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From reading this Forum I get the impression that many caregivers are taking care of dementia/Alz people.
Would you say that many, most, some take or have taken years of cholesterol lowering drugs and from what I read so much we need cholesterol for our brains. The drugs are taken to lower cholesterol. To me it's so mindboggling on the drugs given to millions.
I believe this man's info was the first that got me thinking about this subject probably 20 yrs ago or more.
Remember, forum members can relate anecdotes and you must know by now that this is of limited value. My dad had dementia. My sister and I were caretakers. He never took any cholesterol-lowering drugs.
My grandmother, aunt and cousin, her mother, grandmother and great grandmother all had Alzheimer's. No, they did not take cholesterol lowering drugs.
I don't even know if any of the drugs existed in my parents' days...yet my grandparents and their parents...cholesterol lowering drugs are pretty new in the whole scheme of this issue.
My parents lived into 90's and ate good fats and had good minds when they left.
My mother and mother in law both have/had dementia. My MIL had Alzheimer's and my mom has vascular dementia. Neither of them ever took any meds at all for cholesterol.
Age-related senility is not the same thing as vascular dementia or Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is relentlessly progressive, and it destroys a person's brain one section and one skill at a time, and the progression is pretty easy to predict. Vascular dementia is caused by a stroke or strokes, and is less predictable but can also be progressive, and usually is.
At age 79 my dad had a touch of senility - though he was very, very active and smart and was in fact still working and still running a business, making lots of business deals and transactions, etc. But on his brain scan, it showed normal, age appropriate brain shrinkage, which would result in normal enough mild senility. It might have gotten worse if he'd lived longer, or maybe not, who knows? All I know is that while he was very wise and very smart, he wasn't what I'd call as "quick" in some ways, and for instance, he called me once and said "I don't think I need to be driving at night," and that was OK - age appropriate mild loss of hand/eye coordination or a quickness of reflexes. He had already cut back on what he called "unnecessary driving" and driving in heavy traffic several years before his death because he just didn't feel as quick reflex wise.
But this little bit of age appropriate brain shrinkage is nothing like Alzheimer's or vascular dementia once either of those moves beyond very mild effects. Believe me, there is a difference and the family will know it.
That three or four years (on average) at the end of one's life is usually when people are stricken with serious forms of dementia, but also when they may suffer from age related, and age "expected" milder senility.
So I think that's why we're seeing an uptick in it more than from any other cause.
I can remember discussing causes of these memory loss issues years ago and the big one discussed was aluminum. At that point I got rid of all aluminum pots/pans and even stopped using alum foil unless totally necessary. I hardly ever use it today. Why so much today, or is it we just have more population and of course the media in our lives.
I still would never go to those cholesterol lowering drugs. Could be more memory issues since these drugs. Pharma drugs certainly are not innocent.
I can remember discussing causes of these memory loss issues years ago and the big one discussed was aluminum. At that point I got rid of all aluminum pots/pans and even stopped using alum foil unless totally necessary. I hardly ever use it today. Why so much today, or is it we just have more population and of course the media in our lives.
I still would never go to those cholesterol lowering drugs. Could be more memory issues since these drugs. Pharma drugs certainly are not innocent.
Oh, I think that many pharma drugs are potentially problematic, as well as aluminum for that matter (in excess). We don't have any aluminum pots or pans for instance. But I do occasionally use aluminum foil - not often but occasionally. And we avoid statins because I do think they can contribute to dementia in some people. But I think you asked if any of us caregivers knew whether or not our loved ones with dementia took those drugs and no one I know of with dementia in my family ever did. I think there are many causes for dementia, and statins could be a cause for some people - same with overuse of aluminum. But I think that one main reason we're seeing more of it is because people are living longer.
I don't think it's causation so much as it increases any existing risk that you had before. It's known that the cholesterol-lowering drugs make you more vulnerable to developing diabetes and that people on diabetes are unlikely to follow their diabetes medication and diet. Probably the damage to nerve tissue (aka diabetic neuropathy) and memory cells in the brain over a long time from high blood sugar is what shows up as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They report it takes about 12 or 13 years before it shows up after a medical diagnosis for diabetes. That was about how long before dementia showed up in our case, put on Metformin diabetic medication in 2003 and dementia diagnosis in 2014.
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