Kelly Teal

Limiting Aluminum Exposure Essential to Reducing Alzheimer’s Risk

Could aluminum exposure increase the chances of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis?

That’s the correlation at the heart of a new study published in the Jan. 13 Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

SciTechDaily reports that researchers found “significant” amounts of aluminum content in brain tissue from donors with familial Alzheimer’s.

In addition, the study uncovered an “unequivocal association” between the location of aluminum and amyloid-beta protein, which leads to early onset of Alzheimer’s, said lead investigator Christopher Exley, PhD, Birchall Centre, Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK.

Exley went on to make a bold statement: “Within the normal lifespan of humans, there would not be any Alzheimer’s disease if there were no aluminum in the brain tissue. No aluminum, no Alzheimer’s disease.”

Science has suggested the link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s for more than 40 years.

Simply put, it couldn’t hurt to reduce one’s exposure to aluminum, an element that features no known essential role in living systems, according to a June 2018 article from the National Institutes of Health.

The metal “is a recognized neurotoxin, which could cause neurodegeneration,” wrote the researchers, Elif Inan-Eroglu and Aylin Ayaz.

Dr. Marnie Whitley, naturopathic physician at Neurology Associates, agrees.

“Aluminum toxicity has been thought for some time to have an association with immune suppression, cognitive decline and dementia including Alzheimer’s,” she says. “As with most heavy metals, the level of exposure and the body’s ability (or rather lack of ability) to clear the metal are factors in health risks.”

There are some foods that may help clear aluminum but “the easiest factor to address is exposure,” Whitley says.

Because aluminum is one of the most abundant metals in the earth’s crust, avoiding it altogether is impossible, she adds. That means aluminum is naturally present in healthy foods such as spinach and that’s okay.

“Where we can best avoid exposure is in food additives, so look for additives containing sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium aluminum sulfate,” Whitley says. “Also look at cosmetics, deodorants, cookware, and pharmaceuticals for sources of exposure and avoid them if possible. For many of these products there are aluminum-free options. Don’t avoid your spinach because it has some aluminum – it has some protective nutrients as well.”

Aluminum is also prevalent in occupations including aluminum refining, publishing and printing, and the automotive sector.

Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute Researchers Looking for Alzheimer’s Candidates

They continue to conduct ground-breaking studies using focused ultrasound and magnetic stimulation

Researchers at West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute are looking for more Alzheimer’s patients to take part in clinical trials involving ultrasound and virtual reality.

Requirements for the ultrasound studies are more stringent and exclusive than those for the virtual reality, or magnetic stimulation, tests.

“We’re looking for early-stage Alzheimer’s patients, so there is very specific criteria,” Ali Rezai, M.D., neurosurgeon and director of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, told WVNews. “We’ve had many, many people who have contacted us for the ultrasound study, but only a few passed the initial screening criteria.”

The virtual reality study, on the other hand, features broader specifications, Rezai said, “so that one will be much easier to get into.”

About a year ago, the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute reported successful phase II ultrasound trial results. That’s when investigators opened the blood-brain barrier using technology from Israeli company INSIGHTEC. The procedure requires no incisions or pharmaceuticals because it relies on sound waves. It works when doctors inject microscopic bubbles into the patient’s bloodstream and expose those bubbles to focused ultrasound. The bubbles then temporarily open the blood-brain barrier in the brain area being targeted.

Researchers are hopeful the new treatment is leading the way toward treating Alzheimer’s, which so far has no known cure. They continue to evaluate whether focused ultrasound reduces the debilitating plaques and cognitive decline that signify Alzheimer’s. It will take several years before experts fully understand whether focused ultrasound will have a permanent place in Alzheimer’s therapy.

People interested in learning more about participating in the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute’s Alzheimer’s studies will want to call 304-293-5150 or email WVURNI@hsc.wvu.edu. Only the personnel directly involved with the research will be privy to patient information.

The WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute research team poses with the first-ever Alzheimer’s focused ultrasound patient moments after the procedure is complete in October 2018.
**Photo by WVU Medicine.**

UCSF Scientists: Too Much Daytime Sleep Could Mean Alzheimer’s Will Develop

The tau brain protein may be to blame

Finding yourself (or a loved one) sleeping more than normal during the day, even after a night of decent rest? New research from University of California San Francisco scientists indicates this may stand out as an early Alzheimer’s warning signal.

It all could boil down to damage from a specific brain protein called tau. The findings contrast with other, more comprehensive research that has looked at the amyloid protein as a key Alzheimer’s culprit.

“Our work shows definitive evidence that the brain areas promoting wakefulness degenerate due to accumulation of tau – not amyloid protein – from the very earliest stages of the disease,” study senior author Lea T. Grinberg told UCSF’s news team.

In other words, the research suggests that Alzheimer’s disease may target and attack the parts of the brain that keep people awake during the day – years before Alzheimer’s actually appears. This underscores the multifaceted nature of Alzheimer’s disease, Jun Oh, lead author of the study and research associate at UCSF’s Grinberg Lab, told Newsweek.

“When people, especially outside of the medical field, hear about Alzheimer’s disease, they only think about memory problems,” Oh said. “However, over the past few years, our lab and many others have shown that neuropsychiatric symptoms, especially problems related to sleep and wakefulness, arise in Alzheimer’s disease, even before cognitive decline.”

Grinberg and her associates reached their conclusions after analyzing the brain tissue from 20 postmortem patients, 13 of whom had Alzheimer’s disease; the remaining seven had healthy brains and served as the control population.

These new observations certainly don’t provide much comfort to anyone worried about developing Alzheimer’s, especially when the data show that the disease strikes someone in the United States every 65 seconds. But just because you or a loved one is sleeping more than usual may not mean Alzheimer’s is imminent.

First try to understand whether the new sleep pattern qualifies as a neuropsychiatric symptom. According to MDedge, some neuropsychiatric issues tied to Alzheimer’s – including auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions, depression, anxiety, psychosis, psychomotor agitation, aggression, apathy, repetitive questioning, wandering, socially or sexually inappropriate behaviors, and sleep disturbances – may be reversible.

The Alzheimer’s Association also discusses managing sleep changes and recommends starting with interventions that do not rely on drugs.

Of course, what defines excessive daytime napping may vary from one person to another. Note, though, that the National Sleep Foundation recommends napping for no more than 30 minutes per day to achieve a state of alertness. UCSF’s Grinberg told Newsweek that feeling sleepy, napping or simply sleeping more during the day, and getting fragmented sleep during the night due to waking up all stand out as changes that may occur long before Alzheimer’s crops up. On the whole, if daytime napping has consistently grown problematic, scheduling an evaluation makes sense.