By Dr. Bruce Semon, M.D., Ph.D. © 2013
According to a new report, the costs of Alzheimer’s care will increase significantly in coming years. Why? Baby boomers will become old enough to develop Alzheimer’s and nobody can prevent this disorder. At the same time, another study came out saying that researchers now have developed a rat with many genetic defects which will lead to Alzheimer’s in this rat. Scientists will then study this genetically defective rat to learn how to develop new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s. The highlight of this Alzheimer’s research is to create drugs to treat the disease in the future, not prevent it.
Scientists seem to have given up on Alzheimer’s prevention. Perhaps we should not give up so quickly on prevention. Is there any information which would help us to determine a way to prevent Alzheimer’s?
Let’s look at another trend. Scientists know from existing research that people who eat less meat or are vegetarian develop less Alzheimer’s. The scientists don’t know why. But these studies point us in the right direction, and led me to perform a study that showed why people who eat less meat develop less Alzheimer’s.
How are these trends related? How is eating more meat related to Alzheimer’s? And how can we prevent Alzheimer’s by looking at meat?
Let’s answer these questions. Meat contains a cottonseed poison called “gossypol”. I have performed a study on what happens when rats eat cottonseed and gossypol. This study strongly suggests that Alzheimer’s can be prevented by eliminating this poison “gossypol” from our diet.
I explain all of this and more in my new book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain (anticipated publication June 2013).
How does gossypol get into meat and then cause Alzheimer’s? Cottonseed is fed to animals. Cottonseed is a byproduct of cotton farming, and is a large part of commercial animal feed. Cottonseed contains gossypol. Gossypol becomes part of our food by staying in the meat, fat, and milk of animals who are fed cottonseed. Scientists have long studied gossypol to figure out just how much can be fed to animals without killing them.
Why does feeding cottonseed to animals cause Alzheimer’s in humans? The cottonseed toxin gossypol is highly toxic, stable, long-lasting and hard to clear. It remains in the meat and fat of animals, and in the milk of dairy cows. We eat it. We drink it. It circulates in our bodies. Gossypol goes to the brain. Not only is gossypol poisonous to animals, it is also poisonous to us. Cottonseed is truly a Rottenseed.
We know from existing studies that when cottonseed is fed to animals, gossypol remains in the meat of animals and can be found in the milk of dairy cows. When people eat meat and drink milk, they are eating gossypol. The gossypol circulates throughout our bodies and goes to the brain, accumulating and binding randomly to important structures, making those structures inactive. This includes supporting structures of cells. The cell dies without supporting structure. In my recent study, when small amounts of gossypol were mixed into the diet of rats and fed for a lifetime, the brains showed signs of Alzheimer’s.
But can this really be true? Why has cottonseed become such a major part of the food chain without someone noticing this? How can it be that scientists have known for a century that cottonseed is highly toxic to animals, without bothering to study whether feeding cottonseed to humans over their lifetimes is toxic to humans? Has anyone else tested gossypol for seeing if it causes Alzheimer’s? And if it does, why does the biomedical research community not know about this?
These questions are complex and I answer them more completely in my book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.
Briefly, though, understand that incredibly, there are no labs currently looking at cottonseed and Alzheimer’s. This appears to be for two reasons. First, because the scientific community generally appears to be uninterested in the question of whether what we eat causes disease in general and Alzheimer’s in particular, and second, because answering the question requires very long-term studies which are hard to do in today’s funding cycles. These are simplistic answers, but I go into great detail about these two problems in Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.
My interest in cottonseed problems started more than 20 years ago when I was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institutes. I was working in a lab on diet and cancer. Gossypol was on a list of chemicals in the diet that may have to do with cancer because gossypol binds to DNA and also causes genetic mutations, which may cause cancer. But as I looked at gossypol, gossypol looked to be more importantly a possible cause of Alzheimer’s.
After trying for two decades to interest existing national labs in doing such a study, I decided to do it on my own in my own lab using rats as an animal model for humans. We funded the study with private contributions and profits from our books, Feast Without Yeast: 4 Stages to Better Health (1999), An Extraordinary Power to Heal (2003) and Extraordinary Foods for the Everyday Kitchen (2003).
The challenge was designing a study that would not kill the animals in the process. If a researcher feeds a lot of cottonseed quickly to an animal, the animal bleeds to death. So cottonseed needs to be fed to animals in small amounts daily over a long period of time. I was patient and I got results: the rats that ate the most gossypol over the course of their lives had the most signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains. The rats that ate no gossypol over the course of their lives had no signs of Alzheimer’s.
This type of study replicates exactly the process of the human diet. We do not eat huge amounts of gossypol in short periods of time. Rather, we eat gossypol in meat and dairy and other products in small amounts over the course of our lives.
I published my results for scientists in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Medical Hypotheses, and am publishing them for lay people, as well as more detailed information, in my forthcoming book– Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain. I also am engaged in a major replication of this study in an independent lab using larger numbers of animals over the next several years. The profits from Rottenseed! will go toward funding this study, as well as other studies on the relationship between what we eat and health.
So, let’s go back to the original question. Why is it that people who eat less meat develop less Alzheimer’s? The answer is easy to explain. They eat less of the cottonseed toxin gossypol.
What can you do now to prevent Alzheimer’s?
- First, stop eating everything that contains cottonseed. Look on packaged and processed foods. You do not need to become a vegetarian. Instead of eating commercially raised meat from animals that are being fed cottonseed, buy only meat from grass-fed animals, because they do not eat cottonseed. Buy fish that is wild-caught, not farm raised. Buy dairy products that are “pasture raised” or from “grass-fed cows.” Eat eggs. Egg-laying chickens do not get cottonseed because it turns the eggs pink. Eating more eggs will not raise your cholesterol. By taking these steps now, you can help yourself today.
- Second, you can read my new book, Rottenseed! Cottonseed: Alzheimer’s and Your Brain. My book will give you much more insight into the problems that cottonseed causes, not only by causing Alzheimer’s, but by raising cholesterol and causing a host of other health problems.
- Third, you can participate directly in funding research on this subject by contributing to our non-profit, 501(c)(3) research foundation, Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition Research Foundation, Inc. Your tax-exempt contribution will go directly to funding critical research on Alzheimer’s prevention that the mainstream scientific community is not interested in doing or funding. Every contribution counts, no matter how small or large.
To participate in funding research to prevent Alzheimer’s, make a donation through Paypal
Or send a tax deductible contribution to us at:
Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition Research Foundation, Inc.
P.O. Box 170867
Glendale, WI 53217
For more information, call 1-877-332-7899
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