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How Agricultural Chemicals and Hospital Stays Contribute to Alzheimer�s
October 17, 2013

By Dr. Mercola

It is projected that Alzheimer's will affect one in four Americans in the next two decades, rivaling the current prevalence of obesity and diabetes. At present, the disease afflicts about 5.4 million Americans.

One of the potential reasons for the skyrocketing increase in Alzheimer�s may be related to rising glyphosate residues in our food supply. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto�s herbicide Roundup, used in ever-increasing amounts on genetically engineered (GE) crops.

Glyphosate is a potent mineral chelator, binding up minerals like zinc and manganese from being used by the plant, or anyone who eats the plant since it is impossible to wash off glyphosate as it becomes integrated into all the plant cells. Zinc deficiency in turn, is thought to contribute to diseases such as Alzheimer�s and Parkinson�s.

There is still no known cure for Alzheimer�s, and very few treatments. Alzheimer's drugs are often of little to no benefit, which underscores the importance of prevention. Fortunately, there�s compelling research showing that your brain has great plasticity and capacity for regeneration, which you control through your diet and lifestyle choices.

Avoiding gluten appears to be of critical importance, as is making sure you�re getting plenty of healthful fats (including demonized saturated fats). Fasting also has a remarkably beneficial influence on your brain health. At the end of this article, I share my best tips for avoiding this devastating brain disorder.

How Zinc Deficiency May Contribute to Alzheimer�s

According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,1 zinc deficiency may play an important role in the development of Alzheimer�s. The disease has already been linked to accumulation of clumps of defective proteins in your brain, and zinc, it turns out, is critical for preventing such accumulation. As reported by the featured article:2

�With proteins, shape is everything. The correct shape allows some proteins to ferry atoms or molecules about a cell, others to provide essential cellular scaffolding or identify invading bacteria for attack.

When proteins lose their shape due to high temperature or chemical damage, they stop working and can clump together - a hallmark of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

The UW researchers have discovered another stress that decreases protein stability and causes clumping: a shortage of zinc, an essential metal nutrient. Zinc ions play a key role in creating and holding proteins in the correct shape.�

As mentioned earlier, modern agricultural chemicals may be a significant driver of this disease, as many herbicides and pesticides are potent chelators. In fact, glyphosate was initially patented as a mineral chelator.

Chelators immobilize nutrients, by binding them so they�re not physiologically available for your body. They do this by forming a barrier around specific nutrients, effectively preventing them from being utilized properly by either soil microbes, plants, animals or humans.

Even if the mineral is present in the plant, if it�s chelated with glyphosate, those minerals will not be physiologically available for your body to use.

Farmers have a lot to answer for, filling animals up with anti-biotics so that when you get ill they can do nothing for you, pesticides in the crops and water tables all for money.

This concept has been discussed at some depth by Dr. Don Huber, an award-winning, internationally recognized scientist and professor of plant pathology at Purdue University for the past 35 years.

His agriculture research is focused on the epidemiology and control of soil-borne plant pathogens, with specific emphasis on microbial ecology, cultural and biological controls, and the physiology of host-parasite relationships.

Glyphosate in particular is a significant threat to health as it�s one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. We are currently using about 880 million pounds�that�s nearly ONE BILLION pounds�of glyphosate annually on food crops grown worldwide.

GE plants in particular are being sprayed with ever increasing amounts of Roundup as weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to the herbicide. As a result, genetically engineered grains tend to have the highest levels of glyphosate residue. In one test, GE corn was found to contain 13 ppm of glyphosate, compared to zero in non-GE corn.

According to Dr. Huber, the nutritional efficiency of genetically engineered (GE) plants is profoundly compromised. Micronutrients such as iron, manganese and zinc can be reduced by as much as 80-90 percent in GE plants! Naturally, health effects are bound to occur if you�re consistently eating foods from which your body cannot extract critical nutrients and minerals.

Glyphosate Appears May Be One of the Most Potent Drivers of Modern Diseases

As Dr. Seneff and Samsel reveal in a recent study conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, glyphosate is probably the most harmful chronic toxin we�ve ever encountered, and could possibly be the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies today�including Alzheimer�s, autism, Crohn�s disease, gluten intolerance, leaky gut and many others.

Besides chelating micronutrients, glyphosate is also patented as an antibiotic. And like all antibiotics, it indiscriminately kills both detrimental and beneficial soil- and human gut bacteria. Your gut bacteria are in fact a key component of glyphosate�s mechanism of harm, as microbes have the pathway used by glyphosate to kill weeds, called the shikimate pathway.

For every cell in your body, you have 10 microbes of various kinds, and all of them have the shikimate pathway, so they will all respond to the presence of glyphosate, which causes extreme disruption of the microbe�s function and lifecycle.

What�s worse, glyphosate preferentially affects beneficial bacteria, allowing pathogens to overgrow and take over. At that point, your body also has to contend with the toxins produced by the pathogens. Once the chronic inflammation sets in, you�re well on your way toward chronic and potentially debilitating disease.

It�s well worth noting that, on May 1, 2013, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doubled the amount of glyphosate allowed in food... Soybean oil may now contain as much as 40 parts per million (ppm) of glyphosate. Meanwhile, research by Dr. Monika Krueger at Leipzig University shows that a tenth of a part per million is all that it takes to kill your Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Enterococcus faecalis. So soybean oil is now allowed to contain a whopping 400 times the known limit at which it can impact your health.

From my perspective, there�s little doubt that if you want to protect your brain and physical health, ridding your diet of foods that have been genetically modified (GMO�s) is a critical step. Ideally, you�d want to eat a primarily organic diet, in order to avoid agricultural chemicals entirely.