Korsakoff's syndrome

You need to know.

I knew nothing about Korsakoff's when I started here two years ago.

I could probably write a book on it now.

Because I'm a big believer in self-education.

Let's see.

So Wernicke's encephalopathy is a term, or Wernicke-Korsakoff's.

So Wernicke-Korsakoff's is a mental memory disorder caused due to long-term lack of vitamin B, thiamine.

requiring immediate treatment, right? Almost always with people with alcohol use disorders, sometimes people with malnutrition, it can't be cured, but it can be kind of reversed.

So Wernicke encephalopathy is when it sets on quickly and Korsakoff is a long-term chronic memory disorder.

And so you may think, how could you be so stupid as to be an alcoholic and not realize a war is going on? It's literally because these people may develop Wernicke's and that becomes permanent in Korsakoff syndrome.

So the oftentimes exhibit confusion, inability to coordinate voluntary movements, visual changes and other eye problems, muscle loss.

Uh, again, they sing a severe memory loss, inability to form new memories and can be life threatening, right? Uh, if you can get your thiamine almost always alcohol related cases, uh, men and people over 40, uh, So it's where they're born in children.

You know, the cloudiness doesn't announce itself to you in the sense of that you're living your life as a drinker and you expect sometimes that when you're drinking, when you've been drinking a lot, that you're not going to remember some of the stuff that you've done, some of the stuff that you've said.

That's baked into your... into the habit it's the times when you're not drinking it's those memories that you're not collecting together they're the worrying things they're the that's the scary part of this whole journey you know it's because when you're living day by day as long as if your memory goes to you well yeah this is i'm not going to remember this or i'm not going to remember that it's in retrospect that you look back and all the things are gone and they're gone for good you know it's one of the first signs of Korsakoff uh Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome it's like your memories are just not there you're not you're not creating the memories in the first place so it's not that you can't remember them it's that you didn't your brain didn't didn't create the memories to hold on to What he's talking about there with the box of photos, it was one of the first times that I realized this in my own life was when I picked up a box of photographs of all these events, all these good times that I've been to, all the times that you work hard for in your life.

You go out and you work and you save money for these events, holidays, vacations, celebrations.

And in most cases, I didn't remember the event itself, you know, vague memories.