2001 should have been a great year for Laura Luft. After a decade of single motherhood, she had a husband who loved her and her daughter. Her career as a real estate manager was thriving too. The retail and office complex she managed was the largest in San Francisco; in fact, it was one of the largest in the western United States.
But all was not well. Medical problems triggered early menopause and in vitro fertilization—her only hope of having a baby with her new husband—had failed. If that wasn’t enough, her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer and news came on September 11 that the high-rise complex she managed in San Francisco was a suspected terrorist target. “It was too much,” she recalls. In a short time, she lost her sense of safety, gave up her dream of having a baby, and feared losing her husband as well. She also suffered another unexpected loss—her memory.
“Memory loss affected basically every aspect of living,” says Luft, who eventually lost her job after spending too much time away for needed treatment. “I would start a sentence and not be able to finish it. I would get lost driving home. I couldn’t find my way to the doctor’s office where I had gone for years. Sometimes, I forgot to pick up my daughter at school—she would call and ask where I was.”
Why We’re Losing It
While Luft’s situation may be extreme, it is not unique. Every day, millions of American women grapple with memory loss, says Elisa Lottor, Ph.D., ND, author of Female and Forgetful (Warner Books, 2002.) The results can range from embarrassing to frustrating (not being able to recall a colleague’s name or your ATM access code) to frightening or even devastating (suspecting you have Alzheimer’s or losing your job because you’ve misplaced important documents or forgotten meetings with clients).
Often associated with aging, Alzheimer’s, and “senior moments,” memory loss is not just a problem of the over-65 set. It is an increasingly common problem for their daughters and even granddaughters, many of whom are professional women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and who are simply stressed out, says Lottor.
Stress, according to Lottor and other memory experts, is a major cause of forgetfulness. Stress causes the release of the hormone cortisol from the adrenal glands, explains Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., president and medical director of the Tucson, Arizona-based Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation. Small amounts of the hormone are necessary to live and function, but large amounts cause damage to the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. He estimates stress related memory loss affects at least 10 million people, and like Alzheimer’s, this more mild memory loss is “much more common in women than in men.”
While Luft had reason to feel stressed, it certainly doesn’t take failed fertility treatment, threats of terrorism, or a loved one’s illness to induce the kind of stress that interferes with memory. “We’re all overloaded; we are all multi-tasking,” says Lottor. “Drive down the freeway and you will see women driving, talking on the phone, and putting on makeup all at the same time.”
Never in history has this overload been greater, she says. While women are making inroads to challenging high-level and once male-dominated careers, most continue to hold the traditionally female roles of mom, housekeeper, cook, and chauffeur. “We have too much competing for our attention,” Lottor says. “We can’t remember it all.”
The unhealthy lifestyle habits that are often byproducts of an overloaded, over-stressed life (not enough sleep, not enough exercise, too much fast food) can also take a toll on our ability to remember, as can the quick and unhealthy fixes (sweets, alcohol, cigarettes) we choose to relieve the stress.
What Action to Take
While memory loss can be life-disruptive, perhaps a bigger concern for many women is the long-term implications of it. Who, upon struggling to recall a familiar word or scouring her house to find her missing reading glasses, hasn’t wondered, “Could this be a sign of more serious problems to come?”
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