eugenez@azure.UUCP (Eugene Zinter) (11/22/83)
SUBJECT: Aluminum and Alzheimer's Disease In the SEP/OCT 1983 issue of "American Health" there appears an article named "Alzheimer's & Aluminum: An Element of Suspicion" on pages 48-54. What follows is taken from that article. Things in quotes are taken directly from the article. Things in [brackets] are supplied by me. "... widespread use of the metal [aluminum] started barely 50 years ago." "It may take decades for aluminum to build up to levels implicated in nerve damage. And that's how long aluminum use has really been on the rise." "Doubts about this long-trusted metal first arose several years ago in a special corner of medicine: lifesaving dialysis centers treating patients whose kidneys had failed. Several times a week, the substitute kidneys filtered body wastes from their blood stream. But some of the patients started going mad. At first, the symptoms appeared only during dialysis---trouble with talking, confusion and muscle spasms. ... Sliding swiftly downhill, patients became helpless, demented, bedridden and died. Doctors called the disease dialysis dementia." "... Dr. Allen C. Alfrey, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and chief of Denver VA Hospital's kidney division ... [discovered that] Autopsy analysis of the brains of dialysis-dementia victoms furnished a strategic clue: high concentrations of aluminum in the brain cells." "It didn't take long to figure out where the aluminum might be coming from. Large amounts of tap water go into the dialysis solution that flushes wastes out of a patient's blood stream. Many municipalities rely on aluminum for removing impurities from their water supply. The varying metallic content of water in different locals would account for the hit-or-miss occurrence of the dementia. In addition, dialysis patients routinely swallowed huge amounts of aluminum in antacids to prevent the accumulation of phosphorus in their blood, a common complication of dialysis." [THOUGHT: It's hard for me to believe that, at ANY time, TAP water would be used for such a purpose!!! How could they believe that ANY tap water would be safe for such a thing as flushing wastes out of the blood?] "But everyone agrees on one thing: The light, bright metal has no business in the brain." "There is no known human need for aluminum." "... only about 12% to 25% of the aluminum we consume seems to be absorbed into the body, estimates Dr. Armand Lione, head of Associated Pharmacologists and Toxicologists in Washington, DC. A typical daily intake may be 22 milligrams of aluminum, though some people may get 100 times that." [NOTE: That means some people are ingesting as much as 2.2 GRAMS of ALUMINUM PER DAY!!!!] "However, brain aluminum concentrations are about four [4] times higher than normal in patients with Alzheimer's disease, even in regions where all diets are high in aluminum. In addition to the telltale aluminum, these patients' brain cells have become structurally damaged. Scientists characteristically find two kinds of lesions: plaques and tangles. Tangles are clumps of filaments that form within the nerve cell body. A plaque is a hard knot of debris marking the site of a burned-out nerve cell ending. It short-circuits pathways of communication from nerve cell to nerve cell that is essential for all human activity." "Many of the disordered cells in Alzheimer's disease either branch out from or are located in what proves to be a critical place---the brain's nucleus basilis. Researchers believe this region serves as a cerebral activator, keeping higher brain levels from falling asleep, for example. The region also turns out to be a rich source of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This substance, studies now show, is important for brain-cell processing of recent memory." "The evidence is tantalizing: three nervous system disorders marked by destructive cell changes and, within those very cells, concentrations of aluminum where no aluminum ought to be. But the evidence is also almost completely circumstancial." "A bit of evidence that aluminum is directly toxic to brain cells comes from animal studies conducted by Dr. Donald R. C. McLachlan, a professor of physiology and medicine at the University of Toronto. In one set of studies, he injected aluminum directly into cats' brains. Result: behavioral changes similar to some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease." "Neurofibrillar tangles appeared within the nerve cells, to, though they were not exactly like the tangles seen in the human version. ... Dr. Leopold Liss, a professor of pathology and