Preventing Senior Moments with Dr. Stan Goldberg

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Larry (00:07):

You are listening to specifically for Seniors, a podcast designed for a vibrant and diverse senior community. I'm your host, Dr. Larry Barsh. Join me in the lineup of experts as we discuss a wide variety of topics that will empower, inform, entertain, and inspire as we celebrate the richness and wisdom of this incredible stage of life.

Larry (00:40):

We all get them those momentary lapses when we can't recall someone's name or why we came into the room, or where we left the car keys, we call them senior moments, but are these moments inevitable or even limited to seniors will lean, learn more about these senior moments and how to work through them with our guest this week on specifically for seniors, Dr. Stan Goldberg. Stan Goldberg is an expert in the areas of aging, human information processing, change, loss, and end of life issues. He's a professor emeritus in the Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences at San Francisco State University, excuse me. And his writing has received 26 National and International Awards. We'll be talking with Stan about his thoughts on preventing senior moments and how to stay alert into your nineties and beyond, which incidentally is also the title of his latest book. Welcome to specifically for seniors, Stan.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (01:57):

Well, thank you for having me.

Larry (02:00):

We use the term senior moment as sort of a catchall for any momentary memory glitch that happens to an older adult, but they're not necessarily limited to seniors. Let's talk about the basics. How do you define a senior moment?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (02:22):

Well, I think if you look at the literature most of the time people will call senior moments as something that's humorous out of place, something you expect your Uncle Ralph to do in the most embarrassing moments. But actually senior moments have to do with how the brain processes information and memory is involved. But people tend to think that it's all memory and it's not. So there, there are lots of different ways that the brain can take the information that's coming to it and process it in a way that doesn't necessarily reflect reality. And that's when I look at those, I think, aha, these are senior moments, however, you even have to qualify them because of their frequency, severity, or context. And any one of those variables can take something that you might think is a senior moment and actually put it in the realm of the beginnings of dementia.

Larry (03:28):

So there are different types of senior moments.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (03:31):

Absolutely. There's actually nine different types. And I'll just very briefly, you know, describe each of them. Excuse me. The first type is forgetting names and numbers. You know, something we all do very common as we get older. The, and that involves a different kinds of processing problem as other senior moments. So the second one is repeating stories or asking questions. You know, we've all, you know, watched someone who asked the question two or three times in an hour at a party and think, Hmm, I wonder what's going on. That's very common to do. Again, that involves problems in term memory, usually. The third is misplacing objects. Something that drives me crazy with when my wife can't find her glasses for the sixth time during the day. And again, that a lot of that has to do with how that that item was remembered in the first place.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (04:31):

So sometimes going into memory can produce as many problems as retrieving what was remembered. The fourth type senior moment is when we substitute words, you know, we've all have done it, and it's not that big of a deal as long as that the word that is substituted is in the same category as the word that you forgot. So when you, when I'm referring, I'm, let's say talking to my granddaughter and I use her sister's name instead of hers. That's, no, I'm not that concerned about that. It's the same category. But if I, you know, called her by the name of a vegetable, then that's a different thing. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> that's more serious. The next one is sequencing problems. Sequencing is an issue that I have and I've always had great deal the difficulty with. So for, for example, you are sitting at your computer, you're doing some writing, and you go, aha, okay, I need to take this paragraph and put it somewhere else in the document.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (05:44):

So you go and you cut it, and then it's saved and you wanna put it somewhere else, and you have no idea where the somewhere else is. So that's an issue of sequencing. Another type of sequencing is, let's say you're in your office and you decide you wanna get a cup of coffee. So you leave the office, go to the kitchen, and you go, why am I here? That's another type of sequencing. Both are really similar types of, of learning problems. The next one is difficulty completing tasks. You know, now what we usually do is we think of this as procrastination, but there are times when it becomes so chronic that it's, it, you know, you wanna think about what is happening there. Another type of senior moment is that con conflating memories. You know, we've all been at a party, at least I've been at parties where let's say my wife is, is, is telling someone about something that happened.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (06:49):

