I sent myself an email from my cell phone last night to remind myself to make this post this morning.

My short-term isn't that bad, but long term is terrible. I find myself forgetting really major things, like how my daughter broke her wrist a few years ago, or even that she broke her wrist in the first place. Stuff like that. Yesterday she said something about it and I was thinking....huh? She broke her wrist? And I had to really concentrate to remember it.

From what I understand, Rocky's first cousin Ginkgo is really helpful with strengthening short term memory retention. The daughter of a friend of mine takes it and she swears by it. She takes it for a couple of days before tests and she says the difference in the amount of info she can retain is amazing.

But you would have to remember to take it.

I do this all the time, but just put it down to being a middle-aged woman. Get up, go into the kitchen, think 'what?', go back into the living room, sit down, remember, get up again, kitchen, forget, back again, sit down, remember ...

I've found emails are essential. If I know I need to do something in the office and I remember at home, I'll email my office address, and vice versa. Likewise, electronic calendars are great. If I make an appointment and put it in the calendar right there and then with a reminder to be emailed to me, I'm ok. But I'm terrible at remembering anything I've not written down.

Last Saturday, apparently, I'd arranged to go over to a friend's house for dinner and then to see Notes on a Scandal. When she phoned me on Saturday morning to remind me I was like 'what?'.

This week I've resumed my supplements - multi-vitamin, ginseng and a few others. The ginseng really helps me with sharpness of focus and I've had a great week in the office, I've been really sharp mentally and less forgetful. Although I do still do that get up, walk to printer, remember I haven't clicked 'print', go back to my desk, click 'print', forget to collect printing, think I haven't printed it, click 'print', then find I've got two of 'em.

But you would have to remember to take it.

Hee. I already take a boatload of supplements morning and night. I have no trouble remembering things that are part of my daily routine. (So far.)

My memory sucks, both short-term and long-term. A friend of mine asked the other day, "do you still see Tanya?" I had no idea what she was talking about and shook my head no. On the way home I remembered that Tanya is a friend, and I see her often.

The other day a family member visiting from NH asked about my surgery, and I had no idea what he was talking about for a minute. Oh yeah, I had surgery in December. Duh, forgot about that!

I have a big calendar in my kitchen with huge blocks. I check it frequently. If I didn't, I would miss appointments.

This morning, I had to stop at the deli to buy my preschooler a sandwich. I didn't remember that the kids fed the rest of the bread to the ducks the other day. I could have easily went to the store yesterday, but I forgot.

It's sad. My memory loss makes me feel like an airhead. I should lay off the Diet Coke. I've read somewhere that it can cause memory loss.

I could go on, but I forget what I forgot.

Lori, ALL of my memory loss problems started when I was addicted to Diet Coke. I drank 2-5 cans every day for probably 2 years. I haven't had soda of any kind for about 5 years, and the things I still can barely remember (my daughter breaking her wrist, for example) are things that happened while I was drinking Diet Coke. My husband warned me several times that it caused memory loss but I didn't believe him.

Depends on a lot of things. For example, how you learn and remember things has a big effect. My memory is highly visual, so I can still see things from my childhood in crisp detail. I do not do well on the written word and worse on names. I will routinely forget names within seconds of learning them, but will remember faces for years. Go figure.

but I forget what I forgot.

or is it, I forgot what I have forgotten.

Diet Coke is bad for my health. It's like a drug, I crave it. Some days I can drink 5 to 6 glasses full. I need to find an alternative, iced tea might do the trick.

That's it, I'm weaning myself.

Huh, I've been drinking a lot of diet soda lately.

Huh.

On a daily basis, I'll think of something I need to do, walk to the room I need to do it in, and then either get distracted by something else and do that instead, or forget entirely why I got up five seconds ago.

Woking.

