Short Term Memory Loss During The Menopause

Women sometimes temporarily experience short term memory loss during the menopause.
Menopause is a stressful time for the body which is trying to adjust to new levels of the various hormones in the body.
This stress can trigger a bout of short term memory loss, so stress management is a very important factor to improve short term memory loss during the menopause.
Stress causes the body to release a hormone called cortisol which blocks the memories from being registered.
Since it is a known fact that most women going through the menopause are stressed, it is essential to stay positive and stay stress free. Easier said than done, I know :) Try the EFT I mentioned in my penultimate post.
I find that l-theanine which is extracted from tea, is a wonderful gentle supplement that really helps with anxiety and stress...

Menopause Can Cause Temporary Loss of Memory and Learning Ability

A new study has revealed that women going through the menopause do suffer from temporary loss of memory and learning ability.

For a four-year period, researchers studied 2,362 women, who were between the ages of 42 and 52 had at least one menstrual period in the three months before the study started.

This is the largest study of its kind to date and has been published in the May 26, 2009 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The women were given three tests:
* verbal memory
* working memory
* a test that measured the speed at which they processed information.

Scientists tested the women throughout four stages of the menopause transition:
- premenopausal (no change in menstrual periods)
- early perimenopausal (menstrual irregularity but no "gaps" of 3 months)
- late perimenopausal (having no period for three to 11 months)
- postmenopausal (no period for 12 months).

The study found that processing speed improved with repeated testing during premenopause, early perimenopause and postmenopause, but that scores during late perimenopause did not show the same degree of improvement.

Does HRT Shrink Women's Brains?

According to a US study led by researchers at Wake Forest University, two key areas of the brain involved in thinking and memory were smaller in women who had taken HRT than in those who had been given a "dummy" placebo pill.

These findings may explain previous studies linking HRT to dementia and an increased risk of memory loss.

The big flaw in this study was that the researchers admitted that they they were unable to take brain scans of the women before they began takin HRT.

So in actual fact the brain shrinkage could have occured before these women began taking HRT.

Yet again a big broo ha ha about nothing as this doesn't prove anything.
More studies would have to be done before any conclusions about brain shrinkage and HRT can be made.