Oh Good, Turns Out Taking Basic Allergies Medicine Wreck Your Brain Up Good

For the past month, I have been awash in a fog of Benadryl. By the time I’m done walking my dog in the park each morning, my eyes are scratchy, my nose is stuffed, and my throat itches. I have to pop one just to make it to the office, then another when I get there.

Sure, it gets me through the day, and I love it, but it turns out in the process I am melting my brain to mush.

That’s because a new study found that basic allergy drugs, along with a bunch of others, cause cognitive impairment and aide in the onset of dementia.

Would you look at this list of drugs?

God damn, that’s like every drug in the world.

The study, out of the Indiana University School of Medicine, used brain imaging techniques to find out the true effects of anticholinergic drugs.

They fucking shrink your brain. Via Fox:

The study looked at 451 people, with an average age of 73. Sixty of them were taking at least one medication with medium or high anticholinergic activity. To identify physical and physiological changes that could be associated with the reported effects, researchers assessed the results of memory and cognitive tests; PET scans, to measure brain metabolism; and MRI scans, to assess brain structure.

The cognitive tests revealed that people taking anticholinergic drugs performed worse on short-term memory tests and some tests of executive function, including verbal reasoning, planning and problem-solving.

Anticholinergic drug users also showed lower levels of glucose metabolism — a biomarker for brain activity — both in the brain overall and in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory and which has been identified as affected early by Alzheimer’s disease. The participants using anticholinergic drugs were also found to have reduced brain volume and larger ventricles, the cavities inside the brain.

Combine that with all the molly you’ve been doing and you’re gonna be a vegetable by the time you are 40.