Did Menopause Symptoms leads to Memory Loss?? As one enters into menopause, she experience the While you may experience thedepression of hot flashes and mood swings. And the one thing which cannot change is memory loss. Recent studies clears that menopause is the cause of inability to recall. Researchers from Taiwan compares the memory of hundreds of women prior to their menopausal stage with the women who entered the menopause. Conclusions to the study are going to be presented in the annual meet of American Neurological Association in Toronto. Dr.Jong-Ling Fuh( an attending physician at Taipei Veterans General Hospital and an associate professor of Yang-Ming University School of Medicine) said that women who entered into perimenopause need not to be worried about cognitive decline. The researchers believes that the story of memory loss at the time of menopause is just a abservation that most of the women have. This is because as they went through menopause their memory is not as sharp as it seems to be before. Studies reveals that harmone replacement therapy might protect against dementia. But later studies reveals that in older women , HRT doesn't protect women from dementia and even increases the risk. Fuh and her colleagues studied around 770 premenopausal women living on a group of rural islands between Taiwan and China. On the basis of this study they tried to answer the questions on menopause and its effect on memory. As the Twain govt. put some restrictions to access these islands, authors reports that study's population was nearly homogeneous, which helps in ruling out other potentially causative factors of memory loss. At the start of the study, every women took 5 different test which are particularly designed to access their memory and cognitive skills. At the time of study it has been seen that 23% of women began to face symptoms of menopause. The research on comparison reveals that there is hardly any difference between the women who entered menopause and who do not. No significant differece has been seen in four of the five tests. Only one test shows a difference in memory, and that difference was almost negligible. This test was done to assess verbal memory. In this women were shown 70 nonstatistical figures and during the test some of the figures were repeated and some were not. women was just asked whether they had seen the figure earlier. Dr. Raina Ernstoff, an attending neurologist at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich said that menopause doesn't mean that there is actually a memory loss. She said that as a lady go through perimenopause and face certain sympyoms like hot flashes and troubles during sleeping, this leads to temporaryaffect on cognitive skills. Dr. Steven Goldstein, an obstetrician/gynecologist at New York University Medical Center in New York City feels that declining estrogen levels is not the reason of memory loss.He said "It's not like your memory is bopping along, doing fine and then takes this big dive during menopause, like bone density can." Ernstoff and Goldstein both were not aware of many women who feels that menopause might cause significant memory loss. Ernstoff pointed out that the education backgrounds plays a great role in memory loss. SOURCES: Jong-Ling Fuh, M.D., attending physician, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, and associate professor, Yang-Ming University School of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan; Steven Goldstein, M.D., obstetrician/gynecologist, New York University Medical Center, and professor, obstetrics/gynecology, New York University School of Medicine, New York City; Raina Ernstoff, M.D., attending neurologist, William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Mich., and member, Alzheimer's Board of Detroit; Oct. 4, 2004, presentation, American Neurological Association, Toronto.