Be careful what we drink when we can’t sleep. A study published by the British Medical Journal links the risk of Alzheimer’s with the prolonged use of sleeping pills.
Those who took benzodiazepines (Valium, Tranxilium, Tranimazin, Orfidal or Lexatin) for three months in a row or more had a 51% higher risk of Alzheimer’s.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that benzodiazepines should not be used for more than 12 weeks. The Spanish Medicines Agency recognises that, “although these are drugs that are only dispensed with a medical prescription, they exhibit a broad component of autonomy in their use, through induced and required prescription”.
The researchers believe that these drugs have great value for the treatment of insomnia and anxiety, but warn that they should be used for periods not exceeding three months.
Worldwide, 36 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s. Year after year the number of affected people continues to grow and experts already consider this disease to be one of the pandemics of the 21st century.
Symptoms of the disease are usually temporary disorientation, immediate memory loss, and behavioral changes. “He stops having interest, begins to neglect himself or has laziness in cleaning, in food… Those are red flags. It can be the beginning of dementia or depression,” explains Rodríguez Bermúdez.
In Galicia, the psychiatrist Luis Ferrer i Balsebre already warned that the consumption of antidepressants increased by 300% in the last 25 years in his speech at the entrance to the Royal Academy of Medicine.
Source: 20 Minutos