And, and the story gets longer and more interesting. And I think, well, she just put three things together into one story. You know, a very common occurrence. That's another type of scene or moment. The seventh type is difficulty understanding, and that can be caused by a loss of different things. You know, someone is speaking at 125 words per minute, which is very fast, and your brain is only operating at 90 words per minute. So you're gonna have some difficulty understanding. And the last form, a last type of senior moment is disorientation. And that's one that, that verges on being almost by itself, something for concern. So for example I was going to Home Depot a couple weeks ago, and I went, I, you know, made a wrong turn. So I needed to come up a new way of going, and I was totally disoriented.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (07:49):

I did not have know how to get to Home Depot. Okay? So, you know, and I realized a lot of that had to do with not being in a familiar neighborhood. But when, when you can't find a contextual reason, a severity reason or frequency reason for disorientation is occurring, that's something that you wanna start talking to a neurologist about. So, very briefly, those are the nine types of senior moments. We tend to have all of them, and as long as the severity isn't great, the context can be explained and the the type is also known. You know, we, we can rest back and say, senior moments

Speaker 4 (08:35):

Are the

Speaker 5 (08:35):

Causes the same?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (08:38):

No, no. A absolutely not. We, you know, when we, we, we have to think of two different variables. One is, is where memory is. You know, when we think of memory, most people just think of short term and long term memory. There's actually four types of memory. First one is called sensory memory. So that, that's what happens. You're, you're, let's say you're in a mall. Somebody walks by you that's dressed very strangely, you know, they turn the corner and in your mind you still can see the blue hair. You may see, you know, the, the, the nose rings, et cetera. But that lasts just for a moment, and then it's gone. But where does it go? It then moves on to what we call short-term memory. Lots of different definitions of what short-term memory is. The one that that makes the most sense to me and makes sense to most neurologists is short-term memory is anything that stays in your memory up until you go to sleep.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (09:44):

And when you go to sleep, what happens then is whatever is in the area of the brain that stores the short-term memory moves somewhere else. And that's long-term memory. And so those are the, the, the three parts of that memory. But there's another kind of memory that we don't really think about. It's called working memory and or executive function. Same thing. So this is, what a good example of that. You're sitting at your kitchen, you wanna make yourself an omelet. Well, what's involved in that? Okay. You think back to all the steps necessary to make an omelet. You know, that's your long-term memory. You remember where you just put the eggs, the butter, and something else in the refrigerator. That's short term memory. So we have two things now. We have short term, we have long term. We now pull all of it together and we make that omelet.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (10:43):

You know, that, that, you know, that is, and that's an example, you know, of a working memory. So you can have a problem in any of these four memories, and it would result in a senior moment. So, you know, for example, if I forgot where I put the eggs, you know, and my wife says, well, you know, are you ready for breakfast? And I go, I don't know where I put them. Okay. That would be one type of issue. But if I know where all the items are and I forgot how you make an omelet, that's something more serious. So, you know, all of those types of numbers can cause different types of senior moments.

Larry (11:26):

While we're talking about memory, we've all seen these TV ads for pills or supplements that purport to improve memory. Okay. Do any of them work?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (11:42):

I'll, I'll give you my I, I have a test that I use whenever I, I watch these on TV and I wait until the disclaimers come on the bottom. If I can't read the disclaimer, I know that this is not a proven item. Okay. and you know, if, if you just stop the tv, if you have one of those, you know, systems where you can, you know, pause it and take a look almost all the time, anything you can't read will say not proven by scientific evidence. Now that that doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy these things. There are, you know, lots of studies that looked at individual the, the effects of individual mineral, different materials and minerals on brain functioning. But usually most of that are primary studies. They don't really look at how a human being was affected, but rather how brain tissue was. So, you know, I would say, you know, spend the money, but be aware that a lot of that is a placebo effect.

Larry (12:53):

Don't expect miracle results.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (12:56):

Exactly.

