Forgetfulness Causes

Forgetfulness can't be exactly categorized as a medical condition that results only due to some physical injury or any damage to the nervous system. In fact, many cases don't show any symptoms of injury to the nervous system. Rather, many healthy adults may even forget things or places at some point of time. Even you must have experienced that at certain point of time, you just forget a thing you just kept somewhere or something you said few minutes before. Such cases, however, are normal and can happen in cases when the brain is unable to link to the situation and time. While forgetfulness in old age is related to changes in the activity of brain cells due to the aging process, at a young age, its occurrence is a matter of concern. While normal forgetfulness is never a problem, long term or erratic episodes of difficulty in remembering things can be a hint towards some physical or emotional stress on the brain.

What Causes Forgetfulness?
It has no well-defined causes. Basically, there can be various medical reasons and contributing factors for this problem. If we leave aside this condition in old aged people that results from aging, there are various other prominent causes related to it. It occurs sometimes when we are inattentive to our surroundings, lost in our own world and thoughts and so if someone says or does something even few moments ago, we may tend to forget it. Sometimes, we are so much distracted and worried about something that accentuates this condition. When these factors are left aside, medical conditions are a major cause of forgetfulness.

Depression
Depression often leads to hopelessness and lack of interest in our surrounding things and events, so if you are dealing with, or talking to a depressed person, it may happen that he may forget things very easily. He is consumed by his own world of thoughts that he is unable to relate to the present moment. A depressed person may either linger too much in memories or may be too worried about the future.

Stress
Stress is inevitable in today's life. However, overstressed people may show striking signs of forgetfulness. Youngsters who are in a constant state of worry about their career or the increasing competition may take undue mental stress that amounts to forgetfulness in many cases.

Unhealthy Habits
Alcoholism and drug addiction are significant contributing factors for forgetfulness. When an individual is completely drunk, he may never remember what he is told or explained. Similar are the cases of drug addicted people. Brain cells lose their control due to excessive alcohol intake.

Menopause
Due to drastic hormonal changes in the perimenopausal and menopausal phase, women may often complain of experiencing various symptoms like weaknesses and anxiety. It also occurs in perimeopausal phase and it leads to a lack of concentration. Women may face stress and concentration problems during this phase. However, it's just one of the signs and may or may not occur to every women. Also, the intensity of forgetfulness depends on individual cases and past physical and mental health of the individual.

Hypothyroidism
Underactive thyroid or cases of hypothyroidism is one of the causes of this disease that leads to mental confusion and inability to remember things for a long time. Severe cases of underactive thyroid generally lead to forgetfulness.

Alzheimer's Disease
Generally, in the late middle ages or older ages, Alzheimer's disease affects the mental health of people and as this disease progresses, it leads to problems like dementia and eventually death. If any one of the causes of forgetfulness are due to serious medical conditions, then it is Alzheimer's disease, that eventually leads to loss of memory, language and cognitive abilities.

As we can see, forgetfulness can result from various factors. Even pregnancy related cases have been reported with such cases due to the emotional stress a woman has to go through during that period. While our brain has short and long term memory, several cases associated to it must be handled carefully and they must be reported to medical experts.