Ever been at a party and can’t remember the name of the person you’re talking to? Or find yourself tearing apart your house trying to find your keys? Your first thought may be, “What the heck is wrong with me?” and you might even jump to, “Could I be developing early Alzheimer’s?”
The good news is these sorts of memory glitches can happen at any age, reassures Gary Small, MD, Chair of Psychiatry at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey and author of The Memory Bible .
In fact, they may seem slightly worse now as an after-effect of the months of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Small says. (This should resolve as we return to regular activities and life settles back to normal, though.)
But it’s also true that subtle changes in memory can occur as early as your 20s. Here’s a look at how memory declines with age, plus what you can do about it.
3 Causes of Age-Related Memory Loss
1. The Volume of Your Brain Shrinks
It’s a dirty little secret that your memory naturally declines about 2 percent with each decade of life, which means your memory’s worse at 30 than at 20 (sorry!).
But there’s a bona fide scientific explanation: “It’s due to the shrinking of your hippocampus, the part of your brain that stores memories,’ explains neurologist Majid Fotuhi, MD, PhD, medical director of NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center in McLean, Virginia.
2. Other Health Conditions Affect Memory
High blood pressure, especially in middle age, is associated with a higher risk of dementia later in life, according the American Heart Association. Untreated hypertension narrows and blocks arteries everywhere, including in your brain, Dr. Fotuhi explains.
Elevated cholesterol is also toxic to your brain: It triggers the formation of amyloid-beta protein, a key player in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, according to May 2018 study in Nature Chemistry.
Other conditions, such as untreated sleep apnea or depression, can also hurt your brain, Dr. Fotuhi notes.
And if you’re having trouble hearing, get it checked: September 2019 research in The Hearing Journal shows a link between hearing loss and dementia. (It’s not yet clear if one causes the other, but it can’t hurt to see a doctor for hearing problems.)
3. Your Hormones Change
You may notice you’re especially forgetful when you’re pregnant, or in your 40s or 50s as you go through menopause. This is due to the temporary dip in estrogen, Dr. Small says. Once your hormones regulate, though, your memory should return to normal.
Surprise! Some Parts of Your Brain Actually Function Better With Age
While short-term memory starts to drop around age 35, crystalized intelligence, or the accumulation of facts and knowledge, peaks in the late 60s or early 70s, according to an April 2015 Harvard study in Psychological Science.
“That’s very different from what we would have expected to see, say, 30 years ago, and a lot of this is due to the fact that older people today, aka Baby Boomers, are more likely to be college-educated, have professional white-collar jobs that involve a lot of reading and thinking, and are just more intellectually stimulated in general,” Dr. Small says.
And while younger folks may be able to recall things more quickly or grasp new concepts faster, older people have an advantage because they’re sometimes able to take shortcuts.
“The older you are, the more likely you are to draw on past experiences or wide social networks to solve a problem,” Dr. Small says.
5 Ways to Support Your Memory as You Age
While some parts of age-related memory decline are outside of your control, there are a host of things you can do to help support a healthy memory into your golden years.
1. Break a Sweat
“A third of your brain is made up of blood vessels, so it should come as no surprise that there’s a link between physical fitness and brain volume,” Dr. Fotuhi says.
He points to February 2011 research in PNAS, in which older adults did brisk walking for 40 minutes three times a week for a year. The result? Their hippocampi grew by about 2 percent (the hippocampus normally shrinks about 0.5 percent per year).
“They basically walked away four years of brain aging,” Dr. Fotui says.
Here’s another one: A June 2017 study in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A found an association between low physical activity and the risk of dementia. Researchers conducted MRI scans on about 2,000 people older than 60 and found that the more active they were, the larger their hippocampus — with the most protective effects seen in those older than 75.
In other words: “It’s never too late to start [exercising],” Dr. Fotuhi says.
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