These Common Drugs Are Robbing Your Memory

By Natalie Moore Posted July 13, 2016

• Find out how Big Pharma is destroying your memory one pill at a time
• Is your mental deterioration due to polypharmacy?
• Discover a groundbreaking protocol that could boost your mental clarity in just 90 days. 

Dear Living Well Daily Reader,

Alzheimer’s has become an epidemic.

With over an estimated 5 million Americans currently suffering from this debilitating and heartbreaking disease, you can’t help but think there may be a common culprit.

As it turns out, Dr. Marc Micozzi, a former NIH researcher and well-known natural health expert, thinks there’s a common link as well — and it’s hiding your medicine cabinet.

That’s why we invited him, along with our colleagues and affiliate partners from OmniVista Health Learning, to reveal three common memory-stealing medications you need to know about. Plus, Dr. Micozzi will share natural alternatives you can use to replace these memory-depleting pharmaceuticals.

Read on to learn more…

These Common Drugs Are Robbing Your Memory

During the 1970s when I was in medical training, we saw cases of confusion and cognitive deficits in older people. It was just called “age associated” dementia then — before the subsequent explosion and awareness of Alzheimer’s disease.

Even after we learned about Alzheimer’s, there was a lot of misinformation about the causes. For instance, doctors thought you could “acquire” the disease through mysterious infections similar to mad cow disease and scrapie in sheep.

But even in those days when we didn’t know much about Alzheimer’s, we still recognized one common culprit behind the vast majority of memory loss: prescription drugs.

Today, I’ll tell you which drugs cause the most memory problems — and how you can protect your memory using natural alternatives.

Too many drugs equal too little memory

Back in the ’70s, we found that our elderly patients with mental confusion were often being given up to nine different drugs simultaneously for various chronic medical conditions.

Amazingly, their confusion often cleared up within just one day of temporarily stopping these medications. And cutting the doses once they started back on the drugs kept their confusion from returning.

The problem of polypharmacy (taking too many drugs) was an immediate, clear, and present cause of mental deficits in older patients. But research since then shows this problem isn’t restricted only to senior citizens.

You don’t have to be elderly to have drug-related memory loss

Studies show that taking many common drugs over a lifetime causes memory loss as well.

In fact, the proliferation of drugs — both prescription and over-the-counter — may be the reason Alzheimer’s disease has exploded in recent years.

Following is an alphabetical list of commonly prescribed drugs that have been linked in studies to memory loss. In people of all ages.

Antidepressants. The bottom line is these widely prescribed drugs are not effective for everyone. Not to mention they may increase the risk of suicide for some folks, which is a very dangerous side effect if you’re depressed.

(In fact, research published last year shows that GlaxoSmithKline actually falsified data about how its antidepressant paroxetine — better known as Paxil — was no better at treating depression than a placebo. And it caused suicidal thoughts in more than 10 percent of children to whom it was prescribed.¹ This deliberate fraud may be one of the biggest scandals in modern Big Pharma history.)

Other antidepressant drugs associated with memory loss include Anafranil, Elavil, Norpramin, Sinequan, and Tofranil. These are the older “tricyclic antidepressants” (TCAs) from the 1950s.

But even though these drugs are tied to memory loss and are also linked to heart toxicity, they’re still prescribed today.

Natural alternatives:

Talking about your problems with friends, family, or professionals is a great first step when you’re suffering from depression. Other helpful steps include modifying your thinking and behavior, using light therapy for seasonal affective disorder, and exercising regularly. And, of course, eating healthfully and taking proven depression-busting supplements like vitamin D, B vitamins, omega-3s, zinc, and magnesium can help alleviate depressive symptoms.

Anti-anxiety drugs. Research shows benzodiazepine drugs like Valium, Xanax, Ativan, and Halcion that are used for anxiety and sleeplessness can have an unexpected side effect. These powerful pharmaceuticals may interfere with both short-term and long-term memory.

In fact, Dr. Armon B. Neel Jr., a geriatric pharmacist for AARP, recently wrote that benzodiazepines are popular with anesthesiologists specifically because they cause memory loss.² In light of some of the horror stories about what patients under anesthesia have heard doctors and nurses doing to them and saying about them in the OR, it’s no wonder some clinicians may prefer that these patients not be able to remember!

These effects remind me of the old phrase, “If you can remember the 1960s, then you weren’t really there.” While I was director of the Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, I remember patients taking benzodiazepine drugs who were not sure whether something had occurred in a dream or had really happened.

They could not always distinguish whether we had discussed a topic before or whether it was something they had only thought about… or dreamed about.

Natural alternatives: The book I wrote with Don McCown, New World Mindfulness, is full of tips on how you can beat the anxiety and stress of today’s hectic world. Additionally, taking high doses of vitamin D daily, along with a high-quality vitamin B complex, has been shown in studies to improve anxiety and stress levels.

Sleeping pills. Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata are all sedatives. These drugs may help you sleep, but like the benzodiazepine anxiety drugs, their mechanism of action affects the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory.

So you may get more sleep but you really won’t remember (like the popular song from the ’70s about the guy who’d never been to Spain but was born in Oklahoma…). Again, patients have told me about having an otherworldly experience or sensation as they went through the day awake (or were they?) on these drugs.

Natural alternatives: Research shows that melatonin, valerian, hops, and ashwagandha supplements can all help you sleep.

Simple, natural solutions can halt — even reverse — ALL stages of memory loss

Of course, prescription drugs are just one easily reversible cause of memory loss. There are dozens of simple, natural solutions that can help halt — and even reverse — ALL stages of memory loss.

In fact, despite what you hear from so-called mainstream medicine “experts” or the crony capitalists attempting to cash in on the latest, government-sponsored “Decade of the Brain,” a cure for Alzheimer’s disease ALREADY exists. Just not in the form of a magic-bullet pill mass-produced by Big Pharma.

In fact, a completely natural regimen has produced a 90 percent success rate in improving memory, cognition and overall brain function. And in my brand-new Complete Alzheimer’s Cure Protocol, I outline all of the steps in detail… along with 30 years worth of previously unreported clinical research that I believe can take that 90 percent success rate even higher.

To learn more about this groundbreaking protocol, or to enroll today, click here.

Always on the side of science,

Marc S. Micozzi, MD, Ph.D.

Stay tuned to Living Well Daily tomorrow. We’ve got something special planned for you! Be sure to check your inboxes! You won’t want to miss this.

Live well,

Natalie Moore
Managing editor, Living Well Daily

Sources

^[1] Restoring Study 329: efficacy and harms of paroxetine and imipramine in treatment of major depression in adolescence.” BMJ 2015;351:h4320.

^[2] 10 Drugs That May Cause Memory Loss

^[3] Effect of Vitamin E and Memantine on Functional Decline in Alzheimer Disease

Written By Natalie Moore

Natalie Moore is a dedicated health researcher with a passion for finding healthy, natural, and science-based solutions. After a decade of direct healthcare experience in western and natural medicine, she was involved in public health research before joining Living Well Daily.

View More By Natalie Moore