How to Stop Memory Loss and Dementia Before They Stop You!

Memory loss and dementia are far more common than you think. By the age of 65, about one in five Americans (22%) is diagnosed with memory loss, and every tenth (10%) with dementia. In this article, I will explain their preventable causes, how to stop them from eating your brain alive, and why having or not having them is mostly a choice.

By 'choice' I mean doing or not doing anything about memory loss prevention such as, for example, reading or not reading this article to the end. Most people will not, because it's either scary or isn't as much fun as perusing TikTok or Instagram.

At first glance, the 10% and 22% numbers don't appear that dramatic, but if any of the above — memory loss or dementia — hits you or a family member, it becomes a bona fide disaster not only for the patient but also for those who'll need to care for them for the rest of their lives, effectively doubling or tripling the number of victims.

And, no, I am not making this up to attract your attention. According to the Alzheimer's Association:

"Dementia is not a normal part of aging. It is caused by damage to brain cells that affects their ability to communicate, which can affect thinking, behavior, and feelings. [link]"

This statement is quite profound because it tells you exactly what this article does — memory loss and dementia aren't preordained by aging! Even more important, with the right know-how and basic lifestyle changes, you can prevent cellular brain damage and its irreversible impact on your memory and cognition.

And keep in mind that even mild memory loss isn't compatible with a professional career. It is also a near-certain path to more medical problems ahead and a potential risk factor for financial ruin. Adding insult to injury according to the same Alzheimer's Association:

"Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 60-80% of dementia cases. [link]"

I actually believe that memory loss and dementia precede Alzheimer's disease, not the other way around. This distinction matters because memory loss and dementia are largely preventable, while Alzheimer's disease isn’t, after the brain damage has already taken place.

That is why I am so optimistic about the prevention and reversal of memory loss and dementia, and, by extension, of Alzheimer's disease.

Reality Doesn't Vanish When the Memory Does

My optimism comes from a basic analysis of well-established causes of brain damage, memory loss, dementia, and Alzheimer's disease. For objectivity, I assigned each one of them to three categories: preventable, reversible, and nutrition-related, which are simple to understand and hard to dispute.

Here is what it all means, and how to interpret these facts: 

Preventable causes

As you can see from the Preventable column, only one cause out of 38 — APOE-ε4 genetic predisposition — is neither preventable, reversible, nor nutrition-related.

Every fifth person (20%) carries this mutation, and about 25% of APOE-ε4 carriers are projected to develop dementia in their lifetime, though the precise percentage varies depending on whether they carry one or two copies of the mutation, as well as other individual risk factors. That means the overall risk per population is only 5% (100 x 20%=20; 20 x 25% = 5%).

Many of you may say that I am overly optimistic about prevention, that some causes are accidents. I agree with that point, but even most accidents are preventable with simply recognizing their chances, particularly for anyone reading this material.

Reversible causes

Of the 38 potential causes, only 17 are irreversible, and four of them are partially reversible. Your chance of complete reversal depends on how early you start the process, and, ideally, you should do it before the onset of memory loss. And keep in mind that all irreversible causes except for one were preventable.

Nutrition-related causes

This column is the most interesting because it is related to my expertise in functional and forensic nutrition. Out of 38 primary causes of dementia and MCI, 27 are nutrition-related, meaning that if you follow my nutrition-related recommendations, you will outright eliminate 27 potential factors behind dementia and memory loss.

And that is the core thesis for this article — if you start early enough, 95% of you can prevent or reverse dementia and memory loss completely, and only 5% may develop it, but I believe that chances goes down dramatically if you do the same, and, in fact, should double-up the effort to follow all of my nutritional recommendations, and focus on preventing all other causes unrelated to nutrition.

Nothing Happens Out Of Nothing

I'll provide a brief description of the nutritional causes behind dementia and memory loss. The idea isn't for you to memorize all of them, but to understand the trend. Once you see the pattern, it becomes clear how to eliminate it.

Vascular / Circulatory Causes

These five interconnected vascular conditions cause brain damage that is behind memory loss and dementia. They are readily preventable with the same basic nutritional and metabolic corrections I describe from article to article. When circulation to the brain is steady and the blood vessels remain flexible, neurons receive the oxygen and nutrients they need to function and renew themselves, and the "age-related" decline doesn't occur:

• Atherosclerosis is a progressive thickening and hardening of arterial walls from chronic inflammation that restricts blood flow to the brain that reducing circulation and depriving brain neurons of oxygen and glucose, and causes memory loss and vascular dementia. The main nutritional factors include excess sugar, oxidized vegetable oils, low intake of magnesium and omega-3 fats, and deficiencies of vitamins B6, B12, and folate that promote vascular inflammation.

