DEAR Dr. Fritz,
I hope you are well. Please call me Mayumi. I have been following your column for almost a decade now. I have been so forgetful lately that I always end up misplacing my things. There are times when I kept on buying new keys only to find my old keys later. There are times too when I cannot remember some items on the grocery list. Sometimes, there are words that I wanted to say but can’t because I tend to forget them midway while speaking.
How do I know this is not the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease? This has been giving me the creeps lately. Please help me. I want to overcome my forgetfulness.
Thank you very much and I hope to hear from you soon. More power to you.
Mayumi of Cabantian
*****
Dear Mayumi of Cabantian,
I know how hard it is to keep on forgetting things. Being forgetful causes a lot of anxieties to people today especially that more and more people are already aware of memory-related diseases like Alzheimer’s.
However, new studies have shown that the human mind, if not traumatized by serious injury or disease, never forgets. The thing is, forgetting is not about losing information. It is more of a slip-up in the way the information is being stored or retrieved.
But, don’t worry. Every one of us forgets. There is no human mind that never forgets a thing. It doesn’t mean that if you forget something every once in a while, you are already having the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease.
You know that this is not Alzheimer’s disease yet but you are just experiencing the effects on memory brought by aging when you forget things occasionally, or when you sometimes misplace items, or if you have minor short-term memory loss and cannot remember the exact details.
However, if you are in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease, you don’t remember any episode of forgetfulness. You will forget the names of family members or friends and the symptoms may only be noticed by close friends or relatives and you might also experience some confusion in situations that are outside the familiar.
There are still a lot of things to talk to and you still have a lot of issues to deal with regarding this but we don’t have a lot of space for now so let me then continue this in my next issue. Until then!
Dr. Fritz
(Dr. Fritz Legarde Espedilla is an aesthetic dermatologist and surgeon and a clinical sexologist. She is also trained in hypnotherapy and Medical Acupuncture. She has been in the broadcast media for more than a decade and has written a book based on her 15 year stint with her radio program, “Healthy is Sexy Secrets ni Dr. Fritz.” She is also a faculty in a College of Pharmacy. For your questions, you may send them to Dear Dr. Fritz, c/o VoxPop-Davao Publishing Inc., Ebro-Pelayo Building, Jacinto St., Davao City, (former Department of Foreign Affairs office), across Ateneo de Davao University and beside Holy Child School of Davao, or you e-mail them to dokfritz@yahoo.com. If you don’t wish your letter to be published, we regret that we cannot answer them. Thank you for your understanding.)
