also stress. I could go on and on, but let us better look at why all of these things happen. I do not mean to give you all possible scientific answers, but just a few ideas for you to chew on. The above mentioned excuses are often true, but there are also other factors causing us to forget. Here are a few of those:

High blood pressure

High blood pressure or hypertension is not disease that only elderly people have. Quite often this acute problem is called trouble of modern times. There has been done a research in USA where 30 thousand participants were tested on the causes of memory loss. The results show that those who suffer from high blood pressure experience a lot of memory problems and their abilities to remember decrease as the time goes by. If you have a high blood pressure you should take care of your diet, lose weight, do exercises and not ignore sound advice that your doctor gives you. 

Long trips by plane

Long trips by plane, that last longer than 4 hours can have a direct impact on your forgetting. And if you fly regularly the consequences can be even more serious. A lot of people start complaining about their memory after long flying. It can be caused by tiredness, change of time zones and also stress. 

Lack of vitamin B12

Do you lack vitamin B12? Doctors say that it is essential to keep our neurological function. Lack of vitamin B12 can cause long term changes in cognitive abilities, memory loss, dementia and other health problems connected with forgetting. 

Menopause

According to scientific research (done in US) around fifty percent of ladies at the start of menopause also start experiencing memory problems. The scientists found the connection between the fever and memory gaps. The more ladies suffer from fever, the poorer their memory becomes. There could be other explanations for that, but connection between menopause and memory loss does exist. 

Problems with thyroid

If you suffer from hypothyreosis you can become more forgetful. You may experience weakness, tiredness and memory problems under this condition. This disease is more common for women than men over 40 years of age. 

Pregnancy

It appears that pregnancy can also influence your memory. Quite often it can be difficult to remember even the telephone numbers of those who are close. This is not a prevailing tendency, but increase in memory loss during pregnancy period has been observed. 

Alcohol

Too big amount of alcohol may injure that part of our brains that is responsible for ‘recording’ of memories. Therefore, a healthy way of life is the best way to keep your memory running properly.

Watching pornography

A recent study shows that watching online pornography can cause severe memory problems. This fact needs to be investigated more thoroughly, but as intensive sexual images do impact on our brains this addiction maybe a very serious threat for our memories (mostly men).

Ok, these are some of the things that cause both men and women to forget. Some of them may apply only to one sex, while others fit for all. Let us be aware of these facts and take care of our memories. Good luck in doing so!

Short term memory loss

There are various diseases connected with memory loss and one of them is short term memory loss. It is not quite usual as other illnesses of the kind, but it does still happen. There is a very good movie that you could see, which shows exactly how a person can lose all of his most recent reminiscences forever, yet remember what happened to him years ago (with very small details). 

That movie is called ‘Memento’ and stars Guy Pearce (writer and director: Christopher Nolan). It is about a man who suffers from short term memory loss and who uses various notes and tattoos to find the man who had killed his wife. You would highly recommend you seeing the movie just to see what the condition looks like. 

You may already know that our short term memory stores information for a very short period of time and it may not necessarily go to long term memory. However, it is still important and one should take care not to cause additional problems to our memory processes. 

Some of the most obvious causes for short term memory loss are: 

Various brain traumas (car accidents, sports injuries and etc.

Bad habits: abuse of alcohol, drugs and other chemical substances.

Various cardiovascular diseases and conditions, especially a stroke. 

There are various ways to prevent the condition, but this is the scope of another article. Hope it will come pretty soon. In the meantime you should remember that if you are facing serious memory problems you should consult your doctor and do not try to solve everything by yourself.

Have a nice day!

P.S. Go to see (or rent) the movie ‘Memento’. 

See also: 

General information about short term memory

How to increase visual memory

There are a lot of ways how we remember things. One of the main ones is through accepting of visual images to our brains. This is area of visual memory and I want to mention a couple of activities that will help you to increase its’ capacity and functioning.  Nothing comes easily if you do not practice. So be ready to set aside some time to exercise the things that I am going to mention. 

Firstly, you need to take some object and to remember its’ shape. Is it oval, square, triangular shape or in the form of a stick, ball and etc.?

Secondly, try to remember the size of the object. Is it huge, gigantic, big, average size, small or tiny? Do not think I am asking you to do something stupid and unnecessary. These seemingly foolish exercises help you to train your power to concentrate and ability to memorize without concentration is virtually impossible. 

Thirdly, remember the color of the object. Maybe you consider yourself to be color-blind. Do not worry about this. It most probably is a preconceived belief and you can change it with practice. 

Fourthly, take a break to ‘digest’ what you have seen and go over the above mentioned details in your mind. Try to visualize the object now with your eyes closed. 

Fifthly, make another break, go do your work (or other things) and try to come back and remember the object in full details after one hour. Repetition is very important for general training of your memory, not only of visual one. 

Ok, I hope the post was useful. I hope to continue on the topic soon.

See also: 

Visual memory mechanism and activities

Some worrying signs of your memory

We are humans and we are not perfect in all areas of our lives. The same can be said about our memories. We do forget things on a daily basis. And this mere fact should not worry us too much. However, there are certain signs that our memories might be giving that actually should make us worry. One might have serious signs of dementia or Alzheimer and do nothing about it. Mnemonics does not help here. One should see a doctor and take serious medication for the conditions. 

