So calcium and magnesium are not effective at rendering aluminum exposure harmless? What could help block aluminum from affecting the brain/nerves? I know a bit about chelating aluminum, but how could one prevent it from doing damage in the first place? Any ideas?
Citric acid (oranges, etc.) and malic acid (apples, etc.) in food, not in supplements (either directly or indirectly as excipients or additives). Keeping the colon functioning is crucial, otherwise people can absorb the alumina silicates out of products like bentonite clay. (In like manner, a surprising amount of people get sick or die following a single barium enema.)
Thanks, but isn't that for chelating heavy metal already in the brain? Silicic acid works for chelating too (high mineral content water). What about preventing the aluminum/heavy metals from affecting the nerves? I'm worried about inhaling vapors and the heavy metals going straight into my brain.
I just think we just need to actively avoid it, and this because the inclusion body it creates—the neurofibrillary tangle—is essentially irreversible. Free aluminum can of course be chelated but it cannot when covalently-bound to phosphorylated-proteins such as tau (τ). Calcium does inhibit aluminum's absorption, yet it could be that it simply binds with it in the intestines. The persistence of neurofibrillary tangles in vivo is why it leads to a progressive diseases in nearly all cases. Aluminum can be found in processed cheese, a few artificial food dyes, and wheat products that'd used double-acting baking powder. The food with the highest aluminum concentration in America is most likely the frozen pizza, having sodium aluminum phosphate both in the cheese and in the dough—thereafter becoming aluminum hydroxide upon baking. Although coffee shop and convenient store cheese Danishes are really good with coffee—even those from Kwik Trip! (they pay me to say that)—there is usually no way of telling if aluminum had been used or not. Of course bread is free of aluminum because S. cerevisiae had been for leavening, yet baking powder is often used is instances where the 'yeast flavor' may be unwelcome—as in confections. Yet as we all know iron can create an inclusion body of a different sort called lipofuscin, a mass of lipids and proteins crosslinked through the ε-amino groups—not the phosphates as in aluminum—resulting from lipid peroxidation products that had been initiated by iron. Although iron is most commonly found associated with lipofuscin, this could merely be because it is the most common catalyst in the body: Many other metal ions such as Mn²⁺, Hg²⁺, Pb²⁺, Cu²⁺ are a;o redox-active and thus could induce lipid peroxidation and lipofuscin. Although Al³⁺ is not a redox-active ion and wouldn't be expected to induce lipofuscin, is can actually do something even worse: Walton, J. R. "Evidence for participation of aluminum in neurofibrillary tangle formation and growth in Alzheimer's disease." Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (2010)
But does calcium still inhibit aluminum absorption if aluminum exposure is direct to the brain; for instance, in the form of a vapor? I thought I read a post of yours indicating that autophagy from fasting destroys neurofibrillary tangles. And what if one is almost or totally PUFA-deficient, or takes supplements that prevent lipid peroxidation and the resultant tangles?