Thursday, February 4, 2010

Mercury Contributes To Alzheimer's Disease!

"You wouldn’t take a leaky thermometer, 
put it in your mouth, and leave it there 24 hours a day, 
365 days a year. Yet that’s exactly what happens 
when an amalgam filling is installed in your mouth."


Dr Michael Ziff




Link between Mercury and Alzheimer’s Disease
Research conducted at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine has demonstrated that trace amounts of mercury can cause the type of damage to nerves that is characteristic of the damage found in Alzheimer’s Disease. The level of mercury exposure is consistent with those levels found in humans with mercury/silver amalgam dental fillings. The exposure to mercury caused the formation of “neurofibrillar tangles,” which are one of the two diagnostic markers for Alzheimer’s Disease.

The scientists found that other metals, including aluminum, did not cause the damage. Previous research has shown that mercury can cause the formation of the other Alzheimer’s Disease diagnostic marker, “amyloid plaques.”

This study should remove all doubt regarding the role that dental mercury from amalgam fillings plays in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Although the American Dental Association would like to have you believe otherwise, science has clearly demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between brain mercury levels and the number and surfaces of “mercury/silver” amalgam dental fillings. The mercury levels that caused the devastating damage to nerve cells in the above referenced study were 100 to 1000 times below those found in the brains of people with “mercury/silver” amalgam dental fillings.

In 1997, researchers at the University of Calgary Medical School and the College of
Pharmacy at the University of Kentucky clearly demonstrated that exposing rats to the same levels of mercury vapor that can be released from “mercury/silver” amalgam dental fillings caused the mercury to interact with brain tubulin and disassemble microtubles that maintain neurite structure. The identical neurochemical lesion of similar or greater magnitude is evident in Alzheimer brain homogenates from approximately 80% of patients, when compared to human age-matched neurological controls.

In 2000, researchers at the Neurobiology Laboratory, Psychiatric University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland using neuroblastoma cells exposed to mercury demonstrated an increase in production of amyloid protein that makes up the amyloid plaques as well as significantly increasing the phophorylation of Tau protein.

Mercury Sources
Major human sources of mercury in the human bodies include fish consumption, dental amalgams and vaccines. Methyl mercury in fish, being bound to cysteine, appears to be by far less toxic than hitherto assumed and is about 20 times less toxic than methyl mercury chloride. For that reasons, methyl-mercury found in fish seems not to be involved in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Inorganic mercury (found in dental amalgam) or ethyl-mercury (found in vaccines) may play a major role.

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Dental amalgam, the silver fillings dentists use, is by far the biggest culprit of mercury poisoning and the biggest reason for Alzheimer's and dementia in the world today.

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals): “If an individual has had 5 consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is 10 times higher than if he/she had one, 2 or no shots”. Dr. Fudenberg said it was so and that it was due to mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot. The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Flu shots contain 25 micrograms of mercury. One microgram is considered toxic.

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"The maximum amount of mercury that the Environment Protection Agency allows people to be exposed to is 5,000 times smaller than the permissible amount of lead exposure; in other words the EPA apparently considers mercury to be 5,000 times more toxic than lead."
Marcia Basciano DDS at annual meeting of IAOMT San Diego 1994

Estimates of amounts of mercury absorbed from amalgams
That amalgams can double the body's mercury level and triple the urine's mercury level suggests that mercury from amalgams is the source of at least half to two-thirds of all the mercury humans are exposed to. Over the last four or five years, a substantial body of evidence has emerged which indicates that most of the mercury absorbed by people in industrial nations comes from their amalgam fillings.\

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In 1991 the World Health Organization...... concluded the daily dose of mercury from the environment is 2.6 ug......... If the correct figure for absorption of mercury from amalgam turns out to be 8 ug, then the total mercury absorbed per day from all sources -- the environment plus amalgam -- is 10.6 ug, according to the WHO data. This means amalgam mercury constitutes three-fourths of all mercury absorbed by the body (8 ug is 75% of 10.6 ug). If 10 ug turns out to be the correct figure for mercury taken up from amalgams, then the total absorbed is 12.6, which means about four-fifths of all mercury absorbed comes from amalgams (10 ug is 79% of 12.6 ug).

In a 1995 report prepared for Health Canada (Canada's national health department), Richardson estimated that amalgam mercury constitutes half of the mercury absorbed daily by adult Canadians.

Whether amalgam mercury is the source of 50% of all mercury absorbed, as Richardson's data indicates, or three-fourths, as the WHO data suggests, mercury from amalgams contributes a substantial portion of the mercury absorbed each day, not a "very small" portion as the ADA would have the public believe.

Alzeimer’s symptoms and Mercury poisoning
A large body of research on the effect of accidental mercury poisoning indicates that mercury causes emotional and mental disturbances very similar to those that appear in many AD victims. Here is a summary of the emotional and mental symptoms commonly associated with AD: Patients with Alzheimer's exhibit changes in personality and social skills. They . . . may become socially uninhibited or lose all initiative and interest in activities. These patients often have delusions, hallucinations, and sleep disorders. They sometimes show grossly inappropriate judgment and sometimes are misdiagnosed as being depressed or psychotic.

Every one of these symptoms is common symptoms of mercury poisoning.

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AD as an inflammatory response
The hypothesis that AD is caused by mercury from amalgam and the environment is consistent with the theory that AD is an inflammatory disease caused by the body's reaction to an infection or environmental insult. The evidence that AD "fits the paradigm of the idiopathic rheumatic disorders" was recently presented by Aisen and Davis.

"According to this model," wrote the authors, "an unknown set of circumstances results in an initial insult triggering an inflammatory reaction in the brain. The inflammation becomes self-propagating, or it continues because the obscure inciting factors persist." They argue that the acute phase response may augment production of beta-amyloid, the protein found among the plaques in AD brains. They conclude that "cytokines, acute phase proteins, activated microglia, and complement," all mechanisms which can be triggered by the acute phase response of the immune system, are "involved" with AD, either as causes or consequences, and that anti-inflammatory drugs may "alter" the progression of AD. Mercury may well be one of the "obscure inciting factors" that triggers the inflammatory response.

Some direct evidence that anti-inflammatory drugs may delay the onset of AD already exists. McGeer et al. reported data suggesting that "the prevalence of Alzheimer disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis is unexpectedly low and that [the use of] anti-inflammatory therapy might be the explanation."


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