Power Foods for the Brain (7 page)

So what are we to make of this? Is aluminum a problem or not? I suggest that you not feel a need to take a stand on this unresolved issue. There is no need to bet your brain one way or the other. Instead, it is prudent to simply err on the side of caution. Since you don’t need aluminum, it makes sense to avoid it to the extent you can. You cannot avoid it all, but choosing aluminum-free products lets you steer clear of major exposures.

Aluminum turns up in a surprising range of products. At the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Robert Yokel, PhD, found large amounts of aluminum in many common foods—much more than British, French, or Canadian people were getting in their tap water.

How could that be? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers certain aluminum-containing food additives to be GRAS—“generally recognized as safe”—so food manufacturers are free to use them. Aluminum compounds serve as emulsifying agents in cheese, especially on frozen pizza. It is in common baking powders and the products prepared with them. It is in foil and in cookware, and, yes, your spaghetti sauce will pick up a substantial amount of aluminum from an aluminum pot. It is in soda cans, which can leach aluminum into the products they hold.
³¹

Luckily, there are perfectly suitable alternatives for most every aluminum-containing product. Which leads us to how we can protect ourselves from toxic metals.

As I have mentioned, research on toxic metals in Alzheimer’s disease is still very much in progress. But some things are clear: There is never any benefit from overdoing it with copper, iron, or zinc, and there is no need to ingest aluminum at all. Here are sensible steps you can put to work right now to protect yourself:

• Get your protein from plant sources rather than meats. Organ meats (such as liver) and shellfish (such as lobster and crab) are loaded with metals, not to mention cholesterol. And meats in general—not just liver—tend to deliver more iron and other metals than the body can safely handle. Beans and green leafy vegetables provide iron in a safer (nonheme) form that is more absorbable if you need iron and less absorbable if you have plenty of iron in your body already.
  
• Check the labels on processed foods. You already wanted to skip frozen pizza, because of all the fat and cholesterol in the cheese and meat toppings. Many brands also have aluminum in the cheese and/or crust, as you’ll see on the labels. A good rule of thumb is that the simpler your foods, the more confidence you can have about what is in them. Everything in the produce aisle, for example, has just one ingredient.
  
• Choose aluminum-free baking powder. Aluminum-free brands are widely available. Unfortunately, restaurants
  are not likely to tell you what sort of baking powder they use, and their pancakes can contain substantial aluminum traces without your knowing it.
  
• Skip the single-serve creamers and salt packets. They often contain sodium aluminosilicate, an anticaking agent that keeps them pourable.
  ³²
  
• Check labels on pickle relish. Some contain aluminum.
  

• Choose safe cookware. All kitchen stores sell cookware that is free of copper and iron on cooking surfaces. When using aluminum foil, keep it from touching any acidic foods.
  
• Avoid aluminum cans. Aluminum soda cans have a lining that is supposed to block the aluminum from ending up in the product, but it is not an entirely effective barrier. The longer the soda sits in the can, the more aluminum passes into it. Bottles may be safer, and quitting soda altogether is the best idea.
  

• Be careful in your choice of vitamin supplements. Most vitamin-mineral supplements marketed for older people now omit iron, but they typically do include copper and zinc. It makes sense to choose a supplement with vitamins only, omitting minerals.
  
• Use only aluminum-free antacids if you use antacids. Maalox gets its brand name from the
  MA
  gnesium and
  AL
  uminum hydr
  OX
  ide inside. It can easily deliver a thousand times more aluminum than you would get from a day’s worth of foods. Aluminum is also found in Mylanta
  and Gaviscon. But Tums, Rolaids, and many others do not contain aluminum; they are made with calcium carbonate instead. By the way, if you have an ulcer, the best treatment is an antibiotic, not an antacid. Ulcers are typically caused by the
  Helicobacter pylori
  bacteria, which can be eliminated with a brief antibiotic regimen.
  
• Read the labels on over-the-counter medicines. Some add aluminum as a coloring agent.
  
• Use a deodorant, not an antiperspirant. Common antiperspirants contain aluminum, which passes through the skin and into your bloodstream. Products labeled as
  deodorants,
  but not as
  antiperspirants,
  typically omit aluminum. Now, if you are nervous that avoiding aluminum-containing products would mean you are condemned to using natural deodorants that smell of patchouli and don’t actually work, you will be glad to know that you can still access products from the same chemical conglomerates that make the aluminum-containing brands. If you read a few labels at the drugstore, you’ll see. And you’ll also find many aluminum-free natural brands, some of which do indeed work. Beware of those containing alum. That’s simply an aluminum compound.
  

• See how your tap water stacks up for safety, or use bottled springwater. The Environmental Protection Agency maintains water quality records that show the metal content in some US locales at its website,
  http://cfpub.epa.gov/safewater/ccr
  . If you are unsure about your tap water, bottled springwater may be a better choice. Some home water-filter units (such as reverse osmosis systems) effectively remove aluminum. If you have copper plumbing,
  use tap water for household uses but not for cooking or drinking.
  
• Minimize your use of tea. The tea plant (
  Camellia sinensis
  ) draws minerals from the soil, and aluminum tends to concentrate in the leaves. The aluminum content in tea is less than in foods overall but still significant.
  

