Impact of Cholesterol Drugs on Aphasia

A billionaire patient. This guy comes in, he's been to the Mayo Clinic five times

in two years for three-month stints at a time

for a condition called aphasia, which is what Bruce Willis just retired from

Hollywood. Your brain is thinking what to say, but your mouth

won't say it. It is delayed. On the intake forms, he actually

had five different prescription medications.

Three of them were cholesterol drugs. Two of them were high blood pressure

drugs.

But I didn't know how long he'd been on them. I just saw them on there

and by name.

So I went home, and I wanted to know, of these

pharmaceutical drugs, I wonder if any of these are

published in peer-reviewed published research studies to be

known to cause aphasia.

Aphasia. Mm-hmm.

I printed out these research studies, and as they're flipping through it,

they had

no idea that the cholesterol drugs had a published side effect to cause aphasia.

"Can I ask you when

you were prescribed these drugs?" And he said, "Three years ago." I said,

"How long ago did your aphasia start?" And he goes, "Two and a half years ago."

Mm-hmm.

And I said, "Okay, you're gonna stop your cholesterol drugs

today." He came off the

drugs. Within two weeks, all of his speech was returned.

Yeah.