However, a recent study of commonly prescribed drugs for incontinence, allergy or high blood pressure, indicates users walked more slowly and were less able to take care of themselves than others not taking the drugs, In other words, speeded generic decline. They said people who took drugs that block acetylcholine -- a chemical messenger in the nervous system critical for memory -- functioned less well than their peers. Dr. Kaycee Sink of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, led the study. They had 3,000 people in the study of whom 40 percent were taking more than one anti-cholinergic drug.

"The increase in age incompetence.
Example If 75 in study and taking at least one moderately anticholinergic medication is at a similar functional level to a 78 to 79-year-old,"

The most common such drugs in the study included the blood pressure drug Nifedipine (sold as Adalat or Procardia), the stomach antacid ranitidine or Zantac, both with mild or moderate anticholinergic properties, and Pfizer Inc's incontinence drug Tolterodine or Detrol, which is highly anticholinergic.

"The tricky part ... is that many useful drugs from many different classes of medications have anticholinergic properties," Sink is quoted to have said.

Sink studied the effects of taking multiple anticholinergic drugs on walking speed, dressing, eating, taking care of personal hygiene, grooming, shopping, cooking and managing money on her test subjects whose average age was 78.

Sink found that older nursing home residents who took drugs for dementia and incontinence at the same time had a 50 percent faster decline in function than those treated only for dementia

Editors Note:

This comes on top of recent studies that indicate many elderly are committed to adult care facilities primarily because of memory problems.

Personally, I consider this a huge personal tragedy for the people involved, the rest of their lives literally destroyed by the very system they had been programmed that should go unchecked or unquestioned and followed blindly, anyone disagreeing labeled a charlatan or worse.

We continually read that chemical medications are taken on recommendations of trusted medical practitioners who often have no idea of the down side of these prescriptions (particularly in combinations) that are the down side of getting their patients out of the office in the required 15 minutes their patient having been given something to "help" what ever complaint they came in for, and they go away...feeling "happy" that they are being well taken care of.

The big Pharma reps calling on them weekly (over $30,000 spent some say annually per doctor) keep reassuring them they are doing the right thing.

After reading these type of studies day after day, your writer becomes more and more convinced, (and angry) that most patients would be in the long term far better off (odds) (few writers have the guts to say it) without most drugs, (including aspirin); and the combined harm (and cut in your life expectancy) is far worse then harm from natural ailments of what most are trying to fix by taking these man made chemicals. (prescriptions)

Perhaps the test should be:

• Adds to my short term and long term alertness, functioning and over all well being, WITHOUT downside risks.
• Add to my overall life expectancy, not solve questionable immediate problems without overall cut in life expectancy.
• If I can not find absolute studies and research proving it, I would error on side of passing entirely as best odds.

Click picture for full size sense of humor on the best way to go. Note prearranged and predicted dates.

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