Cognitive health
You walk into a room and suddenly can’t remember why you went there. A familiar name refuses to come to mind. You put your phone down and, five minutes later, have no idea where you left it. At some point, many of us ask the uncomfortable question: Is this normal, or is something happening to…
You are halfway through a sentence when a perfectly ordinary word disappears. You know the word. You can almost see it. Yet your brain refuses to produce it. Or perhaps you’re forgetting appointments, losing your train of thought during meetings, or walking into a room only to wonder, Why did I come in here? For…
Ask most people what drives cognitive decline, and they will mention age, genetics, or lifestyle. Rarely will hormones come up. Yet some of the most consequential changes in brain health over a lifetime track almost precisely with hormonal shifts — the gradual decline of estrogen in women approaching menopause, the slow fall of testosterone in…
We live in a culture that treats cognitive decline as an inevitable rite of passage — a tax you eventually pay for the privilege of growing old. Forget where you parked your car? That’s just aging. Struggle to recall a name you’ve known for decades? Welcome to getting older. We even joke about it. But…