Is Age-Related Cognitive Decline Inevitable?

Jennifer Silver, a dentist in Calgary, Canada, became alarmed after her 62-year-old father started getting forgetful and confused earlier this year. “He had trouble recalling recent conversations and would often ask the same questions repeatedly,” she says. “There were also instances where he forgot where he had parked his car or struggled to remember the way home from places he had visited regularly.”

Fearing the worst, Silver and her family had her father evaluated for cognitive decline. A neurologist discovered the real culprit: clonidine, a blood pressure medication that can trigger dementia-like symptoms in rare cases. After a switch to a different hypertension drug, lisinopril, her father’s mental state quickly improved.

While the symptoms that plagued Silver’s father were particularly dramatic, minor memory lapses — forgetting a person’s name or why you walked into a room — can also lead to worry that you or a loved one is sliding toward dementia. Thankfully most of the time these fears are unfounded. True, the older you get, the greater the risk that some cognitive abilities will decline. In the Alzheimer’s Association's estimate, 1 in 9 Americans 65 and older is living with Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia.