If you find yourself increasingly forgetful or struggling to maintain concentration, there's good and bad news.

The good news: It may not be the first signs of dementia. The bad: Your brain may be shrinking.

In a Dutch study of 500 people ages 50 to 85 with no dementia, researchers found that 453 participants reported occasional memory or thinking problems, minor issues like struggling to find the right word or forgetting things that happened within the last day or two.

Researchers scanned participants' brains, focusing on the hippocampus, an area of the brain strongly linked to memory formation and among the first brain regions to be damaged by Alzheimer's disease. They found that in people with occasional memory problems, the hippocampus was smaller (6.7 milliliters in volume) than in people who said they had no memory problems (7.1 milliliters).

"These occasional, subjective memory complaints could be the earliest sign of problems with memory and thinking skills, and we were able to discover that these subjective memory complaints were linked to smaller brain volumes," said Dr. Frank-Erik de Leeuw, a neurologist and clinical epidemiologist at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands.

"Because occasional memory lapses were so common, though, much more work needs to be done to use such complaints diagnostically."

BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

A baby has taste buds all over the inside of its mouth, not just on the tongue.

GET ME THAT. STAT!

Using a fan to keep air moving in a bedroom appears to dramatically reduce a baby's risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), new research suggests. Researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., found that in babies' bedrooms equipped with fans, SIDS risk was reduced 72 percent compared to rooms without fans.

NUMBER CRUNCHER

A single charbroiled chicken taco "Baja style" from Baja Fresh Mexican Grill (116 grams) contains 210 calories, 45 from fat. That's 8 percent of the recommended total fat intake for a 2,000-calorie daily diet.

It also contains 25 milligrams of cholesterol (8 percent); 230 mg of sodium (10 percent); 28 grams of total carbohydrates (9 percent); 2 g of dietary fiber (8 percent); and 12 g of protein.

MEDTRONICA

National Stroke Association

stroke.org

The site is an expansive, comprehensive overview of strokes, from prevention to treatment to caregiving. It has lots of useful information, though a cluttered design and abundant promotions make navigation harder than it has to be.

DOC TALK

Cut and paste — To surgically open a patient, discover there's no hope and immediately sew the patient closed.

PHOBIA OF THE WEEK

Ostraconophobia — fear of shellfish

BEST MEDICINE

Patient: Doc, I swallowed a bone.

Doctor: Are you choking?

Patient: No, I really did!

OBSERVATION

I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.

— American author Fran Lebowitz

EPITAPHS

Twice five times suffered she the childhood pains

Yet of her children only five remains.

— The tombstone of the unnamed wife of the Laird of Enterkin

Greyfriar's churchyard, Edinburgh, Scotland

To find out more about Scott Lafee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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