Happy New Year and welcome back to the savvy psychologist.

I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Okay, a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, we talked about the two-way connection between the

brain and the small and large intestines, aka the gut, and how the trillions of bacteria that live there influence our mood,

our health, and even our personalities.

This week we'll continue our long twisting joy ride through the gut by investigating

the link between heartburn drugs and dementia.

So let's get into the gut, which, when you hear it described, sounds more like a superhero than an internal organ.

For instance, with a surface area the size of a basketball court, it secrees acid strong enough to burn your skin.

And that burn is what you feel and you have acid reflux, better known as heartburn.

And we all feel the burn after say fried chicken doused in

serracha with a chaser of coffee but in the event that reflux becomes

chronic we may find ourselves with a prescription for a proton pump inhibitor or p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p Nexium was the top selling prescription drug in 2012 with nearly 6 billion in

sales. But recent studies have wrung the alarm on the side effects of

PPPIs, most specifically the risk of dementia and the loudest

warning call came from a study in the journal jama neurology that included

almost 75,000 people age 75 and older.

At the beginning of the study, none of the participants had dementia,

but after an average of five years,

almost 30,000 had some sort of cognitive decline, including dementia and

Alzheimer's disease.

And the researchers found that those receiving regular PPI medication p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p m mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr mr Okay, how in the world would having less stomach acid put you at risk for dementia?

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