Dyslexia onset at midlife?

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Linda

I am beginning to scare myself.

I have always been a top notch speller – drives me a little crazy to come across misspelled words in books and even blog posts (!). And I’ve been typing since high school (omg, that’s coming up on 40 years ago), so I don’t think I am simply mistyping the words (like nad instead of and)

OMG!!!! 40 years??? That’s a post for another day….

Point is that more and more often, I misspell simple words, transpose letters and sometimes even words when I type emails or posts or ….anything.

It’s a constant irritating descrepancy that makes me worry that I am developing dyslexia in my 50s! Never ever had a learning problem and reading is not an issue (except when I miss half the email in my rush to get through the barrage). So it’s probably not true dyslexia. But still…

I am having the same problems with phone numbers. I have dialed the wrong numbers again and again, hitting the numbers in reverse order or worse. I could chalk that up to not wearing my glasses when I call someone…the numbers blend together and my fingers could stray a bit. It’s embarrassing, though, to reach someone who isn’t happy that I called during their nap!

Failing eyesight doesn’t explain the spelling, though. I can see what I type. My brain knows the spelling. But I just sent an email to a friend that said:

"When you do you come home?"

The "you" and "do" sound alike, but I inserted the "you" twice and in the wrong order. This is a pretty tame example; I’ve done worse. And it is scaring me.

I’ve read enough to know that early onset Alzheimer’s is rare, but not unheard of at my age. And my brain is turning to MUSH. Argh!!! I hate this almost as much as the crinkles on my neck and (shall we say) derriere!

Ick, ick ick. I like being on top of things. This is falling behind. Ick. Where did my brain GO anyway?

Does ADD get worse with AGE?

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Linda

I coach a lot of women who ask me that question. Between our hormones bouncing all over the place and the steady progression of memories that DON’T light the corners of our minds, it makes sense.

So the answer is: yes and no.

Yes, it seems as if I forget where I left my shoes more frequently (I’ve been known to ransack the house at the last minute only to find them right beside the door!). And it seems that I need my ADD meds more than ever.

But the truth is that everyone our age is dealing with ADD-ish tendencies, simply because that’s what happens to our brains and neurology as we reach "that certain age." When you already have the real McCoy ADHD, an extra helping intensifies the effects.

Harvard Medical School says that many, many boomer-generation folks like us are rushing to psychiatrists and neurologists to see if our secret fears are confirmed: that we are losing our minds! Fortunately, even with a family history of dementia or Alzheimer’s, most of us are just dealing with a slowdown in processing.

Harvard Medical School reports that our memories (with or without ADD) are more difficult to access when we are over 50. It takes more time. If we give ourselves a minute to be calm, the word or the name or the location of those darned shoes will likely return.

Our memory mechanisms aren’t like a file cabinet, as doctors once believed. We don’t store our memories in a tidy brain compartment, then pull them back our again when we need them.

Memories are stored in locations all over the brain, because we collect memories from many different sensory points. You store memories of the county fair with the sights of the Midway, the smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes and the physical excitement of spinning on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Memories are stored in those smell, sight, physical sensation areas of your brain. When you remember the county fair, your brain has to pull the correct memories from all those centers to recreate your previous experience of the county fair.

There’s bad news out there about memories: recent research shows that our memories are altered slightly each time we retrieve them (fascinating! scary!). An experiment conducted soon after the attacks on September 11, 2001 showed that people interviewed immediately after the event and again six weeks later did NOT tell their story consistently.

There were major differences in their recounting of the incident and they SWORE that they were telling the exact sequence and events in the second interview as in the first!

Our brains play tricks on us. We can’t trust them. Whether they are ADD brains or not.

So if you think your ADD is getting worse with age, it may be that everyone else in our age bracket is discovering their own ADD-ish tendencies. Relax. Take a breath. Let your brain have half a second to remember the name of your dentist. And you’ll be just fine.

ADHD, hormones and menopause

Posted on June 29, 2007 by Linda

Back in 2002, when my peri-menopausal hormones were poised to take a dive, I followed the advice of my OB-GYN and stopped taking my low dose birth control pills.

Now, mind you, I didn’t need them for birth control — I’d had that tubal ligation thing-y a long, long time ago. But as I moved into my late 40s, my migraines had gotten worse, I was a mess the day or two before my period and things just didn’t feel right to me. When the doc suggested birth control pills, I was skeptical — I didn’t want to take pills every day (an ADDiva remembering to take pills EVERY DAY? OK, I missed them regularly, with breakthrough results, if you know what I mean).

I knew somehow that taking hormones wasn’t so good for my body, but I put my brain on hold and followed the prescription. Happily, they worked like a charm. I was calm, only a couple of migraines a YEAR instead of a month and I didn’t seem to be stressed at the EXTREMELY HIGH level I had been pre-meds.

