Aluminum and Alzheimer
The evidence from dialysis
The toxicity of aluminum (in British English: aluminium) is much discussed in literature and in the Internet. It has been claimed that aluminum is a factor that contributes to Alzheimer's disease [1], since a high content of aluminum is found when brain tissue from dead patients is analyzed. The metal forms and slowly (during decades) builds up hardly soluble complex compounds with proteins, which build in into nervous tissue and form plaques. Even though the aluminum industry (for obvious reasons...) denies it, there is a large body of evidence which sustains this.
A heavy piece of evidence comes from dialysis. In the late 1970es there were some cases of “dialysis dementia” in which it was found that a major factor was a high content of aluminum ions in the water used for preparing the dialysate solution [1-4]. When one switched to aluminum free water, young cases turned out to be reversible. These cases were since little talked about and one may have the impression that the aluminum industry has tried to keep the issue down. Little became known about this in the public, but it was known mainly in professional circles.
It is quite apparent that we very slowly build up such hardly soluble aluminum complexes throughout decades and that this could finally – most probably in combination with other factors – at the end be an essential factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The source of this ingested aluminum is to a large extent using cooking pots and utensils made out of the metal and drinking beverages out of aluminum cans!
Therefore:
Throw out all aluminum pots, pans, utensils and tools from your kitchen and replace them with such made of steel, enameled iron or cast iron (tools may also be replaced with wooden or plastic tools). Also replace aluminum espresso cookers with steel ones!
Don’t use electric hot-water decanters unless you know that the heating part (or tube) is made of steel (in most cases it is made of aluminum)!
For the same reason: be careful with coffee machines! The flow-through heater is usually an aluminum tube!
Don’t drink beverages in aluminum cans! (A thin varnish on the inside is insufficient protection, rather comparable to a dialysis membrane... Its main function actually is to prevent a very slow loss of carbon dioxide through microporosities in the aluminum and not to protect the beverage!) If you pay attention, you do feel the difference in taste between a canned beverage and the same in a bottle. The former is a little more “metallic”. Coca-Cola is known to contain a certain amount of phosphoric acid, which can be expected to dissolve some aluminum.
Be careful with beverages (especially fruit juices), which come in cardboard boxes, since the boxes often have an aluminum layer on the inside! (Fruit acids definitely dissolve some of the aluminum.)
Avoid draft beer since it usually comes in aluminum barrels. I prefer to order bottled beer.
Avoid using aluminum foil in cooking!
Don’t use antiperspirants, which contain aluminum chloride (most of them do)!
Don’t take antacids that contain aluminum compounds (many do – better ones have, e.g., magnesium carbonate)! (And I personally would certainly avoid such having a histamine H2-receptor antagonist, since it involves an unnecessary and unnatural physiological attack on the mucosa of your stomach, which knocks out the secretion of HCl in stead of neutralizing the acid.)
“Commercially processed foods such as cake and pancake mixes, frozen doughs and self-rising flour are sources of dietary aluminum, so their ingestion should be minimized. Watch for and avoid sodium aluminum phosphate, an ingredient in baking powder. Pickles and [processed] cheese should also be avoided.” (Quoted from [5]).
Study the contents of packages stated on their labels!
It would be good if you could make the dentist avoid giving you a temporary aluminum crown while waiting for the gold or porcelain one.
Various aluminum silicates (sodium aluminum silicate and others) are used as anticaking agents in table salt, sugar, certain flours and other powdered nutrients to make them pour neatly from the package without forming lumps. Elevated aluminum values have been found in various sweets and in chewing gum. Such aluminum silicates are on the package often misleadingly declared as “silicic (or silicon) acid”.
Some good advice is found here and here. More information here. As concerns cheese, sodium aluminum phosphate is used as an emulsifying agent (“melting salt”) when cheese is processed trough melting to make cheese-spread (often also packed in aluminum foil!) or to form it to cheese slices. Unprocessed cheese should be safe.
To day, however, there is false cheese on the market, so called “analog cheese”! It is artificially made from proteins, artificial flavors, fat and other things and no doubt has a variety of chemical substances. If there are no holes in the cheese, it is suspicious. And study the label! Accordingly, there is since long much artificial yoghurt around. If on the package nothing is written about Lactobacillus or Bifidus, I don’t buy it. That “pasteurized milk” is mentioned, but nothing else, is no guarantee! In such a case the milk is probably processed in artificial ways and not fermented.
Psychosomatic
consideration
The neglected medical science of psychosomatics is discussed
here. In the case of Alzheimer one possible
psychosomatic factor (which in that case combines with physical factors like
aluminum toxicity) is that the person at any price wants to forget
something in his or her life (of course unconsciously). Something he or
she is deeply ashamed of, has feelings of guilt for or heavily regrets.
You don’t believe in psychosomatics? I hope you will not have to learn about it the hard way... And I sincerely hope that you will not have to forget all about it! “About what? ... I don't remember the issue...”
References:
1. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1689721
2. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1568504&blobtype=pdf
3. http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/encephalopathy
4. http://professionals.epilepsy.com/page/renal_des.html
5. http://www.laleva.cc/environment/aluminium_alzheimer2.html
See also references here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease (at the end of the text).
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