It's Not Dementia, It's Your Heart Medication: Cholesterol Drugs and Memory

<p> </p><p>One day in 1999 Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., and could not remember where he was. His wife stepped outside, and he greeted her as a stranger. When Graveline’s memory returned some six hours later in the hospital, he racked his brain to figure out what might have caused this terrifying bout of amnesia. Only one thing came to mind: he had recently started taking the statin drug Lipitor. Cholesterol-lowering statins such as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are the most widely prescribed medications in the world, and they are credited with saving the lives of many heart disease patients. But recently a small number of users have voiced concerns that the drugs elicit unexpected cognitive side effects, such as memory loss, fuzzy thinking and learning difficulties. Hundreds of people have registered complaints with MedWatch, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s adverse drug reaction database, but few studies have been done and the results are inconclusive. Nevertheless, many experts are starting to believe that a small percentage of the population is at risk, and they are calling for increased public awareness of the possible cognitive side effects of statins—symptoms that may be misdiagnosed as dementia in the aging patients who take them. Fat and the Brain It is not crazy to connect cholesterol-modifying drugs with cognition; after all, one quarter of the body’s cholesterol is found in the brain. Cholesterol is a waxy substance that, among other things, provides structure to the body’s cell membranes. High levels of cholesterol in the blood create a risk for heart disease, because the molecules that transport cholesterol can damage arteries and cause blockages. In the brain, however, cholesterol plays a crucial role in the formation of neuronal connections—the vital links that underlie memory and learning. Quick thinking and rapid reaction times depend on cholesterol, too, because the waxy molecules are the building blocks of the sheaths that insulate neurons and speed up electrical transmissions. “We can’t understand how a drug that affects such an important pathway would not have adverse reactions,” says Ralph Edwards, former director of the World Health Organization’s drug-monitoring center in Uppsala, Sweden. Two small trials published in 2000 and 2004 by Matthew Muldoon, a clinical pharmacologist at the University of Pittsburgh, seem to suggest a link between statins and cognitive problems. The first, which enrolled 209 high-cholesterol subjects, reported that participants taking placebo pills improved more on repeated tests of attention and reaction time taken over the course of six months—presumably getting better because of practice, as people typically do. Subjects who were on statins, however, did not show the normal improvement—suggesting their learning was impaired. The second trial reported similar findings. And a study published in 2003 in Reviews of Therapeutics noted that among 60 statin users who had reported memory problems to MedWatch, more than half said their symptoms improved when they stopped taking the drugs. But other studies have found no significant link between statins and memory problems. Larry Sparks, director of the Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Research at the Sun Health Research Institute in Sun City, Ariz., goes so far as to say that “you’ve got a better chance of buying a winning lottery ticket, walking outside and getting hit by lightning and dying” than you do of suffering a cognitive side effect from statins. Vulnerable Genes? Many experts agree that for most people the risk is quite low, but they are beginning to believe the effects are real. “A subset of the population is vulnerable,” argues Joe Graedon, co-founder of the consumer advocacy Web site the People’s Pharmacy, which has collected hundreds of reports of cognitive-related statin side effects in the past decade. Some researchers believe these people have a genetic profile that puts them at risk.</p>

It's Not Dementia, It's Your Heart Medication: Cholesterol Drugs and Memory

  One day in 1999 Duane Graveline, then a 68-year-old former NASA astronaut, returned home from his morning walk in Merritt Island, Fla., an...

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Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet

