BoomerGirl Diary

When Cathryn Jakobson Ramin noticed in her early 40s that her ability to read and retain what she was reading had gone awry, she thought something was wrong with her eyes. After a battery of tests that proved her vision perfectly fine, Cathryn chalked up her lack of focus to middle-age decline.

She was a few fries short of Happy Meal, and she wasn’t smiling.

“And I just thought, ‘I guess I lost my edge and basically it’s pretty much over,’ and I was not at all happy about that. I really took a blow in terms of self esteem,” says the seasoned journalist who relied on her once-sharp mental acuity to excel at her job.

She dropped out of journalism but didn’t stay resigned for long. Soon, her inner investigative reporter took over, and she set out to find out why this was happening to her.

Jakobson Ramin’s first book, “Carved in Sand: When Attention Fails and Memory Fades in Midlife” tells the story of her search for answers to questions about her own unreliable memory and to discover what midlife forgetfulness is all about.

Consulting experts in the fields of sleep, stress, traumatic brain injury, hormones, genetics and dementia, she discovered there are several factors that can diminish what Jakobson Ramin refers to as cognitive reserves.

“For lack of a better explanation,” Cathryn explains, “I refer to cognitive reserve as a suitcase that we all have in our 30s, packed full of spare neurons. So even though processing speed from a physiological standpoint begins to decline in our late 20s and continues to slow in our 30s, rarely do people notice it because of the cognitive reserves until they’re in their 40s and sometimes 50s.”

In Cathryn’s case, a possible series of repetitive head injuries from her childhood may have come back to haunt her in her 40s, which is common among boomers who wheeled all over town without protective headgear. “There’s virtually no accident you can have off a bicycle where your head won’t be involved in some way,” she says.

“Chances are it’s never usually one thing. It’s usually several things that all come together and join up with normal physiological changes that occur in the brain. Then, on top of that, you pile our information-heavy lifestyle and the lack of control we have over how information is delivered and when it is delivered, and that’s when the problems start to show up.”

It’s the piling-on of poor nutrition, lack of exercise, heart disease and diabetes, recreational drugs and alcohol, sleep deprivation, certain medications (both over-the-counter and doctor-prescribed) and, in women, diminished estrogen levels that can contribute to what we often write off as “brain fog” or “middle-aged moments.”

Fortunately, Ramin’s journey has a happy ending. Through her research, the author discovered simple and sound ways to increase those all-important cognitive reserves throughout one’s lifetime.

Cathryn advises, “It’s basically through excellent nutrition, stress reduction so that you’re not allowing anxiety to run your life, and getting enough sleep is very important. We tend to think that we’re going to burn the candle at both ends — especially boomer women with children still at home and busy jobs — that’s how we do it. We cut down on sleep. Well, that’s not going to do one thing for your cognitive abilities.”

Another critical weapon in fighting the brain drain is regular mental exercise. Jakobson Ramin recommends chess, Scrabble, bridge or any strategic games that challenge the mind.

That is, if you can remember where you put them.