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At Dr Golding Medical Practice we check ferritin levels (iron storage levels) and if iron stores are too high we do venesection (blood letting) on site for our patients.
As you age, iron accumulates in your brain. The latest research finds that too much iron in your brain tissues may contribute to memory decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to stop iron-related memory damage before it’s too late. What makes iron so dangerous to your memory? The danger has to do with brain cell oxidation. When iron reacts with oxygen and water in our environment, it forms rust.
Something similar happens in the brain when abnormal iron metabolism triggers the production of highly toxic free radicals – the process called oxidation, which damages a cell’s structure, including its fats, proteins, and DNA – ultimately leading to cell death.
Excess iron also contributes to formation of beta amyloid brain plaques and tau protein tangles that are both strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
In fact, high iron levels in the brain have been linked to Alzheimer’s for decades. Specifically, brain imaging shows damage occurs where iron accumulates in deep gray matter structures including the hippocampus, a key memory area.
But iron’s role in damaging the neocortex, the deeply grooved outer layer of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functioning, hasn’t been explored until now.
Neurologist Reinhold Schmidt and his colleagues at the University of Graz in Austria used a special version of an MRI machine called 3T, because it’s difficult to scan the neocortex using a conventional MRI.
Using this special imaging technology, Dr. Schmidt’s group created a map of brain iron in 100 patients with Alzheimer’s and 100 healthy control patients. 56 of those 200 patients had a follow up MRI and cognitive testing 17 months later.
“We found indications of higher iron deposition in the deep gray matter and total neocortex, and regionally in temporal and occipital lobes in Alzheimer’s disease patients compared with age-matched healthy individuals,” reported Dr. Schmidt.
“These results are all in keeping with the view that high concentrations of iron significantly promote amyloid beta deposition and neurotoxicity in Alzheimer’s disease.”
He went on to say that the iron mapping technique could be used as a biomarker for predicting the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and that drugs called chelators, which remove excess iron from the body, could play an important role in the treatment of the disease.
Long-time readers of this newsletter might remember that we’ve written about the importance of detoxifying the body and the brain from heavy metals to preserve a healthy memory. This new research seems to reinforce what we’ve learned from many natural doctors that we’ve interviewed throughout the years.
Now, even top conventional doctors are pointing to the danger of iron accumulation in the brain.
Why iron accumulates in the brain with aging is unknown. However, the body can only obtain iron from the diet, and some scientists believe that older people should limit intake.
One such scientist is Dr. Preston Estep, Director of Genome Sequencing and part of the senior management team of the Personal Genome Project at Harvard Medical School.
He describes iron as “the single most dangerous element in modern…diets.” He thinks the RDA of eight mg for adults aged 51 years and older is way too high. Instead, that age group should aim for no more than three to five mg of iron per day.
Long-lived Populations
Dr. Estep maintains that long-lived populations around the world have low body stores of iron. For instance, Japanese women have the lowest levels of iron in the developed world, live the longest, and have low rates of Alzheimer’s disease.
Watch Dr. Golding talk on Integrative and Anti-Aging Medicine.
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