Meds used to treat dementia are dangerous and practically worthless

Caring for someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia isn’t for the faint of heart.

It’s a gut-wrenching, exhausting task that will put you through a roller coaster of emotions every day.

And that’s why you deserve to know that your best efforts to keep a loved one from slipping away — both mentally and physically — are being sabotaged by a popular class of drugs that’s being handed out to millions of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

They’re called cholinesterase inhibitors, and new research is showing that they can cause severe and sudden weight loss. The kind that can worsen memory, cause dangerous falls and injuries, and even lead to hospitalizations and death.

It’s all part of a decades-long scam Big Pharma has used to make billions while peddling false hope — and dangerous meds — to our most vulnerable and desperate patients.

Wasting awayWhen cholinesterase inhibitors hit the market 20 years ago, we were promised they were going to boost the memories and change the lives of people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

But drugs like Aricept, Exelon, Namzaric and Razadyne ER may be shortening those patients’ lives instead.

In fact, a new study from the University of California, San Francisco found that our loved ones are literally wasting away to nothing on these pills.

UCSF researchers looked at national VA data on more than 1,000 dementia patients taking cholinesterase inhibitors, and found that nearly a third experienced severe — and potentially life-threatening — weight loss.

And you don’t need to be a doctor or a molecular chemist to figure out why. The most common side effects of cholinesterase inhibitors are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and anorexia.

Stringing together a couple of these side effects, even for a short time, will cause a dementia patient to lose weight and get dehydrated fast. Especially an elderly patient who probably doesn’t have much of an appetite to begin with and isn’t physically active.

And, of course, the damage doesn’t stop with weight loss. I told you a few months ago how a company called AdverseEvents looked at a batch of FDA data on Aricept and found that the drug may be causing heart attacks, heart and lung failure, comas, and sudden death.

Now some patients may be willing to roll the dice on all of these side effects if it means protecting their precious memories.

But the fact is, drug companies have been using these worthless cholinesterase inhibitors to take advantage of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients — and their caregivers — for years.

UCSF researchers, along with a panel from the American Geriatrics Society, say that the benefits of these drugs are marginal at best. And even when they work — which isn’t often — the difference is so minor you probably won’t notice it.

But that hasn’t stopped drug giants like Pfizer and Eisai, which make Aricept, from raking in a fortune off these meds. Even if they have to use lies and marketing tricks to do it.

The companies even put out a 10 mg. and 23 mg. version of Aricept to make patients think they were getting more protection. That’s despite the fact that Aricept’s own research clearly shows that these higher doses don’t provide any more benefit than the 5 mg. pill.

It was a slimy move that outraged Dartmouth scientists called nothing more than an excuse to make a buck off the misery of patients and their desperate family members.

Of course, researchers are now calling for even more studies before we can finally declare these cholinesterase inhibitors as the dangerous duds we all know they are.

But I don’t think we need to wait for that. It looks like these patients — and their caregivers — have been manipulated and harmed long enough.

Sources:

“Common medications for dementia could cause harmful weight loss” University of California — San Francisco, August 3, 2015, ScienceDaily, sciencedaily.com