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Subscribe to RSSNBC's Robert Bazell explains that while memory and brain functions may begin to decline as early as age 45 for some people, the study shows that dementia is a long, gradual process.
By Linda Thrasybule
MyHealthNewsDaily
The brain's abilities to reason, comprehend and remember may start to worsen as early as age 45, a new study from England suggests.
Researchers gave tests of thinking skills to about 5,100 men and 2,200 women between the ages of 45 and 70 years over a 10-year period. They found people ages 45 to 49 years experienced a notable decline in mental functioning.
" 'Senior' moments that people often joke about are true," said Dr. Gary Small, geriatric psychiatrist David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the work.
"If you follow people over time, you'll see there are structural changes that happen in the brain as they age," he said.
The study was published today (Jan. 5) in the British Medical Journal.
Healthy lifestyle may help with brain aging
Previous evidence suggests that impaired cognitive function could be an early sign of dementia. One recent study showed cognitive performance strongly predicted a 75 percent diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, a common form of dementia, after six years.
About 1 in 8 older Americans have Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. They anticipate the numbers will grow each year as more and more people continue to live longer.
Though the age at which cognitive decline begins remains unknown, researchers say the new study demonstrates the importance of a healthy lifestyle, particularly paying attention to cardiovascular health, which may help stave off the effects of brain aging.
"A decline in mental function is inevitable," said Steven Ferris, a psychologist at New York University's Langone Medical Center, who was not involved with the work. "Following a healthy lifestyle can help a certain degree of mental functioning, but there requires more research to prove this."
A healthy lifestyle includes exercising, which increases blood flow to the brain, providing it with much-needed nutrients. Eating foods that are good for the heart, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains is also important, because it could protect brain cells from age-related decline.
A faster decline among older people
Study participants were tested for memory, vocabulary, hearing and visual comprehension skills. People were given cognitive tests three times over the course of the study. The researchers took differences in education levels into account.
Researchers found that over the 10-year study, there was a 3.6 percent decline in mental reasoning scores in people who were between the ages of 45 and 49 at the study's start. There was a 9.6 percent decline in the abilities of men ages 65 to 70 years at the start, and a slightly smaller, 7.4 percent decline, in women of those ages.
Results showed that cognitive test scores declined in all categories except vocabulary, and scores declined faster in older people.
The study also demonstrated that measuring people's abilities at one point in time may not yield accurate results.
"This study follows the same people over a long period of time to see if their cognitive performance changes," said Ferris.
"And these changes are beginning earlier than what people previously thought," he said.
Pass it on: Mental functioning likely to worsen in middle-aged adults.
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Well, isn't that helpful for me - 54 and in the job market and a new career. How nice of you! grrrr.... How about 20 something college students --- like like like ya know like
Cognitive ability? What the heck does that mean? What did they measure exactly? They need to break this out into steps that are key to accomplishing a task. And what sort of people did they test? Did they test people who think for a living or people who labor for a living? The "thinker" can get rusty after years of disuse.
My guess is that older people struggle more with staying focused on the task than the actual process involved in doing it.
As a person that spends a great deal of time working with people on computer based tasks, I can tell you that many people use the fact that they are too old to learn something new as a scapegoat for the fact that they A: either are not interested enough to bother or B: can get themselves out of something that might be a challenge.
Finally some of the greatest discoveries of the past 1000 years have been made by people that fall into this cognitive breach--for example... Stephan Hawking who turned 70 this week
wat ar u talkin bout dude ........we 20 sumthins are smartr thEn u BRO....step asiDe ole geEzr. I'm comin aftr ur jOb Dude......Just kidding kc. I know what you are saying. They should just put us out to pasture already.
Hey, once again I'm better than the average!
I've been mentally reclining for years, and I'm 43! Wait.... was this about dental declinings? Rentals haven't been declining..... what the.... oh wait! See? Told ya I'm heads up on this one!
"Pass it on"?...what jerks. Must be written by a youth.
Um, way off, my mental decline started when I was 21. The good news is that I am now 72 and I can still wipe my own butt.
I live in Sun City - the majority here seem to watch Fox News and are rabid right-wingers. I feel alone in the asylum.
Gumps - That is hilarious funny!! (and I'm right-wing myself sometimes!) Don't even think about watching the news with them!
