Expert: Mary Gordon - 12/11/2004

Question
I know someone who for the past years (I think) has developed a "habit" of verbal irregularities and I was wondering if that is a disease. For ex. she might say "it is 8:00" when its 10:00. or "eat your breakfast" when its dinner time. She also reverses numbers sometimes. Sometimes when she is speaking to me she recals the name of her best friend after 1 or 2 seconds. She is 45.

Answer
Al, there are a number of things that can affect concentration, word finding ability, memory etc. These range from hormonal or chemical imbalances, the person's emotional state, how much stress they are under, small strokes, metabolic disorders, nutritional deficiencies, tumours, and all manner of neurological disorders, including the progressive and incurable ones like Alzheimer's.

The only way to find out what the problem might be is to see a doctor. People as young as your friend do get Alzheimer's. There is a form that hits people as early as in their 30's - however, it is an extremely rare genetic illness similar to Huntingtons in that having a parent with the disease presents the next generation with a 50-50 chance of AD. If this was in your friend's family, she would know, as there would be a history of family members going down hill in middle age. Early onset AD also tends to be quickly progressive (i.e. it appears to be more aggressive than the older onset variety and gets worse faster, leading to death by late middle age).

The odds of what you are seeing being a form of AD are remote - but that doesn't mean that what you are seeing is "normal". If the alarm bells are going off in your gut, I'd listen to them and urge her to see a doctor and find out what is going on, if anything, and what she can do about it.
Could be something as simple as a thyroid problem = but it needs a doctor to review her situation, do a physical and do some tests to determine what is going on.

Hope this helps.

Mary G.