Have you ever left a store and realized you can’t remember where you parked your car? Have you ever run into someone at the supermarket that you were recently introduced to and find that for the life of you, you can’t remember her name?

There’s the well-known joke about two older women who have met weekly for years to play cards. One day one of the women looks at the other and says apologetically “I know this is awful, we’ve known each other for years but for the life of me, I can’t remember your name. Can you please tell me your name again?” The other woman sits in dead silence for several minutes then turns to the first woman and asks “How soon do you need to know?”

In situations where we forget simple details or find ourselves standing in the middle of a parking lot with a dazed look, wondering where we left the car, we may be prone to worry if it is a sign of Alzheimer’s. But according to an article at WebMD, some memory loss is perfectly normal, especially as we age.

In fact, many people in their 20s and 30s experience exactly the same types of memory lapses. Time is memory’s worst enemy according to Stuart Zola, PhD. professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory School of Medicine and director of Yerkes National Primate Facility in Atlanta.

“If we have forgotten an appointment, we begin thinking, ‘Uh oh, is this the first sign of Alzheimer’s disease?’ and we become much more conscious, and it gets kind of a disproportionate amount of attention when it really may be something quite benign”

How can you tell is your memory lapses are normal or something for concern? What physical conditions other than Alzhiemer’s can cause memory problems?

Read Is Your Memory Normal at WebMD

If your doctor has recommended a low-sodium diet, you are probably doing all the right things to ensure you stay within the guidelines. You’ve taken the salt shaker off the table, you cook without adding salt, you choose low-sodium foods when dining out and always read the nutrition label at home.

But according to WebMD, there are foods that you would not suspect of being silently sodium rich, and you may be getting more sodium than you think if you eat them.

Included are things like onion soup mix (a favorite for cooking), spaghetti sauce, canned creamed corn and vegetable juice cocktail.

For an illuminating look at foods you didn’t know were high in sodium, check out the story at WebMD.

The advisory panel of the CDC has announced it will recommend a routine shingles vaccine for all Americans at age 60.

If you’ve ever had chickenpox, you have a 20% chance of developing shingles in later life. A person who lives to be 85 has a 50% chance of getting shingles.

Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which can lie dormant for years after taking refuge in nerve cells, is reactivated and travels down nerve cell fibers to cause a renewed infection. Shingles erupts in a rash of pustules just like chickenpox, but because the nervous system is now involved, is far more painful.

In some cases the patient may develop postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) – a condition characterized by unrelenting pain, caused by damage to the nervous system.

The new vaccine Zostavax has been shown to be more than 60% effective in reducing shingles symptoms.

Read more about the vaccine and shingles at WebMD.

The old stand-by drug, aspirin, has been replaced in many medicine cabinets by other pain-killers and headache and fever reducers. Due to its effect on the lining of the stomach and the risk of bleeding and ulcers, aspirin is generally taken regularly only by those with a risk of heart disease.

But researchers have found evidence in test-tube experiments that aspirin has angiogenesis-blocking power, that is, it keeps cancers from creating the blood vessels they need to grow. They caution that these tests have not been done in humans yet and that no one should start taking aspirin to ward off cancer.

Aspirin May Be Newest Cancer Drug – WebMD