I live in a part of the country where the electicity goes out quite often. I am usually startled to find someone playing around in my pants when it happens. I am even more startled if they come back on and find it's just me!
Sirlafalot - You are obviously one of the people who participated in the study. Your mind has reverted back to that of a 12-year-old. Grow up.
I just read a study review on MSNBC last week that concluded mental decline with aging is largely an OLD wives tale (pun intended!). The problem with little blurbs like this (with no references or discussion of methods) is that they often are junk science or just wrong conclusions... good science requires good methods and good analysis of the data.
Consider this story entertainment - because it only concludes that mental decline (whatever that is) MAY start as early as 45. Yeah, and it MAY start as early as birth... where's the data?
Age? I thought it was because I masturbated too much.
Mental decline happens when one has no money, no work, and no home.
For some people mental decline starts after 7th grade:)
scales67: Lighten up Frances!
Scales67. For some, thankfully, we stopped maturing mentally at about 13. Therefore no "reverting" is required. Life is easier with laughter and levity. Too hard to look at the "grown up" world without crying.
It actually starts at child birth when the doctor gives the butt a good slap jolting the brain into the start of dementia. We start aging the day we're born.
For once, I'm ahead of the curve *sigh*
So what does this say about my grandmother who lived to be 100 and was sharp as a tack until the day she died?
.
In my experience, it means "Bacon, Beans, Bleached flour, Lard, and Pall Malls" ARE acceptable if you get up at the crack of dawn and work your ass off every day. Glad she was blessed with a good long life!
Dang it. I forgot what I was going to post...Crap..
When you don't have much in the way of brains to begin with, like myself, you don't have far to fall.
"Your mind has reverted back..."
Mine reverted forward.
39 and holding now for about 12 years.
This article is pure bunk, complete non-scientific garbage, and the kind of medical nonsense that physicians fall victim to because they lack the training to tell the difference.
First, we have known for about 3,500 years that we know of (and probably far longer than that in fact) that "CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION." This means that because someone finds a "link" it does NOT mean that they have found a cause or a cure.
By skipping over a college degree, physicians tend to lack the scientific training that would show them that this is bunk. Shame on Bazzell. He is a fool!
What is true is that they found that a small number of people seem to begin to lose coginitive ability in their 40's. That is all. Period. There is no known link between early cognityive decline and Alzheimer's. Period. And there is no known way to prevent cognitive decline once it has begun. Period.
It is most likely true that if you got thousands of people to adopt a more healthy lifestyle that fewer of them MIGHT develop early cognitive loss. It is actually not known it this would happen. If cognitive loss were genetic, for example, it might not change it at all. The assumption being made that it is cardiovascular is pure speculation and has NO basis in fact.
It is NOT true that if you find a person with early cognitive decline that any amount of lifestyle change would show an improvement in cognitive function. This is not just speculation, it is an absolute fabrication without any supporting evidence. In science it is called a "surrogate endpoint assumption" and is considered worthless. Medicine as practiced in the US is full of these false assumptions based on no scientific data, but interpreted by physicians under the sway of drug company reps as some sort of esoteric scientific fact.
We have absolutely no idea of what causes Alzheimer's. We have no idea if plaque causes cognitive loss, cognitive loss causes plaque, or if some thirf function causes both. Absolutely no idea at all.
But we have idiots like Bazzell who use a "systemic" school diploma as proof that they have some superior knowledge that, without a shred of evidence, that if you eat your veggies and go to the gym that you will not get Alzheimer's. That is pure BS at best and absolutely wrong and potentially deadly at worst.
Drive through a trailer park. I think it starts in high school.
What about all of us who went through public middle school and high school? For most of us that's when our metal decline stated.
I don't think my metal decline has stated yet.
lmao this is just BS they claim you again IQ points until age 32 then is levels off until age 60 and then starts to drop . which is just more BS since IQ is Mental age times 100 divided by your psychical age. this in it self is a paradox because a person with an IQ of 200 at age 30 would have the mental age of a person 60 years of age an at age 31 would of been dropping IQ points by their standard, which is funny since they have another year to gain.
"... our metal decline stated."
Where? In pubic school?
