On 11 Jan 2025, Seniors Today hosted their weekly Health Live Webinar with a Senior neurologist, Dr Kastubh Mahajan who spoke on and answered questions about Memory Matters: Brain Health Basics
About Dr Kaustubh Mahajan
Dr Kaustubh Mahajan is a well-known Neurologist with experience of over 15 years in the field. Dr Kaustubh Mahajan is Consultant – Neurologist at P D Hinduja Hospital & Medical Research Centre, Khar, Mumbai.
He has completed his MBBS and Post-Graduation from Seth G S Medical College, Mumbai and completed his training in DNB (Neurology) subsequently. He is also a member of the prestigious American Academy Of Neurology.
He is a member of IMA, MCI and Neurological Society of India. He specialises in headaches, stroke care, movement disorders and epilepsy.
If you notice any of the following signs in yourself or your close ones, it means that you have started developing early signs of forgetfulness. These signs include:
- Opening your phone to do a task and instead start scrolling and forgetting why you picked up the phone in the first place
- Entering a room and not being able to recall why you came to the room
- Opening the fridge and being unable to recall the item you had come to get
Forgetfulness is a broad term which can encompass many issues of memory.
One thing that should raise an alarm is forgetting things and events from recent memory.
Loss of recent memory is very common. In such cases, the individual clearly and distinctly remembers all events of the past but is unable to recall things and events that occurred a few days back or even yesterday.
The hippocampus of the brain can be compared to the RAM of the computer, and is the main force behind our working memory.
The frontal lobes of the brain can be compared to the hard disk, and it stores the long term memory.
It is often seen that whenever an elderly person is suffering from dementia or struggling with short term memory, it is seen that the problem is mainly in the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is the centre in the brain which is situated in the temporal lobes and is responsible for recent memory.
There is also this new terminology “doom scrolling” which is used to define the activity of spending a lot of time scrolling, mindlessly and you keep getting distracted. This is because the algorithm of the applications available on your phone knows what you want to see. In such cases, your hippocampus, which is trained to retain 7-8 recent memories at a given point of time, gets overwhelmed by the 10-15 recent memories and things. And which is when you forget the important things/ primary task you were supposed to remember and act on.
Your memories and the things you need to remember are stored in your brain in the synapses, which are neurochemical connections.
At night time, there is clearing of these synapses to keep the important and relevant information and delete the unwanted events/ information.
These are cleared during your REM sleep (later half of your sleep).
If you have sleep issues such as interrupted sleep, not getting adequate sleep, then these toxins are bound to get accumulated. And these toxins in the future cause damage to the temporal lobes and hence cause dementia.
Dementia is therefore caused due to inappropriate clearing of the toxins.
Dementia creates 2 victims, one is the patient himself and the other is the caretaker/ attendant.
It can get frustrating to take care of a patient with dementia, since the patient keeps making the same mistakes again and again. And if one does not know how to take good care of a patient with dementia, the caretaker is bound to have a caretaker burn out.
Myths associated with dementia:
- It is a disease of the old: this is not necessary.
- Dementia is a broad term for degeneration of the brain where the main domain of memory is affected. But memory is not the only domain/ aspect which is affected, the patient may also have behavioural changes, psychological changes.
- It can happen in young patients as well. It all depends on the cause.
2. Medical sciences are growing and we may have a cure for dementia: the maximum research which is happening in the US is on the subject and disease of dementia, since the age threshold is increasing now. But unfortunately we do not have any drug at the moment that can cure dementia.
- However, there are drugs which can somewhat control the symptoms but not cure the symptoms.
- By the time a patient presents with the symptoms of dementia, the disease has already progressed to 80% and thus reversibility of the disease becomes difficult.
3. Dementia can be cured with present medicines or can at least prevent it from worsening. By the time a patient presents with the symptoms of dementia, the disease has already progressed to 80% and thus reversibility of the disease becomes difficult. The disease starts 40 years prior to the presentation of symptoms, thus prevention of the disease prior to 40 years can slow the progression of the disease, or even prevent it.
4. Dementia can’t be prevented if genetic background is present.
- If you have a genetic background of dementia, it is not necessary that you will too suffer from dementia because there are other factors such as the environmental factors that also play an important role in the onset and progression of the disease.
- Genetic background gives you the tendency of developing a disease but your environmental influence is responsible for how severe and how early you will develop the disease.
5. Dementia means Alzheimer’s, they are one and the same. Alzheimer’s dementia is just one of the causes for dementia but there are other causes and types of dementia as well.
Measures that you can take now to prevent dementia at a later stage:
- The most important risk factor for developing dementia is age. As you age, the risks of you developing dementia are higher.
- Reduce the toxic damage accumulating in your brain. For this you need to get adequate, good quality and uninterrupted sleep.
- Improve your brain circulation. The better your circulation, the better and efficient the process of clearing of toxins. You can improve your circulation by
- Quitting smoking
- Abstaining from alcohol
- Exercise
- Improve brain reserve, this can be done by making wanted and significant brain connections which are not going to be deleted. This can be done by learning new things and revising them, such a learning a new language, a new musical instrument, gardening, practice writing with your non- dominant hand
- Certain foods also help. You should avoid food items which will block your arteries such as oily food items, carbohydrate rich food items. A mediterranean diet is good for your brain
- Keep yourself busy with a hobby or an activity even after you retire from work, something to keep you active and creative
