So that's why I am often struggling to find the correct English word, because I have to sift through all the Dutch words as well now...

Thank-you Ronni for this reassuring article. I search for words all the time and this helps me visualize the reason for it.

And it doesn't help that a lot of our prescriptions -- like those for cholesterol -- exacerbate the problem. I just discovereted that recently and it really made me angry. Frankly, I'd rather be dead than spend my last days in la-la land.

My aunt told me years ago that with time our brains fill up and now every new bit of info we take in something's got to go, there's just not enough room for it all. Works for me :)

I think about this topic a lot as I observe my own conversation or thought process, and my observations fit right in with the studies discussed here.

Several years ago--partly in fun--I came up with the Rolodex Theory of Recall. The idea is that as we age, we accumulate so much information and so many names of songs and singers, books and authors, movies and TV shows and actors, and all sorts of other stuff that we sometimes can't come up with a name the instant we want to.

I've learned not to force it. If you let it go, the word or the name will just come. Perhaps not right away, but it's there and will pop into your mind.

Nearly three years ago when I took on the full-time care of my 91 year old mother-in-law who had severe dementia, I began studying aging, dementia, and related subjects. I never really have been concerned about the "senior moment" issue, as almost all of my friends and I, who are now mostly in our early to late 60's, had been laughing about forgetting names and words for more than a decade. One friend had, in fact, labeled this "CBS" for "Cluttered Brain Syndrome", back when we were still in our forties. So no biggie there. And, in witnessing the advance of true dementia in my MIL for almost two decades by the time she required full-time care, I was well aware that it was so much more than slight memory lapses. It had perhaps started out that way very early on, but she managed quite well for the early years, well over a decade. In fact, she and her husband managed so well, remaining in their own home in the suburbs, and still driving themselves most places, until they were both nearly 90, that we did not realize how far along she was by the time he died.They had compensated for each other amazingly well. He was the brains of the operation and she was the brawn. So what I worry about signs of in my husband and myself is very different from silly senior moment incidents. What I watch for is a bigger loss of recognition of all kinds of things, a loss of understanding and a confusion that is very different from minor lapses in recall.

Personally, I think the projection of the numbers of people who will develop true and severe dementia is over- exaggerated and over-hyped. Lots of people are making or hope to make lots of money off this, and that's just sad.

Ha! Loved reading about this, and of course reading the article. Just a couple of weeks ago I posted about something similar and was thrilled to have the experts confirm what I already knew.

Thanks for sharing Ronni!

well, i've been saying that for a long time too: of course young people can remember things better because they are empty headed with little information in their heads, while our brains are full of lots of knowledge that we need to sift through to find what we want...makes perfectly good sense!

How true, Bruce. I'm still trying to cram in useless info for quiz-playing and there's no more room at present.

Great topic and great comfort to know that we perhaps know too much as we get older. It's true for me though, what Madeline says -don't force remembering a word, it'll come later.