A new study showed that elderly people who regularly take laxatives may have a 51 percent increased risk of dementia compared to people who do not use these drugs, according to Fox News.
In a research published in the “Neurology” medical journal, the study conducted in the United Kingdom revealed that the elderly had a higher incidence of dementia among the elderly who regularly used laxatives.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Harvard Medical School and other universities studied more than 500,000 participants between the ages of 40 and 69 (average age 56.5) with no history of dementia.
Of those who said they took laxatives “most days of the week”, 1.3 percent developed dementia of all etiology or vascular dementia after a period of 9.8 years.
In contrast, 0.4 percent of people who did not use laxatives developed dementia.
Vascular dementia is a general term for problems with reasoning, organization, judgment, memory and other thought processes caused by brain damage caused by poor blood flow to your brain, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The study found no association between laxative use and the development of Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of all dementia cases, according to the World Health Organization.
“Constipation and laxative use are common among middle-aged and older adults,” said study author Feng Sha, Ph.
“However, regular use of laxatives may alter the gut microbiome, which may affect nerve signals from the gut to the brain or increase the production of enterotoxins that may affect the brain,” she added.
“Our research found that regular use of over-the-counter laxatives was associated with an increased risk of dementia, particularly in people who used multiple types of laxatives or osmotic laxatives,” she added.
The study found that those who took multiple types of laxatives had a higher risk of dementia, with an increase of up to 90 percent.