Don't Sweat It: Antiperspirant Aluminum Not an Alzheimer's Risk

Could Alzheimer's disease be caused by aluminum-containing compounds in common antiperspirants?

A lot of people think so, but in his latest Scientific American "Fact or Fiction?" column, S.M. Kramer says that's not the case.

The worries started forty years ago, he explains, when aluminum exposure was linked to neuron damage in rabbits. Scientists later found high levels of aluminum in protein tangles found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's.

However, epidemiology has shown that people who consume five grams of aluminum a day in antacids and buffered aspirins aren't at a higher risk for the disease. That's quite a bit more aluminum than the average
American consumes in food, and more than could be absorbed through your armpits.

As for for the protein tangles, Kramer quotes William Thies, vice president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer's
Association:

"One of the things that happens in Alzheimer's brains is that they shrink," he says. "So, you have accumulated a certain amount of aluminum in your brain, and as your brain shrinks, the concentration is going to appear high."

And neither do aluminum-using antiperspirants appear to cause cancer, a fear prompted by a chain email in the 1990's and exacerbated by confusion over recommendations that women receiving mammograms not use deodorants, which can cause shadows on X-rays:

Ted Gansler, director of medical content at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, says that in the past seven years, his organization has received thousands of e-mails and phone calls in response to this chain letter.

The letter claims that inhibiting perspiration causes harmful substances to be trapped in the body where they form cancer. But sweat is mostly electrolytes and water, Gansler says, and sweating is not a significant mechanism for expelling unwanted compounds, more commonly eliminated in urine and feces. "It would be nice if as many people as
[those who] forwarded the e-mail about antiperspirants, urged their friends and relatives to get a mammogram every year starting at age
40," he says. "We would have saved a lot more lives."

Is it theoretically possible that the epidemiology could have missed a statistically insignificant but real effect? Sure. If it makes you comfortable, stick with the aluminum-free antiperspirant alternatives. But if you're nervous about cancer and Alzheimer's, there are better things to worry about than deodorant.

Fact or Fiction?: Antiperspirants Do More Than Block Sweat [Scientific American]
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Image: Kylemac*