I would like to talk to you very briefly about your FAILING MEMORY! My opinion, after 25 years of practice, is that many patients with memory problems are not diagnosed nor treated correctly. If your memory is progressively getting worse, "go to your doctor" is the common advice given. But what do you do if the doctor tells you that "its normal aging" and to "not worry"? You know that you have a problem but no one seems able to help you figure out what to do or even believe you. Next you may see a specialist and at that point be given a drug. They forget to tell you that the drug doesn't stop the progressive decline of your memory nor do they tell you why your memory is failing.

In August of 1985 I saw a 76 year old lady who had become more and more confused and forgetful over the previous 1-2 years. Her family doctor had told her daughter that she had Alzheimer's and only a few months to live. A nursing home was suggested but instead the daughter brought her mother to my office. My tests included a blood test that is still not widely used by physicians called "fibrinogen". Her level was 400 and at the time, the lab's normal values were 200 to 400. I knew then as I know now that a fibrinogen that is higher than 320 is a sign of pending heart attack or stroke due to narrowing of the blood vessels. This high fibrinogen along with a few other tests convinced me that what this lady had was not Alzheimer's but brain blood vessel disease. I treated this lady's blood vessels with a variety of therapies and within three months she was much improved. Can you believe that she lived independently up until this last spring when she fell, broke her hip, developed pneumonia and died at the age of 91! She was one of my best patients ever and I miss her.

Now the point of this is that if you are having memory problems, or if you have been told that you or your loved one has Alzheimer's-it may or may not be correct. Ask your doctor for a blood fibrinogen and a brain MRI to see if you have had a stroke or have bad blood vessels. If the fibrinogen is high or the MRI shows that you have had a stroke then you may be fairly sure that you probably have some degree of brain blood vessel disease that is causing or contributing to your memory problems. Thus poor blood flow with a lack of proper oxygenation is the cause of many memory problems. Small or large strokes can and do often cause memory problems and these strokes may occur without anyone realizing that they have occurred or are occurring. If the memory goes bad suddenly and especially if confusion is also present, then a stroke has probably occurred. If this has happened to you or your spouse, then it is important to have an MRI and MRA of the brain and its blood vessels. If these tests show either a stroke or narrowing of the blood vessels- then at least part of your problem is due to lack of OXYGEN to the brain!

Guess what! Oxygen helps people with memory problems! In a study we did in my office, 80% of stroke patients with memory problems were helped significantly by the use of daily high pressure oxygen treatments.