![\"Enjoying](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/age-cymru-1eh_ook12my-unsplash.jpg\" "\\"Photo")
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Enjoying a craft is lifelong.<\/p>\n
Source: Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash<\/p>\n
Having lost my elderly parents and in-laws to dementia<\/a>, I was surprised to learn that a very good friend of mine in her late 60s is dealing with the beginnings of memory<\/a> loss, and yet she isn’t discouraged. She\u2019s smart; she’s aware of the future that may await her; and she’s managing to take life\u2019s potential calamities in stride. She’s not the only one.<\/p>\n A new book by Zaldy Tan, M.D., the Director of the Memory & Healthy Aging Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses precisely that type of resilience<\/a> in his new book, What to Remember When You Are Forgetting: How to Live with Memory Loss, Alzheimer\u2019s, and Other Dementias.<\/p>\n I also came across a few surprises in the 8th edition of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins. You\u2019ll appreciate these authors\u2019 approach if you\u2019re seeking an encyclopedic set of facts, especially if you\u2019re okay with a bit less of the warm reassurance offered by Dr. Tan.<\/p>\n Here are four of the less-commonly-known facts from the above books:<\/p>\n A decline in memory doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re losing your whole mind. Other cognitive skills remain to help you navigate a thriving life. Not everyone suffers the final stages of dementia. The earliest stages can last for as many as 10 or even 15 years, offering those with mild cognitive impairment<\/a> a fair chance of never progressing to the most severe forms. Meanwhile, suggests Dr. Tan, if you\u2019re the partner or caretaker<\/a> of an early-stage impaired person, don\u2019t miss this chance to help them enjoy the experiences that might otherwise be put off too long, such as travel or learning something new.
\nWhen young and healthy, the way you live may affect the timing and degree of any future mental loss. That may mean giving up the fatty meat, eating your greens, and talking to a doctor about ways to get enough good sleep without potentially harmful methods, i.e., marijuana in any form, alcohol<\/a>, or sleeping<\/a> pills.
\nDon\u2019t fret over the normal ways our thinking changes as we age. Getting lost while driving to an unfamiliar place, for example, is no big deal if you\u2019ve always had a poor sense of direction. If you\u2019re losing what was a great sense of direction, it may be time to investigate. Having trouble with names and faces is a common symptom, though it\u2019s frequently a normal part of aging. So long as you can give yourself \u201chints\u201d that bring back a name or word that temporarily eludes you, that\u2019s probably normal. So if the hard-to-recall word pops up later, relax. With actual impaired cognition<\/a>, time itself won\u2019t bring back the lost word. It\u2019s gone.
\nIf you’ve always gotten by with a casual approach toward keeping track of life\u2019s details, you can learn to use calendars, day-planners, and the like. The friend I mentioned earlier enjoys shopping for eye-catching sticky notes to enhance the effectiveness of the large wall calendar on which she now depends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enjoying a craft is lifelong. Source: Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash Having lost my elderly parents and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-768112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}