The doctor told me that when I turned 50, we’d switch to HRT (hormone replacement therapy). I balked – Oh no! Hormone replacement is bad for women, I’d say. I don’t want breast cancer or uterine problems or whatever the latest research bad news relayed. Then my doctor told me something I hadn’t read in the science section of the newspaper: HRT actually had a lower dose of hormones than even my low dose birth control pills. I was shocked. Who knew?

In order to see whether I was really getting to the Big M (Menopause), we had to measure my current hormone level. So in January, I stopped taking the birth control pills for a test in February – we needed at least four weeks off artificial hormones to test my real hormone level.

I had the test – simple as I recall. And then waited to hear from her about going back on the low dose pills. She never called me, although the test results (sent by mail) showed that I wasn’t in menopause yet. By March, I was beginning to flush and by
April I could hardly get out of bed in the morning, suffering through 40-50 hot flashes a day.

I finally called the doctor’s office and told her what was going on. "Why didn’t you go back on the birth control pills?" she asked in amazement. Because no one told me to, that’s why!

So, no matter what the test showed, I was definitely menopausal with a capital M — and there was nothing Divine about it.

I was miserable. I needed to do something. So I forced myself to read all those books on menopause I had bought but avoided for years. My reasoning was completely illogical: if I didn’t educate myself on menopause, perhaps I could sneak by without going through it. Just stop having periods and become 50 with grace and ease.

Ha.

About the same time, I lost my mind.

No really. I couldn’t carry on a conversation. I could barely keep my mind on doing a load of laundry. And as to coming to the table with business associates? I just kept my mouth shut most of the time – an unusual state for me.

It was awful. I realized that I had gotten by on my intelligence and wit most of my life. I had worked hard to think ahead of where conversations were going so I could be seen as brilliant and interested in the subject. I had brought a unique point of view to projects and conferences. I was seen as bright and witty.

Yet now I couldn’t even rub two words together and make a sensible sentence. I was in despair. I realized, to my great sorrow, that my psychiatrist was right. I did, indeed have ADHD. And it had taken control of my brain. Or what brain I had left, anyway.

Reluctantly, I made an appointment with the psychiatrist and spilled out my torturous story. I had turned into the town idiot in a matter of months. I was stupid where I had once been intelligent. I was distracted beyond belief. I was … doomed.

He listened for a few minutes and then said calmly, "Your brain needs estrogen. Go get some."

Well! This was about the time the Women’s Health Initiative Study had been stopped because women who were receiving HRT were dying of heart disease because of the estrogen (at least that’s what I HEARD from the hundreds of news reports that penetrated my conscious mind).

I wasn’t about to put myself at risk of heart disease; my dad had almost died of a massive heart attack at age 49. I had always soothed myself that I wasn’t a candidate for a heart attack because I was a woman with estrogen and I was too young to die. Now, one of those weapons was gone. And was I too young to die? Maybe not.

I found myself a supply of human identical hormones and used progesterone cream to calm the hot flashes. Note I said progesterone, not estrogen. I was too afraid of estrogen to try it. But I did find an OB-GYN who was also a psychiatrist. She headed up the PMS clinic at Duke Medical Center and I was allowed to see her for hormone consultation;

Predictably. she said "You need estrogen. Here’s a prescription." I fought the idea like a crazed tiger — the Women’s Health Initiative said… I’ve heard of someone who… What are the data for cancer in women who have taken… I pretty much drove her crazy for months with my worries and questions. She printed out the data, sighed, and printed out more data.

I was finally convinced: the WHI study had been done with women over 60 who had never taken hormone replacement; many of them already had heart disease which was exacerbated by the addition of hormones. I was still fuzzy headed and feeling so unlike myself that I filled the prescription for the Vivelle estrogen patch – the name sounded so soothing and calm. But I was so edgy about the whole idea.

Within a couple of weeks I was doing better. And when we added my Wellbutrin back into the mix, it was like I had been asleep and Prince Charming had come along to give me a little kiss. I was ALIVE again! I could THINK. I could REASON. I could sleep through the night without alternately sweating and freezing!

I have to tell you – it’s been four years now and I have tried twice to stop using the patch or reduce the dosage. And it doesn’t work. I fall back into the same trap. As my doctor says "This is a quality of life issue. Do you want to live in misery or do you want to risk the estrogen possibilities?" Of course, she thinks the risks are minimal.

I can’t help feeling that I am a walking, talking science experiment and one day if we find out that the estrogen patch was a bad idea, it will be too late. I am playing hormone roulette with MY LIFE here. It’s an uncomfortable place to be.

But I can tell you that this supplement to my brain has made my life bearable again. I can function, reason, think, talk intelligently. I like me again. And I supposed that IS a quality of life issue, isn’t it?

NOTE: Please know that this post represents MY experience only and is not an endorsement or recommendation for you or your body. Only you and your doctor can make the choices that are right for you!