Finding the Causes of Alzheimer’s Disease

Why haven’t we found what causes Alzheimer’s? It’s simple: our biomedical research establishment is not looking for a cause.  Finding the causes of Alzheimer’s Disease should be a national priority.

What would they find if they only looked? Cottonseed toxins.  That’s right, the seed of the cotton plant.  A little known fact is that millions of tons of cottonseed are fed to animals each year.   Cottonseed contains toxic chemicals that become absorbed in the meat, milk and fat of animals, then become part of the food we eat.  Toxic cottonseed chemicals have been identified as causing Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, strokes and bleeding.   People should demand that toxic cottonseed be removed from the food suply.

Here’s how we would benefit:

Identifying and removing the causes of Alzheimer’s disease would mean that rates of Alzheimer’s would fall — gradually at first, then dramatically — without expensive drugs. Cottonseed in our food literallyis causing the destruction of peoples’ brains as they age. If we stop this destruction, older people will be healthier and have healthier minds.

Two. Rates of heart attacks and strokes would also fall dramatically. Cottonseed also contains a chemical which increases cholesterol and causes artery disease. If cottonseed were taken out of the food supply, cholesterol counts would fall and there would be less artery disease. Removing cottonseed and its cholesterol-raising poison from our food would mean that we would no longer have to have a quarter of the population taking statin drugs such as Lipitor(TM) . With this poison out of people’s blood, the rates of stroke and heart attack would decline.

Three. Health care costs would fall. The cost of Alzheimer’s care, stroke care and heart attack costs the hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Even if the rates of these disorders fell by only 25%,90 billion dollars a year could be saved. The savings could be much higher than that. Compared toeven the minimum amount of money we’d save, the value of the entire cottonseed crop looks small.

 Governments could bring their budgets back into order because of decreasing health care costs.Behind the squeeze on other government programs, from public university budgets to the defensedepartment budgets, are large health care costs that keep on increasing. Government could keep otherimportant programs going if health care costs fell. This is important, because it would mean we’d have less political fighting over every remaining dollar coming into the Treasury.

Five. The general level of anxiety in society about getting Alzheimer’s with increased age would alsodecline. The cost of Alzheimer’s is not just the care of individuals with Alzheimer’s. The toll also includes people’s anxiety about their future.But, instead of eliminating toxic cottonseed from animals’ diets, the government promotes its use. It subsidizes the growing of cotton which leads to more cottonseed’s being fed to animals. This is very unwise. Instead, the government could either buy the entire cottonseed crop or prohibit farmers fromusing cottonseed as a feed. The savings in health care costs would be tremendous.

You can find out more by reading our book,  Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.