Statins and behavior changes

[29jmwe]

Hi, so glad to find this forum. I am just now figuring out why my mother is in the shape she is in. Her memory has degraded to the point of being about 50%, and she is now wheelchair-bound, and I believe because of years on statins. My question- I am wondering if there might be a connection between her statin use and her very uncharacteristic obsession with scam sweepstakes in the last year of her residence in independent living. She grew up during the depression and was ALWAYS very careful with her money until those sweepstakes started coming in the mail. She gave away thousands before we were able to get her mail stopped. Could there be a connection there to all those statins she ingested for years?

[Allen1]

Hi there 29jmwe,

I also had and still have memory problems, they are not as severe as they were before I stopped taking statins 5 years ago, but they still do cause a lot of problems. Going from my experience, I keep buying things like soldering irons and eprom programmers computers etc when I already have enough of them as it is. This is a compulsion that I acquired in the last 8 years or so, whether its got anything to do with the damage statins did to my memory and thinking abilities, I couldn't say for sure but I suspect it could be down to the changes made with the statins.

The terrible thing is about the items I buy is that I could use them OK before statins came along, nowadays I often don't have the physical or mental capacity to do much with them, but still I buy stuff hoping that one day things will go back to normal.

I think that there is a good chance that the obsessional behaviour is caused by statins. All the problems I have experienced on the mental side were often extreme as in changes of mood from one moment to the next leading to depression and very strange behaviour, the buying of stuff I already had is just one of those things that continue.

I hope you Mother gets better and that you manage to keep her away from temptations like the sweepstakes or anything else like that. Keeping her interested in something new may be the answer or just keeping her busy doing things she likes could help her a lot, if like myself, she is OK most days then for no apparent reason starts up with the obsession, then its going to be hard work I'm afraid.

Another thing is that we often know that what we are doing is wrong or daft, but at the time we really don't care, its like the money we waste isn't real, crazy but true.

[29jmwe]

Allen1,

Thanks so much for your response. So far you're the only one I've heard from that has a similar story. Mom went downhill so rapidly, I had to commandeer her checkbook over a year ago and stop her mail to get this stopped. It certainly made her mad, but there was no choice. I had gotten POA right before all this, and got my name on her checking account at her request, so it all worked out for the best.

Since she is now in the memory wing of the care center with no phone, things are under control, and surprisingly enough, she seems to be quite happy. Looking back, I'm just trying to understand what happened, and I really think statins can be blamed for the big end of it. No one wants to see their parents deteriorate like this, and it's easy to place blame somewhere, but I just wondered if this was a documented side effect of this stuff. I believe you may have confirmed this for me. Thanks again, and I hope you are able to recover.