Heavy Metals & Alzheimer's: Do Toxic Levels Contribute to Disease Progression?

Hello everyone, Dr. David Perlmutter here. I'm aboard Mystic Eagle, and this morning I was reviewing some information I think that's really very important. You know, for a long time people have been talking about the risk of Alzheimer's disease possibly being increased in people who have had exposure to toxic metals, things like mercury and lead and cadmium and aluminum. And to answer this question, Chinese researchers working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease an interesting report that is entitled Circulatory Levels of Toxic Metals— Aluminum, Cadmium, Mercury, and Lead— in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review. Systematic review. What does that mean, a meta-analysis? It means basically they are creating a report based upon the review of previous other high-quality studies. And what they looked at was the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in correlation or not with circulating levels of the metals that I've just talked about. Now, what did the researchers find? And I'm going to read to you their conclusion. Compared to controls, circulatory levels of aluminum, mercury, or cadmium are significantly higher, but the levels of lead are reduced in Alzheimer's disease patients. These findings suggest that elevated aluminum, mercury, and cadmium in the circulation, especially in the serum, may play a role in the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Now, it's unclear to me why there was a negative correlation with lead. It certainly doesn't give lead the go-ahead in terms of not being worrisome in terms of brain health. But let's focus for a moment on what they did find that was positive correlation, and that is aluminum and cadmium and mercury. Aluminum, as you may know, is something that we can be exposed to by taking aluminum-containing antacids. Using aluminum cookware, aluminum foil, and even aluminum-based antiperspirants. Cadmium is something that we're not really going to be exposed to very much. It is used in electroplating and smelting, also in the manufacturing of batteries. There is cadmium, however, in certain colors of paints that artists may use. And finally, of course, mercury is something that we can be exposed to by consuming it in various seafoods and even freshwater foods that are high in mercury. The point here is that a well-constructed study in terms of a meta-analysis does in fact confirm what our suspicions have been for quite some time, and that is exposure and retention of at least aluminum, mercury, and cadmium seem to be fairly strongly correlated with risk for developing Alzheimer's disease. So that said, it does tend to focus on the notion of prevention, certainly as it relates to aluminum. Again, not many of you are going to be exposed to cadmium unless you happen to be artists working with cadmium-based colors, but certainly mercury based upon the foods that you consume, specifically mercury Rich fish, certain fish as we know are very high in mercury. Fish like swordfish, various larger tuna, for example, seem to retain a lot of mercury. So limiting our consumption would be worthwhile. We do also know that at least as it does relate to mercury, that various interventions are effective, various forms of chelation therapy are effective in lowering the body burden of that metal that we now see is correlated with Alzheimer's risk. So really, everything we can do to offset the risk, taking straws off the camel's back, in this case looking at various toxic metals, I think is very important. Thanks for joining me. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Bye for now.