@alan,
You are closer to being correct than you might think. If you measure educational achievement you find that there is a huge loss in general knowledge that starts right after high school, even if you go on to get a PhD. This is because a K-12 education exposes you to a broad range of topics. The information you do not use evaporates quickly (calculate the area of a circle.) Information that ages goes out of date evaporates (where again is Rhodesia.) And most people specialize, even if they continue their education beyond that point and lose a lot of information that does not relate to their specialty in some way (a bench scientist may lose track of advances in anthropology.) If you measure things in the broadest context, you are most likely to be adjudged the "smartest" right after you graduate high school.
IQ is a piss-poor tool for doing of saying anything. The standard IQ test (Stanford-Binet) used to be considered invalid above 132-136 and is generally now considered to be "unreliable" above 148. Its only use involves being able to compare large groups of people.
IQ is also not the same for all times. IQ tests are "re-indexed" about every 3-5 years to keep the "average" acore in the 95-100 range. This is because IQ scores on all IQ tests have been rising about 3% a decade since the early 1900's (called the Flynn effect.) So a student scoring 100 on the SB today would have scored 94 twenty years previously and would have been considered a "special needs" intelligence when Teddy Roosevelt was President. Does this mean people are smarter today? Not at all. It is just an index that has to be used very very carefully.
And IQ does not indicate future success in life or career. If you look at Mensa members, the most prominent vocation is "truck driver" and it has a much higher than average suicide rate among its members.
Roll Tide
I am 67 and can sure tell a difference. It sure makes you wonder about all those old geezers in congress that are older than i am making decisions that control our lives. Experience is wonderful thing but at some age people need to retire and make way for younger people.
LOL! well I think many of them were mush heads when they were young. Look at the current crop of young turks. Most of them can't scrape together a coherent lunch plan.
Plus, when old leaders make decisions, their "long term outlook" isn't as long as for young people. For many decisions they seem to make, they are either retired or dead by the time the sht hits the fan.
No matter the age, term limits need to be strict; after 8 years, it doesn't matter how your cognitive skills, et al, etc.... are - you've become a Capitozombie and are incapable of having any individual thoughts whatsoever. People only THINK our reps are bought out, but it can't be that easy to destroy America and Americans way of life..... it's something 'they' put in the caviar or champagne up there. By 8 years, completely zombified. Should we thank them for the sacrafice?
Maybe we need a mandatory retirement age in the congress and senate say 60 they have already scammed and made enough money by then anyway.
Lifetime term limits would be a good start - but our current method of choosing rascals to serve would just result in swapping new egomaniacs for older ones at a quicker rate (leading to a larger number on fantastically generous pensions.)
Better we should choose Representatives and Senators randomly from the voting roles. There would be an occasional thief, egomaniac, sex pervert, ignoramus, and radical - wait a minute, how would that differ from now? The main difference is that now we have a system that guarantees each and every Legislator is a power-mad zealot with a God complex (and most are millionaires.) Have the chosen Senators serve 6 years, Congressmen 4 years. Retirement will be a tax-deferred savings plan, limited to a max 20% employee contribution with the first 5% matched, plus Social Security like all the rest of American workers - no other pension, no health insurance after leaving service. It is not a career, just temporary service to the country.
A word to journalists.....your body CANNOT digest whole grains. They are ground, and therefore refined, and therefore a problem.
Eating one slice of "whole wheat" bread isn't any different than eating a snickers bar. Both will jack your blood sugar levels through the roof.
racaille - you obviously don't have a clue when it comes to nutrition. Educate yourself before posting false statements on the Internet that others was clueless as you might believe.
Actually racaille is NOT too far off. An ex-girlfriend of mine is diabetic, and ONE slice of bread, of ANY kind, equals one carb for purposes of taking one unit of insulin. She's wrong that a candy bar EQUALS a slice of bread, BUT, I believe a candy comes in at two or three slices of bread. And, there are MANY fruits and vegies that are ALSO high carb as far as diabetics go, and not too different from eating candy. In fact, I'd hate to be a vegetarian and have diabetes, dinner would be pretty bland.
Someone forgot to take their nap today! Or does mr. grouchy pants just need a hug?
Scales has been skimming crack again.
While there may be some merit to this study... the beginning age of the people that they studied was 45 so how are they able to show a decline. The ages were from 45-70 years old and studied for 10 years. So was that the age that they started studying them or the age they were at the end of the study. It makes a difference. I would think that they would have to know what a person's cognitive abilities were when they were at their peak to be able to show true decline. I say that because, as we all know, not all people have the same levels of cognitive abilities. Someone with a half lit bulb when they are young will only get dimmer and dimmer.