• Cerebral Small Vessel Disease damages the brain's tiny capillaries and arterioles, reduces microcirculation, and leads to "white matter" loss, a key cause of vascular dementia. Nutritional factors include hypertension, elevated homocysteine from folate or B12 deficiency, and the weakness of the blood vessel walls (endothelium) from low vitamin C, magnesium, and omega-3 intake.

• Ischemic or Hemorrhagic Stroke. In ischemic stroke, a clot blocks blood flow. In a hemorrhagic stroke, a weakened vessel ruptures. Both conditions instantly deprive parts of the brain of oxygen and kill neurons responsible for memory and reasoning. The nutritional causes include high blood sugar, elevated homocysteine from low folate and B-vitamin status, and brittle vascular walls from vitamin C and K deficiency.

• Hypoxia (Chronic Low Oxygen Supply) causes persistent oxygen shortage from anemia, poor circulation, and shallow breathing. It deprives neurons of energy and accelerates their death. The main nutritional causes include deficiencies of iron, vitamin B12, and folate that impair red-blood-cell formation, and low magnesium and coenzyme Q10 that reduce cellular oxygen use.

• Cerebral Hypertension (high blood pressure in the brain) is caused by stiffened and narrowed brain arteries. Just like regular hypertension, it results from chronic hyperinsulinemia and earlier vascular damage from all other causes. As resistance in the arteries rises, the brain receives less oxygen and nutrients, and microscopic vessel ruptures or blockages begin to destroy tissue. Over time, this process causes cognitive decline and vascular dementia. The main nutritional factors include excessive refined carbohydrates, low intake of potassium, magnesium, and calcium, and deficiencies of vitamins C and E that impair vascular repair.

Metabolic / Nutritional Causes

The same most common nutritional deficiencies and imbalances that weaken your metabolism, digestion, and immunity also damage brain function over time, and are behind dementia and memory loss. I've covered each of them in minute detail throughout my previous guides:

• Vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency causes brain fatigue, poor concentration, irritability, and loss of coordination. As the deficiency deepens, people become forgetful, anxious, and mentally sluggish — the first signs of cognitive decline commonly mistaken for aging.

• Vitamin B-12 deficiency causes loss of mental clarity, slow thinking, and mood instability. Over time, it leads to memory gaps, confusion, and depression that may look identical to early dementia but are fully reversible once the deficiency is corrected.

• Folate (B-9) deficiency causes mental fog, poor focus, and emotional instability. In more advanced stages, people become apathetic, withdrawn, and unable to organize thoughts or tasks.

• Niacin (B-3) deficiency causes low energy, poor concentration, insomnia, and gradual emotional flattening. Left unchecked, it progresses to confusion, anxiety, and loss of interest in normal activities. These mental and emotional conditions mirror dementia and exacerbate sporadic memory loss.

• Hypoglycemia related to persistently high levels of insulin causes unpredictable swings in attention, motivation, and memory. People describe feeling foggy after meals, tired despite eating, and forgetful in everyday tasks. Over time, this pattern turns into a chronic state of mental dullness and disorientation and contributes to sporadic memory loss. The main causes of high insulin are chronic stress, a high-carbohydrate diet, alcohol, blood-sugar-lowering medications, and injectable insulin.

• Hypothyroidism causes mental slowing, fatigue, low motivation, and loss of short-term memory. The primary causes of hypothyroidism are chronic stress, weight-loss diets, selenium and iodine deficiency, excessive fluoride exposure, and long-term use of antidepressants or cholesterol-lowering medications. Each of these factors interferes with thyroid hormone production or conversion and affects normal brain function.

• Chronic dehydration related to table salt deficiency causes poor concentration, lightheadedness, irritability, and short-term memory lapses. Even mild dehydration can make the brain feel tired and disconnected. As bizarre as it may sound, drinking too much water is a common cause of chronic salt deficiency because it flushes sodium and chloride out through urine. The same applies to calcium, magnesium, potassium, and water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C and the B-group.

Neurodegenerative / Structural Causes

This group of conditions below represents the main forms of neurodegenerative dementia. Unlike vascular and metabolic causes, these disorders develop slowly and are considered irreversible once advanced. Long-standing nutritional deficiencies heavily influence their onset and progression:

• Alzheimer's disease is strongly associated with chronic hyperinsulinemia, thiamine (B-1) and niacin (B-3) deficiency, low magnesium and zinc, and inadequate intake of choline and omega-3 fats that maintain neuronal membranes. Long-term deficiency of vitamins B-6, B-12, and folate (B-9) elevates homocysteine and accelerates cortical atrophy.