Aspartame - the sweetener that is in Diet Coke - is really bad for you. It was illegal for years and finally allowed when Reagan relaxed the FDA regulations and let a whole lot of shit go through that hadn't been allowed before. People who have PKU - phenylketonuria, a disease which causes mental retardation (how do I know about this? Long story involving PKU ex-wife of my ex-boyfriend, their kids, diets, hippies, health food, etc, but trust me here; a lot of this is backed up by Johns Hopkins) really cannot go near aspartame because it completely fucks with their brains. PKU & aspartame. More people than one suspects are positive on some level or another for PKU and in those people (some estimates are as high as 1 in 10,000) aspartame actually converts to a form of methyl alcohol in their brains. Yes, methyl alcohol, like bathtub gin, and it does exactly what you would suspect to brain cells. Diet soda & diet stuff containing aspartame is not allowed in my house & hasn't been since the 80s, when I was drinking diet coke and got dizzy, like so dizzy I could barely walk - for 6 solid weeks. Which is another reason I know a lot about this stuff.

Iconomy, what do you drink now, besides water?

I can't imagine going without caffeine during the day at this juncture. I think I subconsciously self-medicate with Diet Coke. I feel that it keeps me more alert, more sharp. Obviously not. :)

MGL, I know, it's terrible. I drink the original Diet Coke with aspartame in copious amounts. Isn't aspartame illegal in England, or am I not thinking correctly?

I drink water, green or red or black tea (iced or hot), and fresh squeezed oj - my favorite! And once in a while I have apple cider.

Thanks iconomy, sounds good. I'm switching to tea.

My favorite drink in the whole world is a cold glass of San Pellegrino sparkling mineral water. My toes curl when I drink it. Seriously. They do. It's like an orgasm in a glass ;)

Lori, good on ya! I make up iced tea in the morning and drink it all day. Another thing I drink occasionally that I forgot about - lemonade made with fresh lemons and some maple syrup. It's great.

So mike, how much diet soda are you drinking? Does it have aspertame in it? Very interesting...

Mike, I'm exactly the same way, down to the getting furious and overreacting to minor things because of my general forgetfulness.

The other day I had a letter to post. I put it on the bookshelf by the door where I put my keys, work ID and wallet. I left for work, and as I was walking to my bus I realised I wasn't holding the letter. I thought "oh well, I'll mail it tomorrow". When I got home that night, the letter wasn't sitting there. I still have no idea if I dropped it, actually mailed it, or if it's somewhere in the apartment (believe me, I've turned the place upside down). So I'll just have to wait and see if it arrived. It's driving me crazy.

I write things on my hand. It's the only surefire way to get me to remember stuff.

I love San Pellegrino too. It is delicious. Sparkling water needs to enter the house more often.

lemonade made with fresh lemons and some maple syrup.

YUM!

Yes, mike, I'm also curious.

I usually forget two or three things on my way out the door, morning, noon, or night. It's never the keys, but it'll be my phone, or my hat, or a book, or cash, or something. I counter this by patting myself down as I walk down the stairs. Usually by the third step from the bottom, I shout, "SHIT!" and run back upstairs, shaking my head and saying something like "You dumb fuck, you'd forget your head if you didn't keep it up your ass all the time."

On just about everything else, my memory is great.

MGL, I'm a compulsive reader of labels (I used to know the ingredients of everything in my bathroom; now I remove labels because I don't want chemical names zinging around my brain when I think someone's hair smells nice and I tend to really like the shape of unadorned toiletry bottles, plus, none of my housemates will use anything out of an unlabeled bottle, even if they recognize the shape; I digress). I noticed the "PHENYLKETONEURICS - CONTAINS PHENYLALANINE" warning on the side of every bottle or can of soda starting a few years ago, I think even on non-diet brands. So many wild chemicals pumping through us these days.

I've been drinking Diet Mt. Dew, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet A&W, and Cherry Coke Zero. I don't know if any of those have aspartame. It's really only 1-2 cans a day on average, probably not enough to make a difference. When I said "a lot", I think I meant in comparison to how much I was drinking before; ie, none. I lost the taste for soda in 2005 when I hardcore dieted and went water-only for four months.

In any case, I still think I'll try not drinking it anymore (I probably won't miss it at all) and adding a little ginseng and ginkgo to my daily supplements. I think the key word that jan used was "focus"; when I forget things, I feel like it's because my mind is jumbled and things just get "lost". If I can get some focus back, I should be fine.

What's this thread about again?

Memory is a funny thing. Somehow, our experiences (both subjective and objective) cause some sort of long-lasting and physical change to that mass of meat where memory resides. How is it that we remember dreams - a totally subjective and unconscious experience?

