Chapter 1

The Cry of the Wounded Boomer

My first patient of the day tried to settle into his chair, but he was so tense that he just teetered on the edge of it, his arms clamped to his sides. He was a block of rigid muscles and right angles.

He was afraid that he had early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, and feared that I would soon doom him with that diagnosis. He knew that if he did have Alzheimer's, conventional medicine could do little to help him. He would simply have to wait for the terrible progression of symptoms to begin.

This man hated the idea of waiting passively while his brain disintegrated. He was a fit, fiery man of considerable success, who was accustomed to grappling with his problems until he solved them. He wanted to fight for his mental acuity, and that's why he'd come to me. He'd read in a medical update newsletter that I had developed a treatment program for memory loss and optimal mental function.

Before he had arrived, I'd done an extensive review of his medical records. Based upon what I'd seen, I was not at all convinced that this fifty-one-year-old man was indeed in the early stages of Alzheimer's. It appeared much more likely that he had a type of memory loss that is common among people his age. In most people, this type of memory loss does not lead to goo Alzheimer's.

When I explained this to the man, he seemed very relieved, and he let out a sigh. I could hear the air hiss out of him. "Then what's going on with me?" he asked. "How come I've started to get so absentminded?"

I told him that, in all likelihood, he had some degree of what neurologists call "age-associated memory impairment," a condition that is virtually pandemic among people of approximately age fifty. Theoretically, according to most neurologists, losing some brain capacity at fifty is a "normal" sign of aging, just like diminished eyesight at age forty.

I told him I was pleased that he'd come to see me before his symptoms had become more pronounced, because preventing mental decline is much easier than reversing it. If his memory problems were indeed relatively mild, I told him, he could probably regain full use of his ability to remember. He could also greatly increase his ability to concentrate. With improvements in memory and concentration, his learning ability would almost certainly improve. In all likelihood, he would experience a rebirth of brain power, as had many of my other patients.

Then I asked him how his memory problems were affecting his life.

He launched into a passionate litany of complaints. He said that over the past couple of years he'd begun to forget people's names, and to forget important items when he packed for business trips. Lately he'd had to stop being a referee at his daughter's soccer games, because he often forgot which team had last touched the ball when it went out of bounds. The girls on his daughter's team had been getting angry at him, and his daughter was becoming increasingly embarrassed. His life at home was also suffering, he said, because he was often irritable. He didn't have much patience with his daughters, and he was tense so often that it was creating distance between him and his wife.

Almost every day now, he said, he had problems with what he called his "fuzzy brain." In the morning he'd be unable to find his car keys, and at lunch he'd forget his wallet. He often forgot where he'd parked his car, and when he dialed a number, he'd have to recheck his Rolodex in mid-dial.

Years before, he said-when he'd had a steel-trap mind-these things had rarely happened.

At work, his memory was stunting his career. For twenty years he had sacrificed to reach his current lofty level, but now his job was in jeopardy. Before important meetings, he said, he would be given long legal briefs and be expected to read them, learn them retain them, and then discuss them intelligently. He couldn't do this as well as he once had. He said he couldn't "shut out the world" anymore. Even without deadline pressure, it was harder for him to learn new information, such as his firm's new software system. He was relying increasingly on his secretary and his assistant. His secretary would remind him who he was having lunch with, and his assistant would preview his briefs and highlight the key points. They both covered for him when he tired out in mid afternoon, and his assistant would return calls that he should have been handling himself.

Net result: His superiors were getting impatient with him.

The competitive atmosphere "inside the Beltway," as he put it, was intense. Some of the ambitious young lawyers in his firm, he said, were trying to grab his job. They seized an advantage every time he forgot a detail or made a slip of the tongue. He felt as if they were circling him in a pack.

I knew full well what he was talking about. I often heard similar versions of the same complaint. I even had a name for it: The Cry of the Wounded Boomer.

© 1997 by Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D.

Tags: Memory Improvement, Alzheimer's Disease, Brain

About the Author

Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. was born in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in Miami Beach, Florida. After travelling the USA for educational purposes (Omaha, San Francisco), he settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1978. In 1979 he started practicing Kundalini Yoga with Yogi Bhajan and in 1981 converted to the Sikh lifestyle replete with full beard and turban.

About the Author

CAMERON STAUTH is the author of nine critically acclaimed books, a former editor in chief of the Journal of Health Science, and a journalist who has written more than a hundred articles for the New York Times Magazine, Prevention, Natural Health, and other publications.