'Antidepressants and antihistamines are among the most common types of medications people take, and they belong to a class of drugs known as anticholinergics. These drugs can treat a variety of health problems, including COPD, asthma, depression, dizziness, gastrointestinal problems, overactive bladder, and the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Although they can be effective, a large new study has shown that if you take them, you might just be trading one problem for another, possibly bigger one: dementia.
Although people who suffer from depression may be desperate to get relief from this illness that can have such a negative impact on daily life, tricyclic antidepressants fall into this category, so it’s important to pay attention the concerning new findings if you take medications like Elavil, Deptran, Sinequan, or Silenor. The same can be said for antihistamines like Benadryl, among other drugs.
The study, which was published in BMJ, involved more than 40,000 dementia patients and more than 283,000 people who don’t have dementia and followed them from 2006 to 2015. They found that people who had dementia had a greater likelihood of having taken class 3 anticholinergic drugs prior to developing the illness.
These medications block the actions of acetylcholine in the brain, which can prevent it from causing involuntary movements in the muscles in the lungs, urinary tract, gastrointestinal tract, and other parts of the body.
Although the higher risk varied depending on the drugs, some of them raised the risk by 30 percent. Not every anticholinergic drug had the effect, but using some of them even as far back as 20 years raised a person’s risk of dementia later on. Generally speaking, they believe that a person aged 65 to 70 sees their risk of dementia increase by 19 percent if they’ve used anticholinergic antidepressants. The association with dementia goes up with greater levels of exposure to the meds.'
Read more: Antidepressants linked to dementia: Mental meds may just trade one condition for another