One theory holds memory is reinforced by association: when the mind makes connections between different memories, all of those memories become more accessible.

There used to be a art of memory which was widely practiced in Western societies up till the widespread introduction of printing; Ars Memoria. Many of the techniques relied on associative techniques such as memorizing a speech while walking a particular path through a building. After enough repetitions, one recalls the sights and impressions of the walk and the association with the speech make it part of the memory of the walk. Other techniques relied on attaching images to each part of the piece being memorized.

The other oddity is the relationship between odors and memory. Evidently the portion of the brain that evolved from the olfactory lobes is when much of the memory activity takes place. Thus odors associated with memory events can be intensely evocative.

Memory regression under hypnosis can be an amazing experience. Once, many years ago, a very skilled hypnotist had me recall the time in my infancy when I took my first steps. I don't know if the memory recalled was true or simply felt true, but it was extremely vivid and contextually accurate withy many details of the surroundings and people that I know to be correct from other sources such as old photographs. A very remarkable experience.

Here's a question for bunnies: what is your very earliest memory?

"...olfactory lobes is where much..."

I think I forgot my earliest memory.

My earliest memories are all of pain. The furthest one back was when I got the ring finger on my right hand caught in the clicky-clicky part of one of those old clicky-clicky lawn chairs at my grandmother's house in Minnesota. Almost cut the tip of my finger right off. I remember the doctor and being stitched up pretty vividly.

for the record, aspartame certainly isn't illegal here (England). We have the same range of faux-sweet stuff as you do (you=americans, sorry brits/amero-greeks/swedes/others).

My earliest memory is of when my younger brother was born - I was 27 months old. After that, it's a blank until I was four or five years old.

Generally speaking, my memory is kinda flakey. I can remember the stupidest shit (which actor was in which movie with which other actor) without a problem, but if the mister told me something half an hour ago, it's probably gone. I've countered that with asking him to make sure I'm paying attention (not looking at my computer, a book, the tv, etc.) and really listening and that helps a lot.

As for diet Coke (usually generic) and aspartame - I've not had any memory problems I can ascribed to my intake. I switched to Splenda sweetened soda about four months ago and haven't noticed any difference in my memory.

My biggest memory gap (besides childhood*) is the year or two leading up to when I finally started taking anti-depressants.

*It's odd that I can really remember my time in grade school but junior and senior high are kinda vague. Life started really fucking up at about the time of my moving from grade school to junior high (losing my father-figure, being molested, being homeless, moving a lot; it's also when I started gaining weight, imagine that), so maybe it's not so odd.

I have almost no memories of my early childhood. It's very odd. I do remember my kindergarten teacher, but nothing else about that; I vaguely remember first grade. Second grade is very clear -- that's what, seven years old?

This sometimes worries me. I had a very happy childhood, though, so I don't think I'm actually repressing anything.

As for my short-term memory, I'm usually very good at remembering things, but some time at the end of last year I realized I had too much to remember and should start writing things down (assignments, meetings, etc.). But when I write things down, it pretty much takes them out of my memory -- I guess I decide I don't have to remember them any more, because I have them on paper -- but I haven't yet gotten back in the habit of looking at the papers. And it probably didn't help that I lost my calendar/planner for several months over the holidays.

So it's been a bit of a scramble the last few months. I actually missed a job interview by a day a few weeks ago; since the interviewer had also written down the wrong date for the original interview (I missed the rescheduled one), we ended up about even.

Oh, and Mike, I often put things I need to do something with (letters to mail, dry cleaning to drop off) by the front door so I remember to take it with me on the way out. It's astounding how often I just step over the pile without seeing it!

mike9322, the human memory is capable of prodigous feats. The ancient Greeks and Romans routinely committed several hours of oratory to memory, when hearing a speaker, one time. Long, long passages of poetry and oral history have been passed along, via verbal recitation from one generation to another, in many cultures. Writing is a great convenience, but a good memory is vastly more useful.

I think you can improve your memory substanially, by several means.

1) Expect your memory to work, instead of expecting it not to work. If you have a self-expectation of having a poor memory, you set the stage for your memory to fail often, and you begin to try to work around it, constantly. If you expect your memory to work, you leave a lot more time to observe the world about you, and to interact with your surroundings and people reasonably, and your memory will automatically work much, much better. So start saying, instead, to yourself, and to others, "I have a good memory." because, really, you do, if you learn to let it work.

