However, recent studies indicate that memory can be significantly impaired during pregnancy and the immediate post-childbirth period. This does not need any treatment and improves with the passage of time after the childbirth.
What causes memory loss in pregnancy? The exact cause is not known but following may contribute :. The concept is so popular in the society that minor slips in the memory of daily life are believed to be due to pregnancy.
The stress hormone cortisol level increases during pregnancy as a part of normal physiological changes in the body. Cortisol may affect memory. However, robust scientific data is inconclusive to support this theory. Mental health conditions. Stress, anxiety and depression are common during pregnancy. Some researchers believe that they may contribute to memory impairment. However, more robust research is required in this area.
Physical symptoms. Symptoms such as tiredness, fatigue, insomnia, pelvic girdle pain, nausea and vomiting may affect general wellbeing and cognitive brain functions. Changing circumstances. Changes in brain structure. The changes persist up to 2 years of childbirth. This results in overall shrinkage of gray matter in the areas related to social cognition. Julie Henry, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who conducted the research, said: 'Pregnant women are significantly impaired on some, but not all, measures of memory.
The memory deficits are smaller than the deficits found when comparing healthy year-olds and year-olds, but are probably close to the modest deficits found when comparing healthy year-olds with healthy year-olds. Henry and Peter Rendell, a memory researcher at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, reached their conclusion after examining the memory performance of pregnant women, mothers and non-pregnant females. Pregnant women experienced the worst problems in memory tasks which were more challenging, the authors said in the report published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.
The authors admit that, while they believe the syndrome definitely exists, they cannot be sure why physiologically it occurs. But some academics have dismissed 'maternal amnesia' as a myth. The study was never published, rejected from at least three, maybe four journals and has been sitting in a file ever since along with a number of other studies.
With the open access and open science movements growing, I decided it was time for this research to see the light of day. I will be self-publishing much of my research over the coming weeks and months. Here is the first study. More importantly, are hormones to blame? The answer is yes on both counts. We found that pregnant and postpartum women exhibited detectable cognitive deficits across multiple domains.
The deficits were worse in late pregnancy and mostly improved postpartum. These memory problems were linked to both the excessively high hormones of late pregnancy, the low hormones following delivery, and the large changes in hormone concentration from pregnancy to postpartum. Pregnant and to a lesser degree, postpartum women had difficulty sustaining focus — this may be the mommy brain fog that many women complain of. We also found that during pregnancy especially, women were unable to manipulate and organize incoming information effectively.
This presented as poor performance across a number of tests that assessed both short and long term memory. In the case of verbal memory, these highly intelligent estimated average IQ was — and educated average years of education was 16 years women tested in the low single digit to the 20th percentiles across multiple IQ-adjusted verbal recall measures.
Even when estimates of IQ were not used to adjust scores, the participants performed poorly compared to normative standards. This was surprising given that many of these women had advanced degrees and were working in professional capacities. The verbal tests involved remembering lists of words; words that could be grouped into meaningful categories that would improve memory significantly. Most of the study participants had difficulty grouping the words into categories. Instead, they would attempt to remember by rote sequence, which is always much more difficult.
They also exhibited high numbers of intrusions — recalling words that were not in the original lists and repetitions — repeating words. Similarly, and more strikingly visible, visual- spatial memory was marred by the inability to group bits of information and perhaps even to see the groupings in the first place.
In this test, the study participants were given a complex figure to copy shown below. They were not told that they would be asked to recall and redraw the picture later.
When asked to redraw the figure, the inability to see the totality of the picture, to group bits of information was apparent. Interestingly, while spatial memory improved significantly from pregnancy to postpartum, verbal memory did not. And this is probably what troubles women the most, the perceived deficits in verbal memory.
Most of us think in words, when our ability to find words, retain words, organize information effectively is compromised, we notice. Both high levels of late pregnancy estrogens, estrone, estradiol and estriol — we measured all three and the low levels these estrogens postpartum were correlated with multiple measures of diminished memory, attention and processing.
Additionally, the larger the change in the circulating levels of estrogens from late pregnancy to early postpartum was associated with poor memory postpartum. Indeed, women who had higher postpartum estradiol and estriol specifically, performed better on measures of verbal memory than those who did not.
Progesterone, long thought to be associated with cognitive function, primarily because of its sedative properties, was not associated with any measure of cognitive function at either test time, although large changes in progesterone were associated with some performance measures.
Ladies, you are not imagining the pregnancy memory problems. They exist and they are related to the hormones. Most women knew this already, but it took a while for science to catch up.
Not to worry though, the memory problems do resolve as the hormones stabilize my next study to be self-published — a long term follow-up. More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine.
We are not funded and accept limited advertising. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now. Yes, I would like to support Hormones Matter. This article was originally published on Hormones Matter on March 26, She has published and presented several articles on her findings.
As a graduate student, she founded and directed the UNLV Maternal Health Lab, mentoring dozens of students while directing clinical and Internet-based research. Post graduate, she continued at UNLV as an adjunct faculty member, teaching advanced undergraduate psychopharmacology and health psychology stress endocrinology.
Allithiamine gave me back my brain after 2 children. I felt like I lost my sharp clever brain during my 2nd pregnancy. Now I look back and see it was the start of full blown thiamine deficiency. My dosage of allithiamine varies between mg per day. The difference is day and night.
Happy to stay on this dosage forever. Thank you Drs Marrs and Lonsdale for your tireless work in bringing thiamine deficiency back into the light.
Hi, I want to encourage you in your research. An experience of mine: I was a high-achieving student in school, going to an elite technical university. When I was in high school, I had a tremendous ability to concentrate, including on technical topics. When I got to college, I got a boyfriend, and suddenly it seemed like my ability to concentrate, particularly on technical things, evaporated.
That the hormones involved with mating had changed my brain — making it less able to focus on things that are purely objective. Girlfriend brain? These are not very PC ideas but it was a really obvious change in my experience of being myself. Being a woman is a complicated affair! I have been trying to read and searched for articles on memory loss — post pregnancy — focus etc….
When I was pregnant, I had excellent memory in fact I would say I was in my best at work.
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