Beta blockers may prevent cognitive impairment

There's no such thing as a panacea for advanced medical conditions, but doctors do their best to ensure that patients are receiving the most comprehensive care possible. In some cases, this can result in huge bills or a cumbersome amounts of pills, the cost of which a can help reduce, and prescribing fewer medications to handle the same variety of symptoms can also be helpful.

A link between body and mind
Research recently revealed that some high blood pressure patients could actually be reducing their risk for developing dementia and other brain diseases by taking beta blockers. The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) announced that findings from the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study had been released, showing dementia and Alzheimer's instances were much lower in research participants who had taken beta blockers, a specific kind of heart and blood pressure medication, in the years leading up to their deaths.

Over 750 Japanese-American men participated in the study, according to the AAN, all between the ages of 70 and 95. Of those in the program, men who took only beta blockers had the fewest brain abnormalities associated with dementia and similar illnesses, when compared to those taking some other form of blood pressure pill. Even those taking beta blockers and a secondary pressure medication saw lower success than those purely being administered the beta blocker, researchers discovered.

Universal treatment opportunity
This could be good news for more than just blood pressure patients, according to CNN's health blog The Chart. Doctors are hopeful that treating both heart and brain diseases can become a simultaneous process, looking to these results as a sign that vascular and neurological health are inherently linked. There have long been parallels between these two schools of medicine, the source reported, with hypertension and other heart-related illnesses shown to cause negative side effects in the brain.

"We know that there are connections between brain health and heart health," said Heather Snyder, medical director at the Alzheimer's Association and a clinician on the study, quoted CNN. "So if you have heart problems, you should have them diagnosed and treated because there may be benefits for later life brain health."