INS: Menopausal Memory Complaints Linked to Mood - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today
INS: Menopausal Memory Complaints Linked to Mood - CME Teaching Brief - MedPage Today
Here we go again- something most likely physical in nature being blamed on a psychological state.
When people spread their attention thin, it's difficult to encode new information," Dr, Mapstone said. "When they're worried or anxious about being late for work, or the problems of an aging parent - that sort of stress can rob your attentional resources and impact your ability to encode information properly."
This phenomenon isn't limited to perimenopausal women but can occur in any man or woman with symptoms of anxiety or depression, he added.
"What characterizes these women is that they're being pulled in a lot of different directions," Dr. Weber said. "Many work -- they have careers, aging parents, children. Then they're going through this dramatic hormonal change."
Thankfully there is a nod to small sample size being a limit to the applicability of the results, but it is maddening that researchers would rather look at the psychosocial component of memory loss as opposed to the physiological rationale. Maybe estrogen protects the brain in women. Maybe loss of estogen allows for inflammatory processes to happen. Maybe cytokines are involved??? My pet word her, thrown in for fun, but the point is that I think that estrogen can be protective for women in a way that has not been determined scientifically yet.
Here we go again- something most likely physical in nature being blamed on a psychological state.
When people spread their attention thin, it's difficult to encode new information," Dr, Mapstone said. "When they're worried or anxious about being late for work, or the problems of an aging parent - that sort of stress can rob your attentional resources and impact your ability to encode information properly."
This phenomenon isn't limited to perimenopausal women but can occur in any man or woman with symptoms of anxiety or depression, he added.
"What characterizes these women is that they're being pulled in a lot of different directions," Dr. Weber said. "Many work -- they have careers, aging parents, children. Then they're going through this dramatic hormonal change."
Thankfully there is a nod to small sample size being a limit to the applicability of the results, but it is maddening that researchers would rather look at the psychosocial component of memory loss as opposed to the physiological rationale. Maybe estrogen protects the brain in women. Maybe loss of estogen allows for inflammatory processes to happen. Maybe cytokines are involved??? My pet word her, thrown in for fun, but the point is that I think that estrogen can be protective for women in a way that has not been determined scientifically yet.
posted by Impatient Patient at Saturday, February 04, 2006
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