Memory loss is a typical symptom in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia in the UK, and accounts for two-thirds of cases. Dr Tim Beanland, head of knowledge and learning at the Alzheimer’s Society, says that this typically takes the form of “rapid forgetting”.
Unsurprisingly, then, experiencing lapses in memory, particularly around names and faces, can cause people of a certain age to worry they are in the early stages of dementia. Dementia expert Professor June Andrews says: “I’m often asked this, but forgetting names is very common and not a sign of dementia.”
Not being able to remember names or faces can be a sign of dementia, but not always. Dr Beanland explains that this is because of how dementia can affect our memory and, in the early stages, the symptoms vary based on where in the brain the disease starts.
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In dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), where there are clumps of proteins in the brain cells, “you can get problems with memory early on, but again it tends to present in other ways,” Dr Beanland says.
This all means there is no one way that dementia affects memory in the early stages, and it is compounded by the fact that our memory worsens as we age, with or without dementia.
The key thing to consider around memory and dementia is not necessarily if you’re forgetting names and faces, but the context in which you forget them.
Additionally, with dementia, the decline is steep (over a few months rather than several years) and increasingly impacts your daily life.
If your memory is a concern for you, the experts emphasise learning to stop the difference between normal ageing and dementia – this is crucial to help contain unnecessary worry as well as, more importantly, getting the right people diagnosed who assume their issues are symptoms of normal ageing.
“We’ve got a million people living with dementia in the UK, but a third of them still have not got a diagnosis. And without it, you can’t have access to treatments and support, or understand what’s causing the symptoms, that can be really distressing.”
Key questions to ask yourself
Is this a recent development or have you always had an issue with names? If it has changed, how much worse has it become and at what rate? How is it affecting your life? And does it happen all the time, or when you are stressed/tired/unwell? Does it happen in close relationships?If it does happen even when not stressed and with close/familiar faces, that is the point at which the experts recommend getting it checked out.
Visit alzheimers.org.uk/checklist or call Alzheimer’s Society’s Dementia Support Line on 0333 150 3456.
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