George J. Brewer - Environmental Causes and Prevention Measures for Alzheimers Disease

Chapter 1 is an introduction to the book. A brief description of Alzheimers disease (AD) is given, although a much more detailed description will be given in Chapter 2. It is pointed out that AD is a disease of cognition loss in people aged 60 and over, and a brief description of the brain pathology is given. Then the chapter briefly discusses what is in the rest of the book. A highlight is in Chapter 3, where surprising and important facts about AD are givennamely it is in epidemic prevalence in developed countries but rare in undeveloped countries, and the epidemic in developed countries has occurred in the last 100 years. It was rare before 1900. These facts cry out, Something in the environment in developed countries is causing the epidemic. Then there are two chapters searching for the environmental agent or agents, and then a chapter describing copper, particularly divalent copper or copper-2, as a major culprit. Then there are several chapters giving copper background and detailing how copper and, specifically, copper-2 are causative of AD. At this point in Chapter 1, the fascinating story of how chance and careful investigation led to the experimental demonstration that copper-2 in drinking water was causative of AD in an animal model. Chapter 1 then returns to the book overview. Chapter 8 puts together an overwhelming web of evidence that copper-2 is a major causal factor for the AD epidemic in developed countries that has emerged in the last 100 years. Chapter 9 shows how an increased body load of copper in general (irrespective of valence), occurring because of dietary changes in developed countries, is also contributing to the epidemic. Chapter 10 shows how nicely the copper hypothesis fits with known risk factors and current theories of AD causation. Chapter 11 is very important because it describes how people can almost completely avoid this disastrous disease by two easy steps that almost completely eliminate ingestion of copper-2. Dietary changes that reduce copper absorption are also discussed. The final chapter, Chapter 12, discusses how the federal government has failed to set proper standards for drinking water copper content and failed to assure safety of multimineral supplement pills by eliminating copper-2 in them.