<p> puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes.</p><p>The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe connected to a vessel filled with water, is particularly fashionable among young people, with the number of specialist bars rising 210 per cent since 2007.</p><p>But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.</p><div><img alt="Trend: Zaky Ali ,40, owner of Marhaba Cafe in Birmingham" height="353" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/14/article-2114987-1229BDEC000005DC-252_468x353.jpg" width="468" /><p>Trend: Zaky Ali ,40, owner of Marhaba Cafe in Birmingham, with a hookah pipe for smoking shisha, which is becoming more popular among the young. But experts warn it can do more damage than cigarettes because users take more puffs of smoke</p></div><p>This is because a cigarette smoker typically takes between eight and 12 puffs, inhaling 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke.</p><p>But during hour-long shisha sessions smokers may take up to 200 drags, ranging from 0.15 to 1 litre of smoke each. </p><p> </p><div> </div><div><h4>More...</h4><ul><li><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114944/Britains-drink-death-capital-How-people-die-alcohol-Sunderland-else.html">Britain's drink death capital: How more people die from alcohol in Sunderland than anywhere else</a></li></ul></div><p> </p><p>‘Shisha smoking is a growing concern because people aren’t aware of the risks like they are with cigarette smoking,’ says Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London.</p><p>‘The greater the exposure in terms of duration and amount smoked, the greater the risk to your health’</p><p>That’s because although shisha tobacco tastes nicer than cigarettes, it contains all the same toxicants known to cause lung cancer and heart disease.</p><div><img alt="Cigarette" height="364" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/14/article-2114987-0053AA3000000578-481_233x364.jpg" width="233" /><p>Risk: Smokers typically take in 12 puffs on a cigarette compared to up to 200 for hookah pipes</p></div><p>Among the risks are heart disease, respiratory problems, lung and mouth cancer and problems during pregnancy.</p><p>‘Smoke from tobacco contains a number of carcinogens which damage the DNA in cells,’ explains Professor West. ‘Just one damaged cell can divide and multiply uncontrollably and quite quickly develop into a large tumour. This is what causes lung cancer,’ explains Professor West</p><p>Enthusiasts claim that as the smoke passes through water most of the harmful chemicals are absorbed, however there is no evidence to support this.</p><p>‘If people think it’s safer than cigarettes, when it’s not, they need to be informed otherwise,’ said Professor West.</p><p>There are other risks. As the mouthpiece is passed around from person to person, this raises the risk of transmitting diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.</p><p>The waterpipe has been used to smoke tobacco for centuries, primarily in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.</p><p>A rise in travel to countries such as Egypt and Turkey has seen the pipe transported to the UK.</p><p>The waterpipe is heavily sold as a souvenir, and is popular with tourists who like to take it back home as a gift or decorative object.</p><p>The waterpipe can also be purchased in various shops in London for as little as £20, with shisha tobacco costing £5-£10.</p><p>The tobacco is burned with charcoal in a bowl that sits above the vessel.</p><p>The smoke it produces passes through the water in the container and goes down the pipe so the user can sit by the vessel and an inhale it with their mouth. </p><div><img alt="Middle Eastern inspired: A shisha user in Iraq, the pipe's traditional home" height="313" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/14/article-2114987-12203A12000005DC-615_468x313.jpg" width="468" /><p>Middle Eastern inspired: A shisha user in Iraq, the pipe's traditional home</p></div><p>The smoke is cooled by the water and makes it feel less ‘harsh’ - and experts warn that as a result people inhale it more deeply into their lungs, which increases the risks even further.</p><p>Shisha tobacco is flavoured with fruit molasses such as apple and strawberry, so the residual redolent smoke is sweet.</p><p>Because it doesn’t taste like a cigarette, people often think of it as being safer or better. Many young people who don’t usually smoke are attracted to this seemingly harmless activity.</p><p>It’s also a cheaper option than buying a round at the pub. One shisha usually costs between £7-£20, and is often shared by two or three people throughout an evening.</p><p>In the borough of Westminster, London, the number of shisha cafes have gone up approximately by 68 per cent since 2007.</p><p>The smoking ban hasn’t stopped this trend from growing. Restaurant and café owners offering shisha have been able to flout the ban by creating garden terraces or patio seating outdoors.</p><p>But as the weather gets warmer, and shisha becomes more and more fashionable, experts are calling for better health warnings.</p><p>Professor West suggests: ‘Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet.’</p><p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff;"><br /><br /></span></p>

Shisha cafes should have prominent notices saying, “Smoking shisha can kill” - just like you would on a cigarette packet

 puffing on a Turkish waterpipe is the latest trend to hit British bars and cafes. The flavoured tobacco, which is smoked via a long pipe co...