• Exercise helps you rid your body of excess iron. In
  chapter 6
  , we’ll see how to get started.
  
• Surprising as it may sound, donating blood is the fastest way to eliminate excess stored iron. And you’re giving it to someone who can actually use it.
  

The discovery that metals are hiding inside beta-amyloid plaques and the revelation that these metals might contribute to everything from everyday mental fuzziness to Alzheimer’s disease were huge breakthroughs in medicine.

While research continues, you’ll want to remember that you do need some copper, iron, and zinc, but all of these metals are toxic in excess. You don’t need aluminum
at all.
Simple steps will help you avoid potentially risky exposures.

There is much, much more to protecting your memory and cognition. The next chapter deals with one of the most common and decisive issues in brain function—the fats that end up on our plates and in our bodies.

T
he next clue comes not from a laboratory but from a garden, where a woman named Masu is working. She spent the morning cleaning her house, doing her chores, and tending her plants, and she is now picking lettuce, spinach, and green onions for her lunch. The fact that she turned 100 last year and is still active and in good health is not remarkable here. Many people in Okinawa live to a ripe old age. Her cousins are 105 and 106.

She has been through a lot over the years, including the hardships of World War II, when a quarter of the civilian population of Okinawa died and life for the rest was precarious. Foods from the family garden sustained them during those difficult times, just as they do today.

In the post–World War II period, Americans brought their own food preferences, and McDonald’s and KFC eventually set up shop on the island. But Masu has never been to either one. Her number one staple is the sweet potato, with rice a close
second. And she has plenty of greens, daikon radish, seaweed, and nigauri (or “bitter melon”), which is a bit like a cucumber. The occasional bit of fish or pork will find its way onto her plate, but these are not staples.

Her daughter moved to the United States and started a Japanese restaurant, where she serves many of the same foods that kept her family healthy. Have they heard of Alzheimer’s disease in Okinawa? Yes, but it’s not very common and, as her daughter told me, “that’s only in really old people.”

Masu didn’t know it, but during World War II, sailing offshore on an American destroyer was a young military surgeon with whom she had quite a few things in common. Ellsworth Wareham, MD, was originally from Alberta, Canada. He moved to Loma Linda, California—about an hour east of Los Angeles—to go to medical school. After Pearl Harbor turned the world on its head, he found himself sailing past Okinawa. And what he was eating was very similar to a lunch Masu might have prepared for herself. As soon as hostilities ended, he pursued advanced studies in cardiothoracic surgery and eventually ended up back at Loma Linda University, serving as chief of cardiothoracic surgery.

The reason I am telling you all this is because just as there was something that set Okinawans apart from people in most other countries—their amazing health and longevity—there was something that set Ellsworth apart from other surgeons. He had energy they didn’t have. When they retired, he kept going. Age sixty-five was just a number. As he reached seventy, seventy-five, and eighty years, he still donned his gloves and surgical gown and strode into the OR every day, just as he always had.

This can’t go on forever, he told himself. So, arbitrarily, he decided that ninety-five ought to be the age when he would retire. And when that day finally arrived, that’s what he did. Even though his colleagues tried to talk him into staying—they
wanted his experience, steady hands, and clear mind at the operating table and even offered to pay his malpractice insurance premiums if he would stay—he figured it was time. He decided to hang up the scalpel—sort of. Today you’ll find him operating on the bushes and trees on his two-acre lawn. At six feet tall and 172 pounds, he feels great. “I never have any aches or pains. I rarely have a cold or the flu.”

So what is he eating? When he was growing up, Ellsworth’s family raised cattle for beef and milk, and chickens for eggs. And he didn’t particularly like the look of any of it.

“Looking after the animals, I found milk to be rather unhygienic, when you see where it comes from. The chickens were not too clean either, so I didn’t care for their eggs. I had them once in a while, but not often. I never cared for meat or dairy products.” And then, arriving in Loma Linda, his diet took another step. “I found out that I didn’t need animal products
at all
. In fact, I was better off without them. And that was it. For the past four decades, I’ve pretty much avoided anything from animals.”

Anywhere else, that might have been an odd choice. But Loma Linda is home to many Seventh-day Adventists, whose religious teachings put a huge premium on clean living. Tobacco, alcohol, and even caffeine are frowned on, and meat eating is discouraged, too. So skipping animal products entirely was not a particularly unusual choice.

Sailing by Okinawa, he would have loved a serving of Masu’s sweet potatoes and vegetables. His own meals are just as simple. Fresh fruit and whole-grain cereal with soy milk for breakfast; baked beans, vegetables, corn on the cob, soy yogurt, and occasional faux “meats” later in the day; with almonds or peanuts as snacks. He enjoys his menu and the health and longevity it has brought him. He recalled a
Wall Street Journal
article that said that other than breast milk, all tastes are acquired. “In other
words, your tastes adapt to what you eat. If you eat fatty, salty foods, those are the foods you’ll crave. And if you break away from them, you’ll come to enjoy healthier foods.”

Okinawa and Loma Linda are places where people enjoy surprisingly good health—including healthy brain function—well into advanced age. In 2005, these remarkable geographic “blue zones” were described by Dan Buettner in a
National Geographic
pictorial. Other “blue zones” include Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.