Larry (12:57):

Okay. So now we are having a senior moment. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or we have them continue. What strategies do you recommend Okay, to, to combat these memory problems?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (13:12):

Let's first start about how we wanna think about the brain. Okay. I'm 79. I think of the brain as a used car. You know, one of the very old used cars I used to buy in college, I, I had a, a, a system. I was in Pennsylvania when I, working in my doctorate, and I had a limited amount of money. So I would take my old car and a hundred dollars and go to a used car lot and say, give me something that's been inspected so it could pay, are ready to in pass the state expenditure for a hundred dollars in my car. I did that for four years. What it meant though, was I knew that I couldn't do certain things with my car, or if I was going to do things with it, I had to adapt it. Think of the brain in the same way.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (14:01):

Not necessarily as a, as an old Zel, but as, as something that is still functioning well, but needs a little help. So you can give it help in seven different ways, very simple things. And again, what, but we always have to remember, we gotta plug in where the problem's occurring and we're what point of the memory. You know, if it has to do with you not having all the, the things necessary to firmly plant something, then that's, that's a one strategy. If it has to do with how you retrieve it, that's another. So, again, very briefly, I'll go through the seven, and they're all in the book, and there's, there's very clear examples people can use in order how to adapt it. So the first one is to slow down. It's the easiest thing that you can do is to slow processing.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (15:02):

What happens is, as the brain gets older, it takes more time to process information, still functions as well as it did when you were 24. But as long as you process slower, so you can request information comes in slower, you can read slower you can walk slower, you can do your activity slower just to give the brain that added few milliseconds in order to function. You can use patterns. And this is the, the, one of the, the best strategies that people don't understand is when the brain processes information or stores information, it doesn't store it bit by bit. It stores patterns. So, you know, if you, if you understand that when you're trying to to store information, you store a whole pattern. So for example, you're a tennis player and, and you wanna learn or you wanna improve your backhand, well think about a segment of that backhand.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (16:14):

And that's what you wanna have your brain process. So you keep working on, on that segment. You can challenge your brain. This is like an overall thing that you can do constantly. There was a very interesting study did done in, I think it was 2013, where there, there were two researchers wanted to figure out what teacher, what teachers needed to do in order to train students to be more creative. And they came up with with, with four very specific variables, went to them now, but again, they're in, they're in the book. And, you know, for one, you know, was example is to be, to be able to change in midcourse, which you're doing. So they had these four things and they found that in fact, you had the brain was, was, was able to start to function better when people were more creative.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (17:14):

Move ahead until 2000 to 20 20, 20 18. And now we start seeing that the brain is able to actually grow new neurons and neurosynaptic connections. You know, tremendous discovery. 'cause What it meant was, we don't have to assume that sp once someone has had a stroke or appears to be going onto a dementia path, that is inevitable, we can change things. And lo and behold, those four characteristics of being creative are identical to what happens in order when someone is, is, you know, is cognitively challenged. So, you know, knit, write a story, but don't do any, but don't sit on the couch and watch tv That doesn't grow anything. Okay? So tho those, those are some of the strategies you can also when you're learning something, anything, you wanna make it lasting. So if you're listening to something on, on TV or on radio and you wanna learn it and you think that it's getting a little hard to do that, write it down.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (18:23):

Have something in front of you read as you, as you're writing, doing all of those things, what would actually, you know, help you remember that. So when it comes time to retrieve it, you have lots of memory hooks to use. One of the biggest problems when people have, when they can't retrieve is they learn something in isolation, or they learned it with nothing to help onto it. Hold onto it. When, when I was still working with, with kids with language disorders one of the biggest problems that they had was understanding language. That was abstract. I mean, how do you teach someone time? How do you teach somebody movement? So if it's just, you know, auditory, they're gonna have a much harder pro di difficulty learning it than it was laid out so they can actually see it. You know you saw a clock with time, you saw someone running, you know, all things like that.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (19:24):

The, the sixth thing is involved focusing. So the more you can focus on your, your environment, on what is you're trying to learn, the better you'll learn it. So you, you wanna learn something new, turn off the tv, turn off the radio. Don't listen to music when you're writing, because your brain now has to divide its attention to do different things. So, and the, the final, there's another one called Managing the Environment, and you kind of structure things. And the, one of the most important ones is the last song, which is practice. Practice is absolutely essential. And what you're practicing are the most important elements of what you wanna remember. Great example, Steve Curry's Midco Shot. You know, if you notice that he will go to a certain spot, doesn't have to think about it, shoots, and three points goes in. His, his, someone asked his trainer how he does that curry, according to the trainer, Curry shoots a minimum of 500 shots from each spot he wants to, to hit before every game. So it's, it's that kind of a practice. What happens with practice is whatever pattern the brain has has remembered now gets reinforced time and time and time again. So if you, whatever it is, you, you wanna remember, practice it, you're forgetting your granddaughter's name, practice it,

