Kira (Kira Greene)

I have a vocabulary.

I haven't forgotten the words.

I just couldn't think of it at that moment.

So that is a very common experience.

So and again, I think it is a really interesting thing because this is where we have that sort of gray area.

that with all of these things, so a lot of all of these kinds of day to day failures of memory, forgetting someone's name, forgetting a word, that sort of tip of the tongue feeling.

These are really, really common things that everyone will experience from time to time, but they can also be an indicator of early stages of cognitive decline.

And essentially, it really comes down to the frequency of these issues.

How frequently are they occurring?

So what I would say to someone is if this is something that happens occasionally, you're not really seeing other aspects of your life aren't showing significant signs of cognitive decline, it's probably not a big deal.

If you think that there are other signs, so if you find, for example, that you often get confused or that you find that you're having more trouble regulating your emotions, those can be signs of kind of mild cognitive impairment or early stages of decline.

And if someone does have any concern about their memory and about age-related memory decline, the first port of call really is to speak to your GP, your family doctor.

Another important resource can be family members, in particular spouses, because they often really have much more insight into our behaviour than we might have for ourselves.

So it can be helpful to say to a spouse, have you noticed any decline in my behaviour?

Have you noticed that I'm forgetting things more frequently?

And if they say, no, it's the same as you always have been, then that's fine.

If they say, well, actually, maybe there's something, that can be something you do want to check out.

I have to say, to me, 77 times a day seems like an underestimate, but I can well believe it.

So I think, again, there's kind of this distinction here between attention and memory.

And they are very tightly interlinked, but they are also different things.