Years ago I read something about Aluminum possibly being the cause of the epidemic increase in Alzheimers in the news.
So I stopped drinking from aluminum cans, stopped using baking powder with sodium-aluminum sulfate in it and stopped using antiperspirant with aluminum chlorhydrate in it.
When I hear of so many people getting this terrible disease lately I can’t help think that rubbing this stuff on your underarms every day is a likely part of the problem.
So this morning I did some research on the epidemiology of antiperspirants. Below is what I found.
I wanted to know if anyone had ever even looked into this subject. I had (wrongly) assumed that many scientists had made a study of this. This paper from 2002 could only find 1 such study. So I went to that one study and found that, YES, it did find a
correlation between use and AD. The odds ratio is +1.6 (1 is neutral). It also found that “increasing frequency of use” brought those odds up to +3.2 which is quite high!
I would say that not enough has been said about this finding. Maybe because so many people have used this product that a lawsuit would easily bankrupt Procter and Gamble, and other huge companies!



Antiperspirants and Aluminum (PMID: 12222737 in 2002)
Aluminium salts are the major constituent of many widely used antiperspirant products, and the possibility that antiperspirant aluminium might exert an effect on health should not be ignored 59. Experiments on mice have shown that aluminium salt could
pass the skin barrier, and the transdermal uptake of aluminium resulted in the accumulation of aluminium in the hippocampus of the mouse brain 60. However, in the epidemiological field, little consideration has been given to the effect of use of
antiperspirants with aluminium and the risk of AD. To our knowledge, only one epidemiological study has revealed an increased risk of AD for subjects using aluminium-containing antiperspirants 57.

57. Graves AB, White E, Koepselle TD, et al. The association between aluminium containing products and Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 1990;43:35–44. [PubMed]
59. Exley C. Silicon in life : a bioinorganic solution to bioorganic essentiality. Journal of Inorganic Biochemitry. 1998;69:139–144.
60. Anane R, Bonini m, Grafeille JM, Creppy EE. Bioaccumulation of water soluble aluminium choride in the hippocampus after transdermal uptake in mice. Archives of Toxicology. 1995;69:568–571. [PubMed]

REFERENCE 57 Abstract below:

J Clin Epidemiol. 1990;43(1):35-44.
The association between aluminum-containing products and Alzheimer's disease. Graves AB1, White E, Koepsell TD, Reifler BV, van Belle G, Larson EB.

Abstract:
The association between exposure to aluminum through the lifetime use of antiperspirants and antacids and Alzheimer's disease (AD) was explored in a case-control study of 130 matched pairs. Cases were clinically diagnosed between January 1980 and June
1985 at two geriatric psychiatric clinics in Seattle, Wash. Controls were friends or non-blood relatives of the case. Subjects were matched by age, sex, and the relationship between the case and his or her surrogate. For all antiperspirant/deodorant use,
regardless of aluminum content, there was no association with AD (adjusted odds ratio **(OR) = 1.2, 95% CI = 0.6-2.4). For aluminum-containing antiperspirants, the overall adjusted OR was 1.6 (95% CI = 1.04-2.4) with a trend toward a higher risk with
increasing frequency of use (p for trend = 0.03), the adjusted OR in the highest tertile being 3.2. For antacids regardless of aluminum content, the overall adjusted OR was 3.1 (95% CI = 1.2-7.9). Here, a steep dose-response gradient was found (p for
trend = 0.009), with an adjusted OR for the highest tertile of 11.7. However, when only aluminum-containing antacids were analyzed, the overall adjusted OR was only 0.7 (95% CI = 0.3-2.0) and there was no significant dose-response trend. These results
are provocative but inconclusive due to methodologic problems relating to the necessary use of surrogate respondents and the long time period of potential exposure for this dementing disease. PMID: 2319278
** The odds ratio (OR)[1][2][3] is one of three main ways to quantify how strongly the presence or absence of property A is associated with the presence or absence of property B in a given population. 1.6 is moderate, 3.2 is high.
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The Judge <pyroartist@sbcglobal.net> writes:

Abstract:
The association between exposure to aluminum through the lifetime use
of antiperspirants and antacids and Alzheimer's disease (AD) was
explored in a case-control study of 130 matched pairs. Cases were
clinically diagnosed between January 1980 and June 1985 at two
geriatric psychiatric clinics in Seattle, Wash. Controls were friends
or non-blood relatives of the case. Subjects were matched by age, sex,
and the relationship between the case and his or her surrogate. For
all antiperspirant/deodorant use, regardless of aluminum content,
there was no association with AD (adjusted odds ratio **(OR) = 1.2,
95% CI = 0.6-2.4). For aluminum-containing antiperspirants, the
overall adjusted OR was 1.6 (95% CI = 1.04-2.4) with a trend toward a
higher risk with increasing frequency of use (p for trend = 0.03), the adjusted OR in the highest tertile being 3.2. For antacids regardless
of aluminum content, the overall adjusted OR was 3.1 (95% CI =
1.2-7.9). Here, a steep dose-response gradient was found (p for trend
= 0.009), with an adjusted OR for the highest tertile of
11.7. However, when only aluminum-containing antacids were analyzed,
the overall adjusted OR was only 0.7 (95% CI = 0.3-2.0) and there was
no significant dose-response trend. These results are provocative but inconclusive due to methodologic problems relating to the necessary
use of surrogate respondents and the long time period of potential
exposure for this dementing disease. PMID: 2319278 ** The odds ratio (OR)[1][2][3] is one of three main ways to quantify how strongly the
presence or absence of property A is associated with the presence or
absence of property B in a given population. 1.6 is moderate, 3.2 is
high.

My reading of the abstract you posted is:

Although use of anti-perspirants containing Al (in which one would have
to absorb the Al through the skin) were positively correlated with AD,
use of Al-containing antacids (where one actually swallows the Al and it
would be absorbed via the digestive system) was negatively correlated.

Those two data points together suggest (to me) that it's not the Al
that's the problem. If it's not the Al, then something else in the Al-containing anti-perspirants and in the non-Al-containing antacids is
the problem. That, I imagine that might be something worth researching.
-WBE

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