As I was scrolling through Facebook, I stumbled upon this article related to something else entirely. It was about police walking away from a situation that involved a mentally ill individual. You know how off to the side they have those "related articles," I saw one that mentioned medications leading to Alzheimer's disease and decided to read it. It is frightening!
As per Google when I went to search for the article again.
"Older people who have relied on a class of drugs called benzodiazepines to reduce anxiety or induce sleep are at higher risk of going on to develop Alzheimer's disease, new research finds, with those whose use of the medications is most intensive almost twice as likely to develop the mind-robbing disorder."
Alzheimer's and/or dementia is bad enough, but why are we "poisoning" our population with drugs that could potentially cause dementia or worsening of this horrid disease?
http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-sn-anxiety-drug-alzheimers-20140909-story.html
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/27/sleeping-drugs-increased-risk-alzheimers
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/benzodiazepine-use-may-raise-risk-alzheimers-disease-201409107397
If you are dealing with someone with dementia, I highly encourage you to talk to his/her doctor about the medications he/she is taking and, if at all possible, remove the medication from his/her regimen. Sometimes the risks far outweigh any benefits one might experience.
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