Rosemary

[annie]

In folk medicine, rosemary has been associated for centuries with having a good memory. But is it worth investigating whether it really has any powers, asks Dr Chris Van Tulleken.

In scientific terms there are different kinds of memory.

There's past memory - your experiences and what you learned at school. There's present memory, which is your working minute-to-minute memory. And there's future memory or "remembering to remember".

This is for many of us the trickiest one. When it fails bad things happen - we forget to take our vital heart medicine or worse still to buy our spouse's birthday presents. It's the reason letters decompose in my back pocket over months even though I cycle past a postbox every day.

There are plenty of examples of people who have enormously improved their past memories, committing decks of cards to memory or whole new languages. But remembering to remember is more complicated. Like most people I would do almost anything for an improved future memory.

Medicine has little to offer. There are some drugs for treating the memory loss that happens with dementia but they are not hugely effective. They give some measurable benefits but whether they are "clinically significant" is controversial. Certainly they are no miracle cure for people with dementia, nor do they improve the memory of anyone else.

So I was not that hopeful travelling up to Newcastle to see Prof Mark Moss at Northumbria University. His team is running an experiment to test whether rosemary essential oil could benefit future memory. I'll be honest - this seemed hokey.

Rosemary has been linked to memory for hundreds of years. Ophelia in Hamlet says to her brother Laertes: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." But that's no kind of basis for a study. She had after all gone insane after the death of her father and was to kill herself shortly after this scene

MORE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33519453

[maureenho]

I use to have Rosemary in the garden but it died off.

[JaneJ]

I have a rosemary in the garden. I bought one the other week. I will. Give it a worl if i remember!

[wendy]

this is most interesting
I have a rosemary in my garden, and would not be without it.
I love the smell and another one which smells similar I think it was called Lads love.


I seem to have lost that one and would love to get another, it would bring back many memories.

I have used a lot of Lavender oil whilst being poorly and I have a rose spray which I kept spraying around the house.
both I found helpful.