As much as you’d probably love to listen to me complain about what you’re doing wrong, I’m just not going to do it.
Life—its full of choices that ultimately have an impact on everything else we do. Some choice you could be making right now that could be affecting you in ways you’ve never thought of.
Here are 5 things that actually make your memory worse.
B-Vitamin Deficiency
You’ve heard it about a million times. You need a diet full of quality protein, with good heathy fats, and full of nutrients. Most of us don’t exactly achieve all those things. Even if we swear we do.
The thing is, a healthy diet promotes a healthy memory. On the other hand, a poor diet has just the opposite affect.
When you fail to get enough B-vitamins, primarily B1 and B12, you’re more likely to experience memory problems as a result. That’s why it’s important to have adequate amounts of these. B1 can easily be found in foods like, vegetables and whole grains. B12 can be found in such things as dairy, and most meats.
Sorry to all those vegans out there, B12 isn’t found in any plant sources. Unfortunately, you’ll need to take B12 supplements instead.
Also, heavy-alcohol drinkers beware. Vitamin-B deficiency is more common in heavy drinkers due to the alcohol interfering with vitamin absorption.
You may want to reconsider a few less drinks from now on.
Smoking
Whether your weapon of choice are cigarettes, or something a little more “in the herb variety”, smoking has showed to negatively impact your memory.
Smoking deprives your brain of the oxygen it so desperately needs to function. When you smoke, you rid your brain of much of that oxygen. Therefore, you may have some fuzziness or a decreased mental acuity as a result.
However, this doesn’t apply to the new craze of vaping. With their popular e-liquid flavors, and large puff clouds of vapor.
The biggest memory problems smokers tend to have is with facial recognition. There have been studies that have shown between smokers and non-smokers, that people who smoke had a severe difficult time putting names with faces compared to non-smokers.
Not Enough Water
It’s kind of funny how something as important as water still gets debated by all kinds of professionals, as to how much our bodies need daily. The popular opinion still is 6-8 glasses of water a day. This obviously is more the average human than say, a star athlete.
Dehydration is nothing to mess with though. It’s like a complete shutdown. You ache, you can’t move, it can even lead to nausea and if severe enough, death. But dehydration has also been linked to a decline in mental acuity and associative memory loss. Especially as you age. Which is why it’s crucial to start healthy drinking habits when you’re younger, they will evolve into instincts.
Medications
Has anyone ever looked at what some of the side effects of your medications?
Well per the US-FDA, the following medications have been found to cause memory problems.
- Sleeping pills
- Diabetes Medication
- Anti-Anxiety Medication
- Antihistamines
- Cholesterol-Lowering medications
- Certain pain-killers
The FDA has cautioned numerous times that cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, could raise your risk of cognitive side effects (memory loss, lapses, amnesia, etc.).
Also for all the Diabetics out there on Metformin, studies have shown an increase in memory related problems if you take it.
Anxiety, Depression, and Stress
The mind is still one of the greatest unsolved mysteries out there. We still don’t know everything, and there’s a good chance maybe we never will. But one thing we do know about the mind, throw in stress, anxiety, and depression, you have yourself a cause for a bad memory.
Any one of these can lead to problems with focusing and memory. We’re all dealing with some type of stress or anxiety now. While some still struggle with their battles of depression. This is most common is people who are in a constant state of flux, juggling around work and home life. Combine that with not getting enough sleep, you have yourself a struggling memory cocktail.
There are a lot of outlets for whatever you may be dealing with and caring people willing and waiting to help anyway they can. Here’s a good place to start.
Whether you know it or forget it, any signs of a memory problem that aren’t trauma related can usually be fixed. These are just a handful of situations that influence your memory. So, if you can remember these, you should be golden.