• Lewy body disease is linked to impaired mitochondrial metabolism caused by low coenzyme Q10, niacin (B-3), and magnesium, combined with poor detoxification capacity due to inadequate protein and B-vitamin intake. Low omega-3 fats and cumulative exposure to dietary or environmental toxins further increase vulnerability.

  This condition is marked by cognitive, motor, and perceptual symptoms that often overlap with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. The main clinical manifestations include fluctuating cognition (going from super-smart to super-dumb and back again), visual hallucinations, unstable blood pressure, dizziness, constipation, urinary incontinence, sleep disorders, memory problems, and difficulties with focus.

  Not surprising, this condition is also called Dementia with Lewy bodies. The word "body" in "Lewy body disease" refers to microscopic clumps of abnormal protein that form inside nerve cells. They were named after the German neurologist Friedrich Lewy, who first identified them in 1912 while studying Parkinson's disease.

• Frontotemporal degeneration is commonly preceded by long-standing folate (B-9) and B-12 deficiency, elevated homocysteine, and low omega-3 and phospholipid intake that impair neuronal signaling. Chronic alcohol use, protein malnutrition, and prolonged carbohydrate overload aggravate the condition.

  This condition is also known as frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and is behind a group of brain disorders that cause degeneration of the frontal and temporal lobes. It affects behavior, personality, and language abilities starting between the ages of 45 to 65.

• Parkinson's disease-related dementia is aggravated by niacin (B-3), magnesium, and coenzyme Q10 deficiencies, which weaken mitochondrial energy output and dopamine synthesis. Other contributing factors include low intake of sulfur-containing amino acids and vitamins B-6, B-9, and B-12, which impair the brain regions responsible for dopamine production.

Toxic / Environmental Causes

Toxic and environmental factors contribute to memory loss and dementia by disrupting the brain's structural and energy metabolism.

• Medication toxicity. Nutritional choices precede most conditions that lead to medication use. Among them are diets that contribute to diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, depression, insomnia, heartburn, and constipation.

  In turn, blood-sugar-lowering agents prescribed for diabetes, antihypertensives and beta-blockers for hypertension and heart disease, antidepressants and sedatives for depression and insomnia, and acid-suppressing drugs and laxatives for heartburn and constipation all impair digestion, absorption, assimilation, and other vital functions.

  Over time, they deplete coenzyme Q10, magnesium, and B-group vitamins, leading to brain damage, memory loss, and dementia. The same applies to a myriad of other conditions and medications not mentioned here.

• Heavy metals (lead, mercury, aluminum, arsenic). Lead is common in contaminated water, mercury is common in fish, aluminum comes from kitchenware, and arsenic is common in rice. These exposures are avoidable with awareness and attention. Chronic exposure to these metals interferes with energy production inside brain cells and accelerates the loss of mental clarity, balance, and coordination.

  The brain's ability to detoxify them depends on adequate intake of sulfur-containing amino acids, selenium, zinc, and vitamins B-6, B-9, and B-12. Deficiency of any of these nutrients allows metals to accumulate and gradually damage the nervous system.

• Chronic alcohol use. This article isn't a treatise on morals or choices. Alcohol was a big part of my life and upbringing because, in the culture and society I grew up in, it was considered a manly thing to do.

  Without a doubt, it left an impact on my health, and it will do the same for yours. I'm not about to urge you not to drink, but keep in mind that alcohol will damage your brain, memory, and cognition more than any other factor, and it will accelerate the development of dementia in people with a genetic predisposition.

  Long-term alcohol exposure depletes thiamine (B-1), magnesium, folate (B-9), and niacin (B-3), leading to severe energy deficits in brain tissue. The result is a gradual loss of focus, memory, and emotional control — symptoms often dismissed as "just drinking too much." They're not.

  At the very least, while your liver is still functional, take the quality supplements I recommend to offset and preempt the damage.

• Narcotics use. Regular use of soft drugs such as tobacco, mushrooms, or cannabis and their derivatives, and hard drugs such as opioids, cocaine, or amphetamines may, to varying degrees of severity, disrupt oxygen delivery, glucose metabolism, and hormonal balance, leaving the brain in a chronically depleted state. The more frequently they are used, the greater the risks, especially in later years when the body is no longer as resilient as it was in youth.

  Just like with alcohol, I'm not here to pass judgment. These substances are fun for many people, and many can probably get away with them for a while, except for those with a genetic predisposition to dementia.

  Knowing my own addictive personality, I never took a single drug despite countless opportunities and a permissive environment.