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Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry

<p> </p><p>Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry, a consultant psychiatrist says.Many people who use drugs recreationally also take prescription medicines such as tranquillisers, sleeping pills and painkillers to deal with the effects of a weekend high and get back to work on Monday, new research reveals. An international survey carried out by the Guardian and Mixmag magazine found that about a third of the 7,700 people from the UK who revealed their illegal drug use also took prescription sleeping pills – 22.4% had taken benzodiazepines such as temazepam in the last year and 7.2% had taken the newer "z-drugs" – zopiclone and zolpidem. Those taking part in the survey were predominantly well-educated working people who felt they were in control of their lives. But Dr Richard Bowskill, consultant psychiatrist and medical director of the Priory rehabilitation centre in Brighton, said he saw the fallout years later from this pattern of illegal and prescription drug-taking among "highly functioning" clients. "People think they are being their own pharmacist. They have a major binge of cocaine over the weekend and three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday night. They think they understand what it is doing to their body and they think they are in control, but their brain chemistry is getting messed up," he said. "They know the effects of the drug. It's often being used following cocaine to self-medicate for the downswing and it causes chaos. It's a really common scenario. Then they can't get to sleep on Monday and they take some more sleeping tablets." While recreational drug users think prescription medicines are safe, because GPs hand them out and the tablets are what they purport to be, benzodiazepines and opioid painkillers are highly addictive if taken regularly for any length of time. Anna, who had a high-pressured job requiring her to make frequent long-haul flights, was not a recreational drug taker but started taking zopiclone to help her sleep on the plane or when she arrived in a different time zone and needed to be fresh for work in the morning. "Your body gets accustomed to the drugs. I didn't really understand their addictive nature," she said. "They weren't having an effect so I was having to up the dosage." She ended up taking five tablets at a time, but they just made her more anxious, irritable and sleepless. "I lost a lot of friends." She talked of the societal "pressure to perform" and her regret that there was so little help. GPs did not want to know, she said. With the help of the Council for Information on Tranquillisers, Antidepressants and Painkillers (CITA), a support group, she had been switched to a different drug and was slowly cutting down. Against expectations, most people in the Guardian/Mixmag survey did not get their prescription drugs from the internet, but from their own GP or a friend who had been prescribed them. GPs were in a bind, said Dr Peter Swinyard, national chairman of the Family Doctor Association. When people arrived in the surgery complaining of pain or insomnia "we are predisposed to believe what people tell us", he said. "We always work from the premise that they are being honest with us." Nonetheless, a survey the association did last summer showed that 52% of GPs were worried about prescription drug abuse in their area. Eight out of 10 of the 197 GPs who responded to the survey said they were aware of prescribing to people who they thought were addicted. Half were aware of occasions when prescriptions had been sold on. "People tell us they lose their prescription or it got eaten by the dog. A lot of general practices have systems like a book at reception recording those who say they have lost their prescription," Swinyard said. But there are people who GPs would not characterise as liars or cheats. "There is the traditional little old lady who is taking her sleeping pill prescription and selling it down the pub. I'm sure there is a cohort of elderly people supplementing their pension by selling their prescription drugs," he said. Although the Guardian/Mixmag survey responders mostly said they used sleeping tablets for sleep and painkillers for pain, they had often tried them to get high – 57.8% in the case of the anti-hyperactivity drug Ritalin, nearly 40% in the case of the benzos and 28% who had taken opioid painkillers. In the US, prescription opioids have caused a huge problem since oxycodone – better known by its brand name OxyContin – was licensed for use outside cancer treatment in the mid-1990s. In 2008, 15,000 Americans died from overdosing on prescription opiates, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), which is more than on heroin and cocaine combined. The opioid epidemic appears not to have hit the UK. "There has been a rise in oxycodone deaths, but it is pretty small," said James Bell, addiction consultant at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. "I have been trying to look for evidence here and it is not a big problem." Demand was fuelled in the US by direct advertising to the public. In the UK this is not allowed and most people are registered with a single NHS GP so cannot shop around. The Guardian/Mixmag study, which was conducted by Global Drug Survey, shows that a quarter of responders had taken prescription opioid painkillers and 9% had taken other painkillers. More than three-quarters said they took them for pain relief, 24% said they took them to get to sleep and 18% said they took them for mood-changing purposes.</p>

Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry

  Having a cocaine binge at the weekend followed by three or four diazepam to get to sleep on Sunday messes up the brain's chemistry, a ...

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