Becoming more forgetful is something we take for granted as we get older, but is it necessarily true?

My colleague Dr Shirley Bond in our women’s hormonal health seminars used to address the issue of forgetfulness by reminding our audience that the older we get the more information we have lodged in our memories and that it can just take longer to retrieve it – or it has been misfiled somewhere!

Is it inevitable?

Bioidentical natural progesterone can help with both memory and concentration, key factors in healthy aging, and we do not have to accept that getting older means we necessarily lose cognitive function.

In fact it can be the reverse as a study at the University of California at San Diego, and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, seems to show.

We generally seem to accept that ageing is defined by progressive physical, cognitive and psychosocial decline but these researchers have found that for in many people, cognitive skills and quality of life improve steadily even to the end of life.

The Successful Ageing Evaluation (SAGE) study included 1,006 elderly residents of San Diego, all of whom completed a 25-minute phone interview and a comprehensive mail-in survey.

How to help yourself

As in many other areas, such as physical exercise, the mantra seems to be ‘use it or lose it’ so here’s what to do:

– keep active

– maintain your social contacts

– tax your brain with regular quizzes

– try brain puzzles like crosswords or jigsaws

– develop new hobbies and interests, don’t just stick to what you know

These tips can help to keep you interested and alert all life long, and if ‘brain fog’ is a problem then look to your hormone balance. Low progesterone levels are associated with this issue, particularly at menopause, so supplementing with bioidentical natural progesterone, could be the answer.