2) Stress and inattention are common reasons memories are not formed properly in the first place. As your level of anxiety rises in any situation, your normal memory functions deteriorate rapidly. People with normal mental functions who are relaxed and engaged with their surroundings rarely have memory issues. But you can't divide your attention between several activities, and keep enough focus for normal memory formation to work well. And if you are "in a hurry" your memory functions won't be nearly optimal, either, because of anxiety. This is the major reason air controllers, pilots, and command professionals cultivate an aura of professional calm. Calm brings order to a situation, and improves short term memory particularly. If you have to remember something, first be calm, then concentrate on understanding it, and you will then remember it, nearly automatically.

3) Routine is an aid to memory, not a substitute for it. Putting things by your wallet in order to remember to take them along doesn't work, if you are substituting placement for memory. In fact, tricks like these can hurt your memory function, by falsely allowing your concious mind to "tick off" the item as "remembered" instead of keeping it on the "to remember" stack. You can improve your memory function by placement and routine, if you percieve such tricks as consolidations of routine steps, and pay attention to each step in the routine. This is not unlike a pilot doing a pre-flight inspection, by the common walk around technique. We walk around our aircraft, checking specific mechanical details, using the progress of the walk to prompt us for those details in logical order, but we should never do a preflight inspection in a rush. In the same way, we do checklists before takeoff, before landing, and before and during critical flight phases, not as a substitute for remembering details, but as an organizational routine for enhancing memory and performance. When routine substitutes for mindful engagement, problems quickly develop.

4) Learning and practicing mnemonic devices, like "peg" memory, house object routines, numeric or alphabetical pneumonics can help tremendously with easily remembering lists, or random associations, in real time. Generally, I shop for groceries by list, but my lists aren't written. I use a peg memory mnemonic based on my kitchen and refrigerator physical layout, to inventory my kitchen contents and make my normal grocery shopping list, which will be around 75 to 100 items. I also take a written list, to remember items for the bathroom, laundry, my brother's needs, the dog's needs, etc., because they are not a part of my normal memory pneumonic. Only once or twice a year will I "forget" a grocery item, but I actually come home without items on the written lists more frequently than that, because I misread them, or can't find the items at the store. It's just no problem for me to "remember" my grocery lists, and when people go shopping with me they wonder how I do it, as I'm clearly moving purposefully through the store, not browsing shelves, but really, it's easy. In my head, I'm just opening the cupboard doors and the refrigerator, one by one, and getting what isn't there, plus whatever I've previously pictured as needing to be there for any special occasions coming up. In the same way, pilots often do pre-landing checklists from "pictures" of the plane and the instrument panel, configured for approach and landing phases, stored in their heads. This is especially effective for those that fly the same planes or types frequently. It's not uncommon for an experienced pilot to be calling a 200 item checklist flawlessly, from memory, as his second officer reads it back off a clipboard, and it's really no effort on the pilot's part. You can easily do the same, for common tasks in your life, if you believe you can, and practice doing it.

My earliest memory is from preschool - so I was about 3 or so. It is a very vivid memory of having an intense, scary dream and getting out of bed with my blanket, walking out of my room and down the hall in the dim twilight of the morning and curling up at the foot of my parents' bed. I can still see the pattern on the cover in the early morning light.

HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... ah, hah. Ha.

Sorry, I'll just exuse myself from this thread.

My long term memory is very good, almost scary. Short term isn't bad, except for simple things like "Why did I come in here, again?" My earliest memory is of me sitting on concrete steps, "talking" to the two stone lions on either side of the steps. My mother confirms this story - I was about 18 months old. I remember being afraid to go up the dark stairs to my bedroom around the same age. I remember riding one of those bouncy horses when I was around three. I remember watching my mom breastfeed my new brother (and "feeding" my doll) when I was five. I remember being upset for leaving my favorite stuffed animal in my friend's yard overnight (I was around seven, and I still have the toy!) I remember too many other unpleasant things, too, which is why to this day I have no real relationship with my father. I really should write all of them down, for my future generations.