Under the guidance of my long-time colleague Walter Crinnion, ND, the annual environmental medicine update convention took place in Phoenix Arizona last weekend.

All aspects of how environmental toxicity is being proven to affect our health were discussed by many speakers.

Everything from longtime pesticides like DDT to solvents in the paint we use in our house, to the phthalates in our personal care products and our houses, were discussed and their connections with disease were documented.

Alzheimer’s Disease

In this issue of my newsletter I will talk about the newest findings from the convention in Alzheimer’s disease.

In my practice, Alzheimer’s disease is the number one fear of my patients over age 50.

See the slide below from Dr. Crinnion’s lecture.

It shows that Alzheimer’s disease is the second most feared disease in America, only after cancer. In addition, the degree of fear about Alzheimer’s disease has increased significantly. In contrast, fear of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes has been reduced over the last four years shown in this chart.

The latest study just published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that an elevated serum pesticide level significantly increases the risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

DDT is known to be a carcinogen. DDE is its most common breakdown product.

In this study, DDE levels were found to be 3.8 times higher in Alzheimer’s disease patients than in controls. In addition, those people with the highest tirtile of DDE levels had an Alzheimer’s disease risk of 4.18 times that of the lowest tertile group. In this study, they further determined that serum and brain levels of DDE correlated by 95%.

The practical outcome of this is that we can get an idea of a patient’s brain DDE level by a blood test done in a doctors office. I do this blood test regularly in my office.

Air Pollution and Cognition

In another study presented at the convention, it was shown that exposure to particulate air pollution causes cognitive decline in older women.

In this study, they looked at over 19,000 women, aged 70 to 81 in the very famous Nurses Health Study, that I have discussed in my newsletter before. They did baseline cognitive testing in 1995 through 2001 and repeated it at two-year intervals. They looked at general cognition, verbal and working memory, as well as category fluency and attention.

The study showed that higher levels of long-term exposure to two different particle sizes of air pollution were associated with significantly faster cognitive decline.

The article closed by saying that the rate of cognitive loss with exposure to these particles in the air was “Cognitively equivalent to aging by approximately 2 years.”

The bottom line from this study for me is that everybody in a large city should be using a high quality air filter in their bedroom with doors and windows closed, while they sleep. In my next newsletter I will give you two recommendations for air filters that I recommend to my patients.

In a coming issue of my newsletter, I will discuss Parkinson’s Disease and its connection with environmental toxicity.

What is DDE?

Elevated serum pesticide levels and risk for Alzheimer disease.

Exposure to particulate air pollution and cognitive decline in older women.