Larry (20:58):

There are variables that get in our way our health, our attitude. Can you talk a little bit more about those?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (21:08):

Sure. I, I look at aging as, as an exercise in adaptability. You know if as I'm getting older, if I'm not gonna change my goals or change the methods that I'm using to get there, I'm gonna fail continually. So I need to make a, a decision in my mind. What am I willing to change? I used to play handball, you know, four wall handball with, with guys who were in their thirties. And, and as I got older, I realized I just couldn't compete anymore. So I had to make a choice. I either started playing with guys my age, or I accepted that, you know, the, the, my level of playing is, is gonna be significantly reduced. You need to do that. I think with, with anything that you're having difficulty with, you know, do I need to adapt to how I'm trying to achieve this goal? If not, do I need to change my goal?

Larry (22:11):

There are times that it's not just the quote unquote senior moment, it's the memory glitches, a sign of something more serious. How do we determine the difference between the two?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (22:26):

You know, most people think of dementia as, you know, as, as a very hard line. This is senior goal, senior moments. This is dementia, and there is no such thing. When neurologists, one would expect neurologists w would have their finger on this and be able to determine fairly easily, and they can't. When you are looking at, at aberrant behaviors, and we can, we can define them however we want. You need to think of three things. First one is frequency. So I lose my glass. See, I, if I lose my glasses three times a day, four times a day, you know, I wouldn't be that concerned if I lost my glasses 15, 20 times a day, every day. I think my wife would get me to a neurologist very quickly. The second is context. Earlier I mentioned I gave you an example of being disoriented, going to the Home Depot.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (23:30):

I had a client who got lost going to his favorite restaurant. Now, he had driven there, you know, once a week for the last 15 years. It was his favorite restaurant, and he got lost one time. So I asked, well, tell me what was going on. Well, he just had an argument with his wife. He was wearing a new pair of glasses. He was listening to music. He was worried about, you know, what he had ordered and like four or five different things. So that's the context in which, you know, a senior moment occurred. Well, you know, that would explain it away, but if none of that was prevalent, you know, if everything was fine and he got lost along the way, then that is an indication that maybe we, we have, we have an issue there. In terms of the, the third one, which is the severity. Think back to, to some of the criticism that Biden had when he was, when he gave that the speech, or not, the speech was at the, the last debate.

Larry (24:37):

Debate, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (24:39):

And, you know, people were talking about, about the words that were, that were substituted. I listened to that and I didn't hear any dementia. I didn't hear it because whatever words were substituted, and it's actually, you know, applied to Trump as well. The words that were substituted were in the same semantic category. So, you know, if Trump talks about being in Detroit and he really is in Trenton, well, you know, some people may say dementia, but no, it's not. It's in the same category. So you have to look at, at the severity of the disorder. If someone put his glasses on a, on a counter and couldn't find it, that's one thing, but he put his glasses in the refrigerator. That's quite another. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So those three things will give you some indication, but still not definitive in our answers to, is it dementia or senior moments.

Larry (25:34):

Is there anything we missed that you'd like to talk about, that you'd like to bring up?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (25:40):

No, I, I think that maybe the one thing has to do with attitude. And that is, you know, if we think of aging as just minor differences in, in what we've experienced our entire life, we're gonna have a problem. If we think of aging as as an exercise in diminishing our universe and learning how to adapt to it, I think we end up being very happy with what we're going through as we age. So adaptation, I think, is a key to aging.

Larry (26:20):

Again. What's the title of your book? Where it's, where is it available?

Dr. Stan Goldberg (26:25):

Okay. Preventing Senior Moments. How to Live, how to Stay Alert in the nineties and beyond. It's, it's on Amazon and all of the, the major sellers in, in some bookstores, but online is best. And on my website I have many articles there on Aging that compliment the book. It's stan goldberg writer.com.

Larry (26:55):

There's a lot more information, there's a lot more articles. We can sign up, listeners can sign up to receive email notifications of your newest writings as well.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (27:10):

Yes. Also I write now for psychology today.com so people can just get on there and, and look at some of the articles that are not on the website.

Larry (27:22):

Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure.

Dr. Stan Goldberg (27:25):

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

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