Again, some things might come with age, although it may not necessarily be so. We can train our memories as long as we are alive. But having an above mentioned disease is different. 

So, when should one get worried about memory problems?

If this starts interfering with you daily job activities: you forget about meetings, tasks and other daily activities that you used to remember very well. The causes for that can be different. It might be due to: being tired over a prolonged period of time, depression, aging, living under constant stress or it might be an early sign of the above mentioned diseases. 

If you start losing orientation in familiar places: not finding exit from the shop, or forgetting how to get home from the store. That’s a pretty serious problem and might show early signs of a much bigger problem than just daily forgetting. 

If you start losing orientation about time of the day or a season or even year, it is no longer some minor thing. And it does not sound like you are being tired or slightly depressed. These signs might be a good reason for you to visit your doctor. 

If these memory losses are followed by unexplainable feeling of being tired, angry (or other negative emotions), loss of joy of life you should not wait any longer, but go to see your doctor as fast as it is possible. Why wait for the snowball to become gigantic!

Some people are scared of doctors as they are afraid to face ‘possible truth’. However, it might be good to find what your problem is in its’ initial stages (when you can stop its progress or even solve it) rather than wait till it becomes too big to handle. 

On the other hand, your problem might not be as serious as you suspect. Going to the doctor for help will not do you any harm in that case too. 

Good luck in solving all your memory problems!

See also: 

How to do your memory test

Most common memory problems and disorders and their causes

How to do your memory test

Today while thinking on what to write I came with an idea of writing on testing your memory. Again, it sounds like checking your pc, but it is not what I am really talking about. I want to write a few useful ideas on how to test where you are regarding your remembering skills. You have to see whether you are progressing or regressing in the area. In order to do that, you have to ask yourself a number of questions and to answer them. You will also have to decide whether you want to make some improvement or you are just happy with the way things are at the moment. 

Let me give you a word of encouragement first. Daily forgetting happens to everybody and it is not a very serious problem. Even those who practice various memory techniques experience that. And it will probably not be a sign of Alzheimer or something similar. However, you see more and more of forgetting you should ask yourself whether it is not a good time to start exercising your brains. 

So, let us do a little testing. 

1. How much do you remember about things you did yesterday?

2. What about today? How much do you remember things you did today?

3. How many things you can remember (from shopping list) without actually making a list?

4. Can you remember people names easily?

5. Can you remember people phones easily?

6. Can you remember driving directions easily?

7. Do you remember of your friends’ birthdays without any problem?

8. Do you often forget where you parked your car after you get out of the shopping mall?

9. Do you find having problems to calculate elementary tasks from calculus ‘like five multiplied by seven’?

10. Do you forget what you promise and fail to remember to do things from your daily routine?

I might go on and on, but if most of the answers to the question are ‘yes’ you should get worried about the state of your memory. Better safe than sorry! Start training it and if that does not help you might also consult your doctor (just to be sure you don’t have something serious to worry about). 

Ok, I will try to continue the topic tomorrow and talk about something that might help you to identify whether you have serious memory problems or not.

Have a nice day.

See also:

Most common memory problems and disorders and their causes

List of world memory champions

Those of us who want to increase our brain power need some positive examples to follow. We need to see somebody who being humans with the same tendencies and ways to excuse ourselves for failures was able to overcome various obstacles and achieve great things in memory improvement. Such people do exist. There have been various competitions since ancient times that would test people abilities to memorize things, but modern world memory championships started only in 1991. Let me give you a list of the winners of the events and maybe say one or two things about each one of them. So, here we go.

1. Dominic O’Brien (English). He has been world memory champion even eight times. He actually won the first championship that took place in London in 1991. He started training his memory at the age of 30 after seeing a television program on the topic. See how far he has gone! Dominic wrote a lot of books on memory development and is probably the best expert in the field.

2. Andi Bell (English). He has been world memory champion three times. He managed to achieve this great success by using a method of loci. 

3. Ben Pridmore (English). He has been world memory champion three times too. Ben likes creating a story for remembering things. He often creates images (in his mind) around his old school. This helps him to pattern his story much better. 

4. Clemens Mayer (German). He is the first German who has won the title of world memory champion. He was able to repeat the success one more time. He planned to be a runner, but later changed his mind and decided to go to mental sports. He also (like Andi Bell) uses the method of loci. 

5. Wang Feng (Chinese). He has been world memory champion two times. He did it two years in a row in 2010 and 2011. 

6. Jonathan Hancock (English). He has been interested in mnemonics for a long time and written eleven books on memory and studying. Many would be surprised but he works as a teacher in primary school. For many years he worked as a radio presenter. As you may understand he is not a theoretician, but practices what he has learned in the field of mnemonics in his studies. 

Ok, I do not know if you were inspired by the post, but I sure am writing it. It is time to finish, but the good news is: I am going to describe how these world memory championship tournaments take place in my future posts. Have a nice day!