psychiatry at Ohio State University, fed aluminum to rabbits, thus more closely duplicating the way people get an excess of the metal. Result: again neurofibrillar tangles, though not identical to those seen in human Alzheimer's victims." "... McLachlan is now testing ways to get the metal out of brain cells. He gives intramuscular doses of a chelating agent, desferrioxamine, twice daily. This iron compound binds with aluminum and escorts it out of the body. He hopes it will stop the disease from progressing." "Another approach is to give the chelating agent ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) intravenously. But this therapy requires careful monitoring in a hospital and is hazardous to the kidneys." [However aluminum gets in (there's some controversy on how it does it's dirty work) much of can be kept out by simply NOT ingesting those foods, etc. that contain aluminum.] "... many municipal water-treatment systems add aluminum to help remove solid particles such as plant debris. Aluminum attaches to these impurities and sinks them to the bottom, leaving the water attractively clear. But, inevitably, some of the metal remains in the water supply." "Aluminum is also a common additive in food and some medicines. We use sodium aluminum phospate, a leavening agent, in household baking powder, self-rising flour, cake mix, pancake batter and frozen dough. Other aluminum-containing additives emulsify processed cheese, especially the individually wrapped slices, so it melts easily." "A SINGLE SLICE OF PROCESSED CHEESE MAY CONTAIN 50 MILLIGRAMS OF ALUMINUM OR MORE. [capitals supplied by me---I wonder how Velveeta scores here?]" "And aluminum's anti-caking properties make it useful in nondairy creamers, table salt and other powdered foods." "Most over-the-counter indigestion remedies (one notable exception is Tums, which depends on calcium carbonate) contain large amounts of aluminum hydroxide to soothe unsettled stomaches. Similarly, buffered aspirins often use aluminum compounds to counteract aspirin's irritation of the stomach lining. Read the label on your antiperspirant or deodorant, and you're likely to find aluminum. Check hemorrhoid preperations, too. Some have up to 50% aluminum hydroxide." "And then there's the kitchen: pots, pans, cans and foils. When we cook or store highly acidic, alkaline or salty foods like tomatoes, sauerkraut, citrus fruits and carbonated drinks in aluminum containers, some of the metal leaches out into the food." "Here's the rub. Originally, everyone thought aluminum was safe because it wasn't absorbed by the body. Whatever else we learn from the Alzheimer's generation, we have discovered that aluminum can damage the brain and that a lot of it gets into our bodies." [So there you have it, another substance that I bet you didn't even know you were ingesting! Or if you did, you probably thought it couldn't be very much!!! I wonder how many substances that WE humans are actually ingesting that we aren't really aware of---and how long we take to discover it---tragically, many times too late. For a person who is interested in optimum health, I think that these recent articles on caffeine, smoking, formaldehyde, chemical additives to foods such as ice cream, etc. SHOULD prompt us to take on more RESPONSIBILITY in finding out WHAT we are REALLY eating. To become more educated as to what is actually IN our food. Instead of depending on "big brother" or "the scientists" or (you-pick-it) on making sure everything is "safe" for us. After all, these people are only human.] [I make it a personal policy that if there is ANY doubt in my mind about the safety of a substance, then I do the simple thing: I DON'T USE IT!!! THAT IS, I DON'T EAT IT, DRINK IT, BREATHE IT, RUB IT ON MY SKIN, ETC. And if that's not feasable (like polluted air), I MINIMIZE it's USE ANY WAY I CAN. For instance, with aluminum, I might not be able to QUIT using it 100%, but I bet I can reduce the amount that gets into my body by 90% to 95%. However, had I not been AWARE of the problem, I could be heading towards Alzheimer's disease without knowing what I could have done to prevent it. Doing that should be far safer than the usual dodge (said with an all knowing smile): 'Why worry about it---there's so many other things that are poisoning you and you're going to die anyway. ENJOY LIFE NOW!' ... Tell that to the Alzheimer Patients. They would do anything to NOT have this disease. With MY approach, there is NO worry (stress) about what it will do to you---and you don't risk experiencing the 10 or 50 year later side effects either.] ECZ 4 Mon 21-Nov-83 11:55 AM