[Warning] Popular Drug Linked to Dementia
You don’t have to be a doctor to know that dementia cases are SKYROCKETING these days.
We all know someone who has been affected… who has had their memory and personality slowly destroyed by this devastating disease.
Scientists say we’re seeing more dementia because of the poor foods we eat… or because of all the toxins we’re exposed to.
And there’s some truth to that… but it’s NOT the end of the story.
There’s an extremely common class of drugs—taken by millions of people across the U.S.— that can dramatically increase your risk of dementia.
And you need to act NOW to keep yourself safe.
Anticholinergic drugs used to treat depression (doxepin is one example) are known for side effects—specifically in the elderly.
These include drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, and hallucinations.
But it gets worse.
A recent study published in BMJ showed that taking them for long periods of time can dramatically increase your risk of developing dementia.
To determine this, researchers compared the medical records of about 40,000 patients with dementia to almost 300,000 people without dementia.
The connection was clear.
The patients taking anticholinergic antidepressants had a much higher incidence of dementia than those not taking the drugs.
In other words, the same drugs used to “treat” the brain effects of depression could be destroying your brain in the process.
Anticholinergics for bladder conditions and Parkinson’s were also connected to an increase in dementia.
Specifically, the people with dementia were 30% more likely to have taken certain classes of anticholinergics—with the more drugs taken, the higher the risk of dementia.
I’m not surprised by these findings. Other studies have already shown that short-term use of these drugs can cause confusion and can make dementia symptoms worse.
If that’s what it does in the short-term, imagine what it would do to your brain after taking it for decades.
Still, this is the largest study to look into the long-term effects of anticholinergics on dementia—and it’s about time.
Millions of people suffer from depression and bladder conditions—and many of them are blindly taking drugs that could have disastrous consequences down the road.
You shouldn’t have to choose between depression now…and dementia later.
And you don’t have to.
Lifestyle changes go a long way toward improving depression symptoms.
Following an anti-depression diet is a good place to start. This includes loading up on foods like wild-caught salmon, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds—and avoiding processed, sugar-laden junk food.
And for an option that’s more outside the box… cannabidiol (CBD, the non-psychoactive component in marijuana) has been shown to bring about remarkable improvement in patients with depression and anxiety. So much so that many people report being able to stop their drugs altogether.
(Of course, always talk to your doctor before stopping a medication.)
The point is that you have options—ones likely to reduce the risk of dementia, instead of making it worse.
To a brighter day,
Dr. Richard Gerhauser, M.D.
