Your health: Is forgetfulness normal?

Oh, forget it

It's normal to forget things from time to time, especially as you age. But how much forgetfulness is too much?

The Harvard Medical School newsletter says healthy people can experience memory loss or memory distortion at any age. Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with age, but - unless they are extreme and persistent - they are not considered indicators of Alzheimer's or other memory-impairing illnesses.

Here are a few normal memory problems:

1. Transience: Forgetting facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: Memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten.

2. Absent-mindedness: This type of forgetting occurs when you don't pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn't focus on where you put it in the first place.

3. Blocking: Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue. Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other people's names.

4. Misattribution: You remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail, like the time, place or person involved.

5. Suggestibility: Information about an occurrence after the fact becomes incorporated into your memory of the incident, even though you did not experience these details.

Think twice

Some are obvious and others will surprise you, but many habits or behaviors, can harm your health, according to Reader's Digest. The magazine focuses on five, from the book "The End of the Illness" by David B. Agus.

Avoiding flu shots because you're afraid of needles increases your chance of catching the flu, obviously. But the inflammation that comes along with the flu can damage blood vessels and might increase your risk of heart disease.

Irregular patterns of sleeping and eating can raise your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.

Fruits and vegetables can lose many of their disease-fighting compounds over time. It's better to go for frozen versions if you can't buy local or in season.

Hitting the gym daily is great, but sitting around the rest of the day can raise your blood sugar, blood pressure and even cholesterol.

Finally, those cute little stilettos you wear? They can cause inflammation and even chronic pain. But you knew that, didn't you?