Max Lugavere

Sticking with our brain health theme comes from Becky Deppy.

My dad has Alzheimer's.

I'm 50 and fighting for words.

When do I worry?

What do I do?

That's a great question.

That's an important question.

And again, I know I gave this disclaimer at the outset, but I'm not a medical doctor.

But there are some ways to think about this, which I've gleaned over the years that I think are probably worth sharing.

So for one.

There is a degree of forgetfulness that is normal, totally normal.

You know, if something is on the tip of your tongue, like that's totally normal as long as you come back to it at some point down the road.

Forgetfulness seems to increase with aging to some degree.

So again, not a problem.

if you forget where your keys are totally normal if you forget what your keys are for uh that's where you know maybe that's maybe an amber colored flag there's a there's a saying that i um i'm gonna paraphrase but essentially you know if you believe that your uh cognition if you're if you're more forgetful than normal it's probably not a big deal

But if somebody in your life, like your spouse or a loved one, sees a change and has noticed and has flagged maybe that you've become more forgetful than you have been in the past, so if it's observable from the outside, an increase in forgetfulness, that's when you should see a neurologist and not just brush it off.

So if somebody else in your life has noticed a change,

That's when, and also if you've noticed a change, of course, but again, you know, some degree of forgetfulness is totally normal.

You know, if you forget, if you have difficulty asking questions, if you have difficulty finishing sentences in a way that's changed, that's when you should go and see a neurologist.

But if you've, you know, some people are forgetful and they've always been forgetful.