It would be nice when they publish information on a study if they also gave a link to it so we could judge the validity of it for ourselves. Some of these studies are crap and others not so much.
They studied the decline from the time they started to when they finished. So, even if you are an imbecile when the study started it would still be measurable and it would go downhill from there. See, now don't you feel smarter?
My point was that the youngest age studied was 45. So unless they started studying them at the age of 35 (which it does not say) then the info is invalid.
All too often these studies show an infinitesimal difference and act as though it is significant.
You can generally find either the original article or the abstract of that article by going to Google Scholar and using the author's name and first initial as a search argument. In this case, you will notice that the article quoted only a couple of people who were not involved with the study (and who probably had not yet seen the study since it was published in Britain Jan 5th.) Even they made vague and non-informative comments.
Here is a link to the actual article: http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7622
The conclusions begin: "Adverse cognitive outcomes like dementia are now thought to be the result of long term processes over at least 20-30 years, leading some authors to argue for the importance of approaches during life. Despite much research on early diagnosis, pathophysiological and clinical studies have yet to identify biomarkers or cognitive profiles that accurately predict dementia."
I must assume that the linkage between gym and veggies with Alzheimer's is purely the invention of Mr. Bazzell.
Well that explains a lot about Obama.
But not Bush because he was already a f***ing idiot in his 30's.
good point...hard to lose what you never had in the first place
That explains a lot about Obama haters. ;-)
I don't hate Obozo. I think he's worthless as a president, but I don't hate him as a person.
The "Tea Nazi" says, "No tea for you! One year!"
That explains a lot about Sarah. You betcha.
So this new information explains the problem with the Demoncrat Hierarchy in Washington starting with Obama on down.....I mean it is quite obvious that they have a mental problem..and I believe their hearing has been affected considering the laws they have passed...In fact I think they are quite Deaf
So it is true we have a bunch of deaf retards in Washington!
Gee and how old are the Researchers who dreamt this one up??? Therein lies the problem....
Wait a minute here, I..uh, where was I?
I think we were talking about recliners. Someone said something about cognitives.... don't like 'em, never did. I think .... wait.... oh yeah. Tear down that wall!
The American republican party puts a lie to the conclusions of this study. I knew several young republicans who were indoctrinated as youth in the basic republican illusions. By the time they were in their late 30's all of 'em were as big and accomplished liars as one could ever hope to have knowledge of. Those I speak of are now in their late 60's and continue to have the ability and fortitude to formulate a pack of lies about as quick as a cat can lick its ass. No validity at all to this study.
Well I guess that explains why at 70 Richard Hawkins is one of the dumbest people on earth.......Kinda blows a huge hole in this study doesn't it....
Or Carl Sagan was stupid and dumb as well.....Einstein etc. etc. etc. all the best thinkers did their best work after the age of 45.....So maybe it is the Liberal Demoncrat School system where the big problem is...all they do is train monkeys as in memorizing, regurgitating and getting a reward as in a Diploma and by 45 all they know is what is on TV or a Video game and can't think beyond that because they were never taught how to think and those who did were labeled troublemakers and put into Drug handcuffs like Ritalin....
They said a decline, not a complete drop into stupidity. If your baseline is 100 and you drop to 70, that is way different than your baseline being 400 and dropping to 350.
Eddie.....you are hysterical. Blaming an imaginary "liberal Democrat School System" for the mental cognition of those in their forties. I'm 47...here's who led the country in to my 30's.....Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush. Why in the bejesus you ranting wonders can't just bitch to each other about non-conservatives over coffee is beyond me. Not that the school system has ANYTHING to do with the decline of the brain of forty-year olds mind you. You just have to jump on every possible thread and whine. Take it somewhere else.
Mike, Eddie is closer to correct than you seem to realize. Critical thinking is discouraged in schools. thanks to "No child Left Behind" teachers tend to teach to tests and many subjects are largely ignored. Art, Band, vocal music, and other classes have been cut at worse or reduced at best even sports programs (often sacred) in some areas have been reduced.
