Alzheimer's Disease Support Group

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia and characterized by progressive cognitive deterioration with declining activities of daily living and neuropsychiatric symptoms or behavioral changes. An early symptom is memory loss (amnesia), usually manifesting as minor forgetfulness that becomes pronounced with illness progression, with relative...

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Alz drugs and fatigue?

deleted_user
deleted_user
Ever since my Mom started taking Aricept and Namenda she is VERY tired. At first this wasn't so bad because I knew she was safely sleeping.Now it's become a problem because she'll wake up and think it's 6 in the morning not evening. She was supposed to go from 5mg to 10mg of Aricept today but the Dr. told me to keep her on 5mg. Unless something is "cut back", I don't see that there will be any difference. Anyone else have this problem?
GeorgiaW
GeorgiaW
It is so hard for me to say for sure on that. Before my husband started the aricept he had been on meds for high b/p for nearly a year and they tended to make him very tired. When the doctor started him on aricept he also started doxipen to help with sleeping, even though the bp meds made him so listless and drug out he still wasn't sleeping well at nights, almost like he was sufferring sundowners.
He started the namenda several months after the aricept and we didn't notice any change. He still had little energy but it didn't get worse with the adition of the namenda.

something I would like to ask those who have been dealing with these drugs for longer (Neal's been on them for a year now) is about aricept. Someone in our local support group said that some people become aggressive/angry after being on aricept for long periods of time and wonder if anyone here has run into this with their loved one?