menopause

Menopause forgetfulness greatest early in postmenopause

January, 2013

A smallish study suggests that the cognitive effects of menopause are greatest in the first year after menopause.

Being a woman of a certain age, I generally take notice of research into the effects of menopause on cognition. A new study adds weight, perhaps, to the idea that cognitive complaints in perimenopause and menopause are not directly a consequence of hormonal changes, but more particularly, shows that early post menopause may be the most problematic time.

The study followed 117 women from four stages of life: late reproductive, early and late menopausal transition, and early postmenopause. The late reproductive period is defined as when women first begin to notice subtle changes in their menstrual periods, but still have regular menstrual cycles. Women in the transitional stage (which can last for several years) experience fluctuation in menstrual cycles, and hormone levels begin to fluctuate significantly.

Women in the early stage of post menopause (first year after menopause), as a group, were found to perform more poorly on measures of verbal learning, verbal memory, and fine motor skill than women in the late reproductive and late transition stages. They also performed significantly worse than women in the late menopausal transition stage on attention/working memory tasks.

Surprisingly, self-reported symptoms such as sleep difficulties, depression, and anxiety did not predict memory problems. Neither were the problems correlated with hormone levels (although fluctuations could be a factor).

This seemingly contradicts earlier findings from the same researchers, who in a slightly smaller study found that those experiencing poorer working memory and attention were more likely to have poorer sleep, depression, and anxiety. That study, however, only involved women approaching and in menopause. Moreover, these aspects were not included in the abstract of the paper but only in the press release, and because I don’t have access to this particular journal, I cannot say whether there is something in the data that explains this. Because of this, I am not inclined to put too much weight on this point.

But we may perhaps take the findings as support for the view that cognitive problems experienced earlier in the menopause cycle are, when they occur, not a direct result of hormonal changes.

The important result of this study is the finding that the cognitive problems often experienced by women in their 40s and 50s are most acute during the early period of post menopause, and the indication that the causes and manifestations are different at different stages of menopause.

It should be noted, however, that there were only 14 women in the early postmenopause stage. So, we shouldn’t put too much weight on any of this. Nevertheless, it does add to the picture research is building up about the effects of menopause on women’s cognition.

While the researchers said that this effect is probably temporary — which was picked up as the headline in most media — this was not in fact investigated in this study. It would be nice to have some comparison with those, say, two or three and five years post menopause (but quite possibly this will be reported in a later paper).

Reference: 

[3237] Weber, M. T., Rubin L. H., & Maki P. M.
(2013).  Cognition in perimenopause.
Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society.

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Menopause ‘brain fog’ a product of poor sleep and depression?

May, 2012

A smallish study of women approaching and in menopause found that some experienced poorer working memory and attention, and these were more likely to have poorer sleep, depression, and anxiety.

A study involving 75 perimenopausal women aged 40 to 60 has found that those with memory complaints tended to show impairments in working memory and attention. Complaints were not, however, associated with verbal learning or memory.

Complaints were also associated with depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and sleep disturbance. But they weren’t linked to hormone levels (although estrogen is an important hormone for learning and memory).

What this suggests to me is that a primary cause of these cognitive impairments may be poor sleep, and anxiety/depression. A few years ago, I reported on a study that found that, although women’s reports of how many hot flashes they had didn’t correlate with memory impairment, an objective measure of the number of flashes they experienced during sleep did. Sleep, as I know from personal experience, is of sufficient importance that my rule-of-thumb is: don’t bother looking for any other causes of attention and memory deficits until you have sorted out your sleep!

Having said that, depressive symptoms showed greater relationship to memory complaints than sleep disturbance.

It’s no big surprise to hear that it is working memory in particular that is affected, because what many women at this time of life complain of is ‘brain fog’ — the feeling that your brain is full of cotton-wool. This doesn’t mean that you can’t learn new information, or remember old information. But it does mean that these tasks will be impeded to the extent that you need to hold on to too many bits of information. So mental arithmetic might be more difficult, or understanding complex sentences, or coping with unexpected disruptions to your routine, or concentrating on a task for a long time.

These sorts of problems are typical of those produced by on-going sleep deprivation, stress, and depression.

One caveat to the findings is that the study participants tended to be of above-average intelligence and education. This would protect them to a certain extent from cognitive decline — those with less cognitive reserve might display wider impairment. Other studies have found verbal memory, and processing speed, impaired during menopause.

Note, too, that a long-running, large population study has found no evidence for a decline in working memory, or processing speed, in women as they pass through perimenopause and menopause.

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When estrogen helps memory, and when it doesn’t

November, 2010

Recent rodent studies confirm attention and learning is more difficult for women when estrogen is high, but estrogen therapy can help menopausal women — if given during a critical window.

Recent rodent studies add to our understanding of how estrogen affects learning and memory. A study found that adult female rats took significantly longer to learn a new association when they were in periods of their estrus cycle with high levels of estrogen, compared to their ability to learn when their estrogen level was low. The effect was not found among pre-pubertal rats. The study follows on from an earlier study using rats with their ovaries removed, whose learning was similarly affected when given high levels of estradiol.

Human females have high estrogen levels while they are ovulating. These high levels have also been shown to interfere with women's ability to pay attention.

On the other hand, it needs to be remembered that estrogen therapy has been found to help menopausal and post-menopausal women. It has also been found to be detrimental. Recent research has suggested that timing is important, and it’s been proposed that a critical period exists during which hormone therapy must be administered if it is to improve cognitive function.

This finds some support in another recent rodent study, which found that estrogen replacement increased long-term potentiation (a neural event that underlies memory formation) in young adult rats with their ovaries removed, through its effects on NMDA receptors and dendritic spine density — but only if given within 15 months of the ovariectomy. By 19 months, the same therapy couldn’t induce the changes.

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