Science and Social Studies have been pared down because reading and math skills are so poor. When I graduated from high school in 1974 we had foreign language choices from Sign Language to French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, and Latin. Now the kids have Sign Language, French, and Spanish.
It is sad and our national educational system over all has declined horribly. I suggest you read "The Deliberate Dumbing down of America" You can download the PDF free off the internet. It is an eye opener.
Hey eddie, do you mean steven hawking. He is close to my age and by the way, if my theory is right, he is wrong. :)
Lexi...that's all post 40-something education and irrelevant to brain chemistry of 45 year-olds. That's my point. It's a physiological condition - not a political issue in the least.
in any situation, there are always outliers. These are people who are genetically predisposed to not age the same as the average person. You know the person who has a full head of hair at 60? Or the person who lives into their 100's? According to your reasoning, everyone should have the cognitive abilities of Hawkings and therefore the study is invalid. Wrong.
Well, according to your reasoning, aging is related to how much hair you have. So, are you saying that someone who is bald (shaved or natural) ages faster than someone who has a full head of hair (Rogaine or naturally)? This study is not about aging physically, but mentally. I admit that my body is not the same as it was when I was 20 or even 30. Heck, I can't even hula-hoop anymore and I used to do that as naturally as breathing! While I am disappointed with the force for gravity (not your friend) on your body, wrinkles and the fact that I can't hula-hoop, I am happy that my brain hasn't turned into mush, yet, and I still have an excellent memory and can reason with the best of them.
Mr. Blue...you're trying to bring us down. Stop it!
About 1 in 8 older Americans have Alzheimer's? Wow, that's more staggering of a statistic than I thought. My grandpa just passed away from the disease and it's supposedly hereditary...pretty terrifying stuff.
I thought I was being afflicted by alzheimer's but it turned out to be too much coffee. What a relief?
It turns out that caffine, in high dosage, is a depressant.
And they'll find those forty-somethings with teenagers have declined even worse.
From personal experience, that's more of 'my wit's end'. 4 teenage girls here, and that's what happened.... my wits ended.
use it or lose it!
I really take issue on this study. There are still a lot of 60-ish people out there in the work force, me being one of them. I feel that my cognitive abilities have actually improved, not diminished. When I was unemployed, I took a test for a position at a company that required a lot of cognitive ability. Guess what? At 60, I aced this quiz, got the highest score and I took it with people much younger than I was. I do believe that you have to do activities to keep your mind sharp, though. BTW - I do walk every day, try to eat right (like everyone), but I have worked on computers for most of my "working" life and play a lot of computer games, as well. I believe that keeping up to date with technology actually improves your mental state and would encourage older people to step up their game and get with it! Getting older should not be an excuse to opt out of the exciting world of technology.
I would also like to see more details of this study. Was it done on men AND women? Were the women going through menopause - this did make me a little goofy, at times, I must admit - cognitive, but goofy and I'm well over that now. What was the education of these people? What type of outside activities did they participate in? Were they employed or unemployed? Passive (couch potatoes) or active? We need to see more details on this study and it's irresponsible for MSNBC to publish this study without further details or a link. There are a lot of older people looking for jobs out there and the "old geezer" label simply doesn't fit the majority of older people in the U.S and the world, in general. Older people have to fight this type of stereotype every single day.
You are confusing the study with experience vs decline in brain ability. In most situations, the older brain is going to have more information to draw from, but it will process that information slower and slower as the years go by, until it stops being able to access the stored information. A younger person has less information stored, but they can usually access and process it much quicker. You can be wise and slow, or ignorant and fast. Which do you prefer?
Finally, you might be an outlier. The is someone who is not average in your mental health. But rest assured, you'll decline eventually just like the rest of us.
I am not confused at all. I never took this test before and finished it way before anyone else. I'm sure that I will decline in brain and body, but I'm not ready to, yet. Just like a computer that stores a lot of data, it takes longer to access the data you request depending on how large the database is. That's how your brain is, also, to some degree. Saying that, why are you so accepting of this study? Are you simply resigned to the stereotype of getting older and losing it? I get very frustrated by people who don't want to learn anything new and just accept things the way they are told it should be.
I'm not ignorant enough to deny that I will get older and things will change, but believe me, I will fight it every step of the way.
