Friday, March 29, 2024

The unhealthy side of aluminum

Aluminum is a substance people, especially Nigerians, can rarely avoid as they come in different forms, like cooking pots, foods and in the environment and with health challenges.

All scientists can see in aluminum are toxics that cause brain disease, Alzheimer. Aluminum is an indispensable item, but with intended risk to human health as revealed by scientists.

Test carried out by a scientist, Professor Exley, in Keele University in Staffordshire, United Kingdom, showed that the human body is being bombarded with aluminum in everyday products.

Many of our foods, vaccinations, medications, baby products, cosmetics, cleaning products and even soft furnishings contain aluminum and it appears that we are powerless to prevent the ever-increasing onslaught of Alzheimer. Prof. Exley disclosed that aluminum can accumulate in the body and has the potential to do harm wherever it ends up.

According to him, the biological availability of aluminum or the ease with which aluminum reacts with human biochemistry means that aluminum in the body is unlikely to just begin, though it may appear as such due to the inherent robustness of human physiology.

How does one know if he has chronic aluminum toxicity? “At some point, the accumulation of aluminum in the brain will achieve a toxic threshold and a specific neuron or area of the brain will stop coping with the presence of aluminum and will start reacting to its presence.

If the same neurone or brain tissue is also suffering other insults, or another on-going degenerative condition, then the additional response to aluminum will exacerbate these effects,” he disclosed.

In this way, he added that aluminum may cause a particular condition to be more aggressive and perhaps to have an earlier onset – such occurrences have already been shown in Alzheimer’s disease related to environmental and occupational exposure to aluminum.

Though, scientists have claimed that a link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease has existed without evidence(s) to support their claims, but the Keele University in Staffordshire scientist has confirmed that aluminum does play a role, in some, if not all, cases of Alzheimer’s disease.

“We already know that the aluminum content of brain tissue in late-onset or sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is significantly higher than is found in age-matched controls.

So, individuals who develop Alzheimer’s disease in their late sixties and older also accumulate more aluminum in their brain tissue than individuals of the same age without the disease.

“Even higher levels of aluminum have been found in the brains of individuals, diagnosed with an early-onset form of sporadic (usually late onset) Alzheimer’s disease, who have experienced an unusually high exposure to aluminum through the environment or through their workplace.

This means that Alzheimer’s disease has a much earlier age of onset, for example, fifties or early sixties, in individuals, who have been exposed to unusually high levels of aluminum in their everyday lives,” he added.

His most recent study, published by the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology in December 2016, titled: ‘Aluminum in brain tissue in familial Alzheimer’s disease’, is one of the many studies that he and his team have conducted on the subject of aluminum over the years.

However, this study in particular is believed to be of significant value, because it is the first time that scientists have measured the level of aluminum in the brain tissue of individuals diagnosed with familial Alzheimer’s disease.

(Alzheimer’s disease or AD is considered to be familial if two or more people in a family suffer from the disease.) According to the findings, the concentrations of aluminum found in brain tissue donated by individuals, who died with a diagnosis of familial AD, was the highest level ever measured in human brain tissue.

He said, “We now show that some of the highest levels of aluminum ever measured in human brain tissue are found in individuals who have died with a diagnosis of familial Alzheimer’s disease.

The levels of aluminum in brain tissue from individuals with familial Alzheimer’s disease are similar to those recorded in individuals who died of an aluminum-induced encephalopathy while undergoing renal dialysis.”

The research revealed that aging is the main risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease as the substance accumulates in human brain tissue of the aged faster.

It also revealed that environmental or occupational exposure to aluminum results in its higher levels in human brain tissue and an early onset form of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease.

The genetic predispositions, which are used to define familial or early-onset Alzheimer’s disease also predispose individuals to higher levels of brain aluminum at a much younger age.

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