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(NewsNation) — The two oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history are set to face off Thursday in the first presidential debate of 2024, and both have faced questions from political opponents over their age, fitness to serve and cognitive ability.
Former President Donald Trump has suggested his opponent, incumbent President Joe Biden, take a drug test, implying without evidence that Biden may be using performance-enhancing drugs to keep up his cognitive abilities.
Neurologist Dr. Tom Pitts says performance-enhancing drugs are used as short-term solutions and wouldn’t be able to undo any cognitive decline one may be experiencing.
“When I look at how they progressed over time, they could use medicines like Leqembi … that help eliminate protein buildup from the brain that causes Alzheimer’s. Then there’s other medicines like Namenda and Donepezil that kind of potentiate current existing neurons, but that being said none of those are acute cognitive therapies, they kind of slow decline of degeneration,” Pitts said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Jamil Abdur-Rahman suggests that if either Trump or Biden wanted to enhance their focus during the debate, they could consider prescription medication like Adderall. However, he notes that this could increase heart rate and blood pressure, which may not be advisable for people in their 70s and 80s.
“We do you have what are called nootropics, which are the supplements you can take to kind of boost your energy, you’re talking about things like ginseng, ashwagandha,” he said.
Abdur-Rahman added: “There’s one called tyrosine that I think they both might want to look into because .. it boosts your energy, makes you a little bit more cognitively there, and for some men, it can increase your tan; we know Trump likes a tan. And they have an ice cream (with supplements), and we know that Biden likes ice cream.”