Funny thing is that when I was in the age bracket that they say your cognitive abilities drop I was in college kicking butt and graduating Magna Cum Laude. I even sat in my accounting classes and heard the 20 something criminal justice majors admit that they had to cheat to pass accounting. Kind of explains our justice system out of whack but not that us old geezers are dumber, maybe the article was written by one of the CJ majors that were cheating on their work.
The good news is they are learning more each day about how to deal with this terrifying condition. I get blamed for being blond or having senior moments sometimes. Then I stop and think about it. Someone is laughing at me because I can't remember what happened at Christmas 5 years ago. OK. The twenty-year-old who is laughing at me has how many Christmas memories stored in his brain compared to mine? Is it any wonder that those of us who have many, many memories may not have them at the tip of our tongues as well as the folks who have far less to deal with? I have one more comment. Magnesium L-Threonate is a wonderful supplement that can help your thinking clear in no time.
Huh? Wait... What?... I don't understand...
I forgot what I was going to say.
Aww poor lama.
Sadly the study is no doubt a crock and done in answer to the study printed last week that stated seniors aren't at a cognitive disadvantage but rather are taking time to ponder the correct answer.
Sadder still is that todays' children are not even learning how to think beyond preschool. I know this because I work in the school system and hear teachers comment on how they MUST teach to tests AND no longer are able to teach critical thinking (it is discouraged by gov'nt mandates apparently). They now TELL students what to think but must keep within the "party parameters".
So oldsters keep the faith and know that this is merely another ruse to try and keep us in our place.
You mean Ron Paul is dumber than he used to be?
Well, I might be slowing down in my forties, but the two top-graduates of top school, twenty-somethings, that I hired in the last five years either had horrible attitudes and attention spans, or slept around with business associates to an embarrassing degree. Their intelligence and book-smarts were far outweighed by their native stupidity and lack of class. I'll hereby only be interviewing 35 and up in the future, declining mental faculties or not.
I agree with you completely. I just commented about taking a math calculus class and got an "A". Many students never showed up, did the homework, text on their phones, etc. Needless to say they were the ones with "C", "D", "F"'s for final grades. If I had a business, I would definitely hire the older workers probably 40 years and up. They have work ethic and respect for others. I would also check on them before I hire them to see if they text n drive. If they do, sorry no job for them.
How old is Obama again? I know I'm going to catch a lot of flack for that comment, but dang it, it sure sounds funny. I guess if need be, you can insert the name of your choice.
I find that I have trouble remembering sometimes what I was going to do just next. I make daily lists now to get things done and also I do not overschedule myself. If I overschedule and am stressed I just cannot think or concentrate. On the other hand I have recently taken college courses and get A's. The younger students do not come to class, do the homework, are obsessed with their phones in class etc. I am still learning new things and one was even a math calculus class that I got an "A". I find my brain is sharper and I want to learn more now than I did when I was younger. People who just sit and do nothing mentally I do believe will loose their thinking skills much faster than those of us that challenge our brains to learn new things. It doesn't have to be something complex. Just start with a word puzzle or read something challenging to comprehend. The brains need stimulation and if it is not used, it can go to waste.
Everyone please forward a copy of this article to your senators and representatives. I am doing so to those in my area.
So people are either too old and forgetful to be of any use, or too young and lacking in common horse sense.
Beam me up, Scotty, no intelligent life here.
To explain this comment: So they can understand they are too old and stupid to be making national and world decisions and should retire immediately.
How did they determine that 1 in 8 have Alzheimer's Disease? Currently only an autopsy of the brain will definitively diagnose AD. The diagnostic tools are getting somewhat better, e.g., PET scans but to lump living people as AD seems a bit premature. My 93 yr old dad was 'diagnosed' by the family physician as AD but all the neurological tests pointed to stroke related dementia. That said, dementia is a growing medical problem in our aging population. Soylent Green anyone?
Lot of people in government already started down this road !!
Ah, once again the "newsvine" taking everything out of context. Decline can begin in our mid-40's, but that doesn't mean it will for everyone. I'm turning 54 next month, and I have never felt clearer or more lucid in my life. Many of you will too. Relax, it's all a genetic crap-shoot. If you don't think you're losing it, you probably aren't.
Dan I'm with you I just turned 51 and I......uh....oh hell what was I going to say.....oh yeah..that uh....damnit nevermind.