Have you ever wondered how research scientists in a lab can be so spot on at developing a supposed lifesaving medicine — but totally miss the boat because its side effects are as harmful as the condition it was created to cure?
Welcome to Big Pharma…
If you’re one of the 3+ million people diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia each year — this post is for you… because the wonder medicine you’ve been using to treat your irregular heart rhythm… or the very same medicine that millions of people take to treat blood clots — may be causing you brain damage.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of arrhythmia, and one in ten people in the U.S. will develop it at some point during their lifetime. AF is not only common, it’s also serious. It can lead to blood clots, heart failure, stroke or other complications.
And it can easily fly under the radar because you can have AF without experiencing noticeable symptoms at all. But if you do have symptoms, they could range anywhere from chest pain to dizziness to fatigue to exercise intolerance.
Once you have AF, conventional medicine tries to help you get your heart beat back on track with prescription medication. But not surprisingly, this may make your health worse rather than better— especially if you take the blood thinner warfarin.
According to recent research, people who choose to take warfarin to treat their AF, may end up ruining their brain health rather than fixing their heart health. That’s because warfarin has been linked to the development of dementia.
Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City found that taking warfarin as a long-term treatment for atrial fibrillation increases your risk of developing all types of dementia. And, oddly enough, the dementia risk is greater for those under 70 years old.
Researchers have recognized that atrial fibrillation increases your risk of dementia for a while now, but did anyone at your doctor’s office bother to mention that? In 2014, researchers from Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute found that people with AF who took warfarin are up to 4.5 times more likely to develop dementia.
And the risk is especially high when people take too little or too high of a dosage of warfarin for an extended period of time. In fact, researchers admitted that years of improper dosage essentially leads to brain damage.
It seems to me that taking warfarin is a bit like playing Russian roulette with your brain health. If your doctor continually prescribes you a dose that’s even slightly off, it could do irreparable damage to your brain.
But what do you do if you have AF — and want to dodge your chance of developing dementia too? See a qualified natural or alternative health practitioner to discuss safer treatment options.
You might want to even consider yoga. Swedish researchers put yoga to the test against AF, and after 12 weeks the group that did yoga fared much better than the group that did not, experiencing higher mental health scores, lower heart rate, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure than the control group. You can read more about it here.
Ideally, you can avoid the challenges of AF altogether by keeping an eye toward prevention. Like other forms of heart disease, there are some things you can do to stave off development of atrial fibrillation. So if you eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, maintain a healthy blood pressure and body weight, you’ll have a better chance of holding onto your heart health well into old age.
But whatever you do, don’t blindly take the medicine your doctor doles out because atrial fibrillation is nothing to mess around with — but neither is dementia. Know your options…
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Sources:
“What Is Atrial Fibrillation?” National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov. Retrieved May 9, 2016.
“Atrial fibrillation patients treated with warfarin have higher rates of dementia, new study finds.” Intermountain Medical Center. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com. Retrieved May 9, 2016
“New Link Between Atrial Fibrillation and Dementia.” Intermountain Medical Center. https://intermountainhealthcare.org. Retrieved May 9, 2016.