  Also, keep in mind that many people turn to alcohol, vaping, and drugs to self-medicate for depression, anxiety, OCD, insomnia, bipolar states, chronic pain, and similar conditions. Almost all of these problems begin in the kitchen.

  Deficiencies of thiamine (B-1), magnesium, and essential amino acids worsen the cognitive decline and apathy that follow prolonged drug exposure — although I think even that is an understatement.

Infectious / Inflammatory and Miscellaneous Causes 

The following conditions don't fit neatly into vascular, metabolic, or toxic categories, yet they often determine how quickly the brain deteriorates. Chronic inflammation, stress, poor sleep, and the slow effects of aging all magnify nutritional deficiencies and metabolic decline.

None of them is inevitable, and all respond to the same preventative measures — functional nutrition, supplementation, time for recovery, and respect for the needs of structural and energy metabolism. Understanding these final pieces completes the picture of how memory loss and dementia evolve and gives you more than a clue about their prevention:

• Chronic systemic inflammation. Poor nutrition is the primary driver of long-term inflammation that slowly destroys the brain's microvasculature and impairs oxygen delivery. Diets high in sugar and seed oils, combined with deficiencies of magnesium, zinc, and vitamins B-6, B-9, and B-12, keep the body in a constant inflammatory state. Over time, this process accelerates aging, depletes neurotransmitters, and leads to irreversible loss of brain volume.

• Chronic stress and cortisol elevation. Emotional strain, pressure, and lack of recovery time elevate cortisol, which blocks glucose uptake in the brain and suppresses thyroid and sex hormones. Nutritional factors such as low protein intake, magnesium depletion, and chronically high sugar consumption amplify this effect. The result is anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, and progressive loss of memory and focus.

• Sleep deprivation and sleep apnea. Irregular sleep and oxygen deprivation during sleep interfere with detoxification and repair of brain tissue. Deficiencies of magnesium, calcium, and B-group vitamins make sleep shallower and recovery slower. The long-term effect is chronic fatigue, poor concentration, and cognitive decline that worsens with age.

• Age-related brain atrophy. What medicine calls "age-related" is actually the outcome of lifelong deficiencies of vitamins B-1, B-3, B-6, B-9, and B-12, together with low magnesium, zinc, and omega-3 fats that reduce energy production and structural maintenance in neurons. The inevitable outcome is a gradual shrinkage of brain tissue and a steady decline in memory, focus, motivation, and processing speed.

  I hope that from all of these examples, you can see the patterns that lead to nutrition-related brain damage. It's never one dramatic event but thousands of small, preventable mistakes repeated over years until the brain finally fails and enters the full dementia state.

  The good news is that the same simplicity works in reverse. Restore those materials, rebuild energy metabolism, and the body will do what it has always done best — repair, regenerate, and protect itself.

Stupid Things That Make Smart People Act Stupid

It may not sound politically correct, but succumbing to nutrition-related dementia and memory loss is a classic case of "stupid things make the stupid more stupid." In my own case, I'd rather be mildly insulted by a blunt truth than diagnosed with dementia a decade later.

By 'stupid things' I mean a basic ignorance of well-established facts, such as:

• The "healthy diet" recommended by mainstream doctors, dietitians, and nutritionists is the primary cause of the metabolic and vascular disorders behind memory loss and dementia because it's high in processed carbohydrates, excessive fiber, sugars, vegetable oils, and low in protein, essential fats, and micronutrients.

• You can't get all of the required micronutrients from a regular diet, no matter how "balanced" it appears, because urban water and food are "dead on arrival."

• The body's nutritional demands increase with age, stress, medication use, and chronic illness, exactly when the quality of digestion and absorption declines.

• Food labels, government guidelines, and medical advice rarely account for the cumulative nutritional depletion caused by modern food processing, water purification, and long-term use of prescription drugs.

• Not recognizing the early symptoms of mental decline, such as fatigue, fogginess, irritability, and poor concentration, until the damage becomes visible as memory loss or dementia.

• Taking "lifestyle" medications whose real function is to enrich the medical system and keep you sick enough to need even more of them.

• Ignoring the elementary fundamentals behind health and longevity:  age-adjusted functional nutrition, supplementation, quality sleep, and movement.

• Not taking quality supplements to correct known deficiencies and then blaming "aging" for predictable outcomes.

• Ruining your own health with laziness, greed, and ignorance, and then wondering why nothing works.

• Taking health advice from twenty-something "biohackers" and influencers on YouTube and TikTok.

• Consuming alcohol like there is no tomorrow and slowly damaging your liver and brain. Every drink depletes thiamine (B-1), magnesium, and folate (B-9), the very nutrients your brain depends on for memory and mood.

