A revival of the claims in an earlier research study that over-the-counter anticholinergic medications (which includes Benadryl and many of the PM versions of acetaminophen and ibuprofen) causes an increased risk of developing dementia is making its way around social media.

As I strongly urge on a continual basis, we must be aware and intelligent about the context of all research and the tendency among humans to extrapolate generalizations and make them absolute truths from very specific research studies, as well as to perpetuate misinformation, disinformation, and out-and-out lies.

We have the responsibility to thoroughly educate ourselves about these diseases and get all the facts – if there actually are any (many of the more outrageous things I’ve seen have little to no factual basis and yet they are the very things that people widely distribute as truth) before believing anything you see and hear (or read).

The more you learn and know about these neurological diseases, the better able you will be able to distinguish between what is true and what is not (there is a lot of garbage and there are a lot of garbage claims out in cyberspace – when we fall for it, we, frankly, show our ignorance and unwillingness to do the work required to get any kind of comprehensive and knowledgeable understanding of these diseases).

The facts about this study, its context, and over-the-counter anticholinergic medications are in this clinical report.