As many seniors know from personal experience, we’re taking more medications today than we did just a few short years ago.

In fact, the typical senior takes four or more prescription medications daily, usually for some of the most common problems such as high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, high cholesterol and pain management for arthritis and back problems.

What you may not know is that there are a number of common drugs that put you at a higher risk for developing dementia as you continue to age. The class of drugs that has been shown in some uses to increase this risk over long term use is called anticholinergics.

Some of the most common drugs were Elavil (amitriptyline), Prothisden (dosulepin) and Paxil (paroxetine), used to treat anxiety and depression. Most often use of other anticholinergic drugs was specifically to treat conditions such as incontinence, asthma, COPD and Parkinson’s disease.

Researchers in the United Kingdom created a scale call the Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden to score the effects of 27 million prescriptions, rating them from a level of 1 for possibly anticholinergic to a score of 2 or 3, which meant that the drug was definitely anticholinergic. 

The drugs that had an ACB score of 3, typically prescribed for depression, incontinence and Parkinson’s, were found to be linked to a higher risk of dementia lasting up to 20-years after having been taken.

What does this mean to you, the patient, particularly if you might or have been prescribed one of the many drugs that are listed as anticholinergic? 

Your first step has to be to talk with your doctor and discuss your concerns, because they are real. Since the UK study found that 35 percent of dementia patients in their research had been prescribed a medicine that is an anticholinergic, ask if there may be an alternative prescription that you can take to avoid a result that may either exacerbate a current condition or possibly take years to manifest as a form of dementia.

The next step is to monitor yourself, paying attention to small changes in your functional abilities. Aging brings some forgetfulness, but signs of dementia are more distinct and have been discussed in some of my previous articles.

Lastly, physicians knowing that every medication has the potential for side effects, need to be aware that some classes of prescription drugs carry a higher, more devastating risk, and the benefits of prescribing them must outweigh the potential downside for unexpected negative side effects.

I’m not a physician, but, like many of you, I pay attention to the changes to my body and physical condition, and I’m very careful to research the medicines that I’ve been prescribed to be sure that while there are side-effects, I’m not setting myself up for some future problem by taking a drug that has been shown to create a disease as devastating as dementia.

My advice is to discuss any concerns, but a lesson we have learned in world politics can be applied to innocently accepting the word of even our medical professionals — “Trust, but verify.”

Ron Kauffman is a consultant and expert speaker on issues of aging. He is the author of “Caring for a Loved One with Alzheimer’s Disease.” He may be contacted at 828-696-9799 or at drron561@gmail.com.