• Smoking or vaping because it looks trendy or sophisticated is a sure way to starve your brain of oxygen and accelerate the vascular damage that leads to dementia years earlier.

• Driving without a seat belt or after drinking. One bad decision or even a minor crash can cause the kind of head trauma that will set off lifelong cognitive decline.

• And the biggest illusion of all is telling yourself it will never happen to you because you make good money, have great insurance, and access to the best doctors in the world. In fact, in most cases, the opposite is true: the wealthier you are, the more likely you'll be taking multiple drugs and being overtreated by the 'best doctors.' Unfortunately, no doctor, hospital, or insurance plan can reverse decades of brain damage once it is done.

To summarize: if someone around you develops dementia or memory loss, in the majority of cases, they asked for it by doing nothing to prevent it. Don't be that person.

The Wise Don't Buy on Price 

Your chance of preventing memory loss and dementia depends in large part on the quality of the supplements you'll be taking or not taking, and that quality no longer depends on price or brand but on the source. Here is what I mean by it:

• People with plenty of money go on Amazon and look for the most expensive supplements, thinking they're getting the highest quality money can buy, because in their minds, high price equates to high quality, which, in most cases, is true with other goods, but not so much with online or retail supplements.

• People who are short on money go to Amazon and look for supplements based on price (the lower, the better), reviews (many are fake), label content (factual but meaningless), free shipping, speed of delivery, and top placement on the page.

A decade or so ago, Amazon used to resell quality goods with a modest markup because that was the only way to put most of its competitors out of business, build volume, and lock up customers with Prime. Mission accomplished.

Today, selling anything on Amazon has become an expensive proposition. The platform charges most sellers a referral fee of 10% to 15%, plus additional costs for fulfillment, warehousing, advertising, shipping, and returns.

Once all of these expenses are added up, a typical vendor ends up paying 40% to 60% of the sale price to Amazon. It's no different for Swanson, iHerb, Walmart, Target, Costco, Vitamin Shoppe, or any other retail or online vendor.

To stay competitive and still make a profit, manufacturers are forced to cut production costs by outsourcing production to the lowest-cost manufacturers with the lowest-cost ingredients in China or Vietnam. With new tariffs and rising logistics costs, that pressure is only getting worse.

At best, you may still get some value buying from those sources based on price or wishful thinking. In the middle, you get a false sense of security, thinking you are doing good for your body, while what you are taking does little or nothing. At worst, you may be taking supplements that are outright harmful, contaminated, unsanitary, or toxic.

But unlike with bad meat or lettuce, you wouldn't find this out the next morning, but years later, with dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart attack, stroke, or cancer.

I am a former pharmacist, know a thing or two about supplement manufacturing, and wouldn't allow low-quality supplements to pass my lips. For this reason, I recommend the supplements that my family and I take, and you can find all of them on this site.

Author’s note

Great memory isn't everything. In my case, I am focused on keeping and improving what I have rather than on dreaming about what I could have. And I recommend you do the same:

• Leonardo da Vinci was profoundly dyslexic, wrote backward, and had difficulty remembering sequential information.

• Agatha Christie was dyslexic and struggled with spelling and handwriting her entire life. She often dictated her novels instead of writing them.

• Hans Christian Andersen was severely dyslexic. His manuscripts are full of phonetic spelling errors.

• William Butler Yeats had poor memory and spelling. He relied on repetition and rhythm to retain ideas.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald admitted to being a slow learner and weak at rote memorization. He compensated for these shortcomings through obsessive rewriting.

• Ernest Hemingway had weak recall and difficulty with names and details, which isn't surprising for a functional alcoholic.

• Winston Churchill, also a lifelong dyslexic, couldn't memorize facts but mastered language through oratory and rhythm.

• Thomas Edison was a poor student with minimal rote memory and famously said he had "no use for memorizing what I can look up."

I, too, am dyslexic and need to look at my hands to distinguish between left and right. I never had a good memory either, and wasn't a top student in high school because I couldn't memorize well for exams.

I was terrified of failure during my time at medical university, especially in subjects like anatomy or chemistry that demanded a lot of memorization. Somehow, I managed to graduate with B+ grades, and the only two Cs I got were over petty disputes with professors, not over lack of knowledge.

I also never studied English formally because I couldn't memorize the rules and exceptions, so I learned it by watching TV, listening to talk radio, reading magazines, and writing a lot over the past 30 years.

For me, the concept of bad memory or even minor memory loss isn't such a big deal because I never had much of it to begin with. For this reason, researching and writing this article was a lot of fun because this subject is so close and personal to me.

I hope it will help you keep the memory you already have, and, even more important, don't let it slide into full-blown dementia.