MatureAging Blog

You have checked your medicine chest (don’t get frightened by its enormity: the average adult takes over 14 medications per year) and have exchanged (with your doctor’s blessings) many of them. You have gotten rid of over-the-counter medicines, prescriptions and dietary supplements that may impair your memory.   Yet, you find yourself forgetting words that you knew yesterday, or you get lost driving to visit your children (a car trip that you undertake almost daily) or have misplaced (again) your keys, or you experience wild mood changes for seemingly no reason, at least that you can remember.   What are you to do?   How do you keep yourself sharp as you age? You take pride in your fly-paper memory.   You remember every detail, no selective memories for you.   But you are afraid that you will lose that mental acuity.

Some of us expect that as we age that we would lose some of our body strength, even some of our mobility.   But the power to see, that will remain with us forever.   Others have a more mature response:   Why should vision be any different?   Changes in how we see are inevitable.   There is good news for both schools of thought.    The future – with new medications and lenses – may be clearer and brighter.  

If you have ever cracked a psychology text, you have seen it: two pictures, usually side-by-side, of a dark circle surrounded by other white rings.   In one image, the circles surrounding the inner circle are significantly larger than the center one, while in the other, they are much smaller.   Which of the two circles in the center is larger, we are asked.   We know the answer, but incredibly our instinct drives us to declare that the black circle surrounded by smaller circles is bigger than the other one.   They are, of course, of equal size.    We have been duped by a modest mind-game.

Most of us have difficulty in talking to our friends, neighbors and even (or especially) close relatives about our physical and mental challenges. There are several reasons for such a hesitancy.