Short Term Memory : Using Vitamins to Improve Your Memory

Article by Martin Mak

Can vitamins help you improve your memory? An Australian study has found that older folks who took vitamin B12 and folic acid (vitamin B9) supplements for two years had greater improvements on short and long term memory tests compared to adults who did not.

Though the results were modest, they were certainly encouraging according to Dr Janine Walker, a researcher of Australian National University and one of the authors of the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. She said “Vitamins may have an important role in promoting healthy ageing and mental well-being, as well as sustaining good cognitive function for longer on a community-wide scale.

In tests, researchers asked more than 700 people aged 60 to 74 years to take a daily dose of 400 micrograms of folic acid and 100 micrograms of vitamin B12, or placebo pills that resembled the vitamins. Participants did not know which pills they were assigned to take.

The test subjects were chosen because they had showed signs of depression although none had been diagnosed with clinical depression. Dr Walker said, “We felt that older people with elevated depression symptoms were an important cohort to target given evidence that late life depression is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment.”

There seemed to be no difference between the groups in how well people scored on mental tests, including those on memory, attention and speed. after a year. But after 2 years, those who took the vitamins showed more, if modest, improvement in their scores on the memory tasks.

On a short-term test, for instance, those who took the fake pills improved their score from 5.2 to 5.5 over 2 years. Those who took the vitamins raised their test scores from 5.16 to 5.6.

Using short term memory, a person dials a number that someone has just told him, while long term memory comes into play when he calls that number a day or week later.

The mechanism on how taking vitamins might work to improve brain function is not yet clear. Perhaps the vitamins reduce the body’s levels of a molecule called homocysteine, which is linked to cardiovascular disease and poor cognitive function.

The idea is that lowering homocysteine could perhaps reduce the cardiovascular risk and in turn, after mental function.

Further tests are needed, including that on whether other groups of people, especially those older than the people in the study, would also benefit from taking Vitamins.