Ask the Doctor: What causes forgetfulness; can food or medication help?

Dear doctor, what causes forgetfulness? You can imagine things like forgetting what you are holding in your hand, the name of your best friend, what you read in a book within a day. What is the cause? Are there any food supplements that boost the memory? Are there any drugs that can help without side-effects?

Paul, Mukono

Dear Paul, a lot of people experience forgetfulness or memory lapses, which is usually not serious but forgetfulness is sometimes part of an aging process. This can be both annoying and embarrassing.

Sometimes it may be accompanied with personality and behaviourial problems when one suffers from a form of brain disease called dementia. Forgetfulness can result from reversible causes but when they are irreversible, medication may be of help. It is always necessary for people to visit their doctors for regular check-ups so that such problems are detected early and resolved. Excessive stress, anxiety disorders, depression and other mental illnesses cause forgetfulness and need to be checked out.

Sometimes medications including Proplanolol, sleeping pills, those for HIV, and for mental illness may cause temporary or permanent memory loss.

Forgetfulness can result from brain damage because of a brain clot, a brain tumour or a brain infection, a blow to the head, low oxygen levels, chronic alcoholism or drug abuse. Also medical conditions including deficiency of vitamin B 12, kidney, liver or thyroid problems may also be to blame. Food supplements that contain Vitamin B 12 may help. But if one has problems absorbing the vitamins, one may require the vitamin in form of injection.

Dear doctor, I have two questions in one. My wife is two-and-a-half-months pregnant and she is experiencing pains in the lower stomach. What could be the cause? Secondly, I was told that she has fibroids. Do you think they are the cause? Do you think her pregnancy is safe?

Anselm Kubukya

Dear Anselm, pain in the lower abdomen though could be from any cause, say, appendicitis whose location of pain can change during pregnancy. Your wife’s pain is likely to result from stretching of an expanding womb. It could also be from constipation or Urinary Tract Infections that usually occur resulting from pregnancy-related hormones

Innocuous as this may seem, you need to visit a doctor to rule out other problems that usually cause pain in the lower abdomen in all women including pregnant ones. The doctor may order ultrasound scan tests to locate the baby to rule out pain due to a pregnancy outside of the normal womb, say, in the fallopian tubes.

Fibroids are non-cancerous swellings that develop in the womb during of a woman’s reproductive years. Therefore, they may be found in a pregnant woman. Since in the majority of women they show no symptoms, they may be found accidentally for the first time during pregnancy. Some pregnant women may experience minor symptoms, including lower abdominal pain.
Though many people worry that fibroids grow rapidly in pregnancy due to a rapid rise in levels of female hormones, this is not always the case. Those that grow tend to return to their pre-pregnancy size afterwards.

Fibroids, however, can cause uncomfortable feeling of heaviness and may cause sharp pain in the lower back and legs if nerves are compressed. Rarely do fibroids enlarge and outstrip their blood supply (red degeneration) and bleed causing lots of pain. This tends to occur in the middle three-month period of pregnancy.

The most common problem with fibroids in pregnancy is delivering two to three weeks early (the premature baby usually survives and therefore this is of little threat to the baby), recurrent miscarriages (rare before 24 weeks of pregnancy) and partial blockage of the lower part of the womb requiring delivery by Caesarean section.

Dear doctor, I have problems at work and was expecting that I would lose weight but I have gained a lot of weight instead. Can stress cause obesity?

Mama Dorothy