The shocking culprit behind 50,000 dementia cases per year

There are many factors that impact the way our brains function. Most of which we bring on ourselves—like a low-quality diet, not getting enough sleep, sitting too often, and exercising too little. The list goes on.

But what many people don’t realize is that there are a lot of things doctors do to us that also harm our brains—in the long run, at least. And easily the most damaging of these is the blatant over-prescription of pharmaceuticals that we simply don’t need.

We’ve known about the link between anticholinergic drugs and dementia for a while now. But recent research really drives this threat home.

An over-the-counter Alzheimer’s risk

According to a new study, middle-aged and older patients who take anticholinergic drugs at a standard dose for three or more years face a 50 percent higher risk of developing dementia.

The drugs also lead to beta-amyloid deposition in the brain—which, as you know, is a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease.

And before you assume that you’re not taking these drugs, I’ll warn you that the list is long and varied. This class of drugs includes antihistamines, sleeping pills, tricyclic antidepressants, and drugs to treat an overactive bladder.

For reference, here are a few of the most common anticholinergic drugs:

• Benadryl®
• Dimetapp®
• Sinequan® (doxepin)
• Paxil™ (paroxetine)
• Desyrel® (trazodone)
• Remeron® (mirtazapine)
• Enablex® (darifenacin)
• Toviaz® (fesoterodine)
• Urispas® (flavoxate)
• Ditropan® (oxybutynin)

The associations were strongest for the antidepressants, antipsychotics, overactive bladder drugs, and over-the-counter cold medications. And as you can see from this list, there’s more than a good chance that you or someone you love takes them regularly.

And if that’s not scary enough, get this: If this correlation proves to be truly causal, then these drugs would bear direct responsibility for roughly ten percent of all new cases of dementia.

Half a million diagnoses a year

I think ten percent of the entire dementia population is a staggering statistic that speaks for itself.

But if you’re not convinced, let me break it down for you:  There are about 500,000 new cases of dementia every year in the U.S. alone. Which means that getting people off these drugs could spare 50,000 Americans a dementia diagnosis every year.

And as far as I’m concerned, we have a duty to do exactly that. It disgusts me when the medical establishment fans the flames of disease—something that goes against everything the medical profession stands for!

To make matters worse, most docs probably don’t even realize the harm that they’re doing. Let alone that there are safer alternatives for most of these drugs, whether it’s a different pharmaceutical or a nutritional supplement.

Bottom line? Any drug that affects your brain chemistry in one way is going to affect it in other ways, too. That’s just common sense.

Mainstream medicine likes to think that one drug does one thing, and one thing alone. But you and I both know how simplistic this way of thinking is… and that it ignores the pharmaceutical butterfly effect at great cost to the public health.

Your average doctor may suffer under the delusion that the body’s systems exist in a vacuum. But that’s simply not true.

And until they come around, risks like this will continue to be exposed. People will continue to turn away from conventional medicine. And I’ll remain right here, leading the way out of the rabbit hole.

They can keep their heads in the sand. But you don’t have to.

P.S. My Drug-Free Protocol for Reversing Alzheimer’s and Dementia is a multi-faceted plan to protect and restore your memory, strengthen your focus, and build a bigger, brighter brain. To learn more, or to sign up for this online learning tool, simply click here now!

Source:

“Anticholinergic Drugs Could Account for 10% of Dementia Cases.” Medscape Medical News, 06/28/2019. (medscape.com/viewarticle/915011)