You are young, perhaps fit and not taking any heavy drugs. You know for sure you weren’t in any severe accident. Yet, you suffer from memory loss. For example you have difficulties remembering phrases, numbers, which slow you down in your work. You could misplacing objects or mixing words. Perhaps you’re having a hard time remembering names or simply recollecting events that happened a while ago. Age, head trauma, Alzheimer and nervous system medications have a direct impact on the brain and are pretty much self-explanatory in regard to memory loss.  What if I told you at least 6 other causes that can impact your memory no matter how young you are?

Emotional trauma / depression / anxiety

That’s not an enumeration, but rather a natural order. An event with significant emotional impact can cause a major depressive episode, followed by generalized anxiety. However that’s not the point here.

When the brain is faced with an emotional impact that is hurtful to recollect, it wipes away the paths to those memories. This is in simple words the mechanism of dissociative amnesia. The memories themselves are not actually erased, you just forget how to access them. The fantastic news is that as that impact fades away, either through therapy or with the passing of time and self healing, those memories will show up again.

In fact, in therapy, when the brain starts to remember painful periods in one’s life, it can be a sign of healing. Basically the brain considers it is safe to go there again, because now you can handle it.

Lack of sleep, stress and multitasking

As I’ve explained in this article right here, sleep deprivation has an impact on your frontal lobe, resembling excessive drinking.

Stress can get you physically sick (click here for the full article). In regard to memory loss, the mechanism is simple. A few minutes of stress cause the release of cortisol. The first area hit by large quantities of cortisol is the hippocampus. Guess what that part of the brain does? It deals with memory and the learning process.  

Multitasking is purely damaging to the brain and I’ve explained here why. When you’re multitasking you’re not even present, so how could you possibly remember anything? Plus, specific studies have been made, which I’ve linked in the aforementioned article which were showing that multitasking does cause memory degradation.

Nutritional deficiency

I’ve met people who were under the impression that they are eating well, just because they were affording large quantities of food. But pork is not a vitamin. A diet which misses B vitamins (B1 and B12 in particular) or good proteins can affect your memory. Deficit of B1 can bring along confusion and even hallucinations. Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but you should eat your veggies along with some meat.

Alcohol + common meds cocktail

“I don’t drink much, just often” – sounds familiar? Well, as if the excess of alcohol wouldn’t be damaging enough, combining it voluntarily or not with medications can damage your memory really fast. That’s why a lot of meds explicitly mention they should not be taken with alcohol.

The most dangerous ones are those that relate even slightly to the nervous system. For example: sleep pills, anti-depressants, pain medication, tranquilizers and surprisingly also antihistamines (commonly prescribed for allergies).

Lack of memory exercise

Brain needs exercise too. Nowadays everything is at hand- we don’t have to remember phone numbers or do simple math in our head. We don’t even need to remember info, because we can just google it. Who cares what this street is called and where it goes? You use your GPS for that. Who needs to remember the opening hours of some place? You have it on Facebook.

Therefore, as with any body part / area in the brain not used, your body will conclude that ‘hey, it seems like we don’t use this, so let’s forget about it’. If you want to actively improve your memory, not just keep it in shape, there are plenty of phone apps targeting memory exercices.

The idea is simple: sleep well, eat well, use your brain more, challenge it. Avoid mixing alcohol and meds and if you have some things to address, go see a therapist. Take care of your brain and it will take care of you and the decisions you take.