Is There Copper In Your Drinking Water?
Study: Copper in tap water could increase Alzheimer's
PHOENIX — A new study shows tap water with trace
amounts of copper accelerates Alzheimer's Disease in rabbits with high
cholesterol, The Arizona Republic reported.
View the complete selection of water test kits.
Do you know what
is in your drinking water?
Researchers now want to find out if the same holds true in
people, many
of whom already have an emerging risk factor - high cholesterol — for
the growing neurodegenerative disorder, the article stated.
"If there's a relationship in humans, it would be
huge," said D. Larry
Sparks, lead author of a study published Aug. 11 in the online version
of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Sparks, a senior scientist for Sun Health Research
Institute in Sun City,
stumbled on the finding while studying the role high cholesterol plays
in Alzheimer's, the newspaper reported.
After years of inducing the disease in rabbits by feeding
them high levels
of cholesterol in Kentucky, Sparks couldn't understand why he was unable
to do the same at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix or at his lab
in Sun City.
He seized on the only difference he could find between the
Kentucky lab
animals and those in the Valley: local rabbits were being fed with tap
water, whereas the Kentucky rabbits were being fed distilled water.
His conclusion: distilled water provides protection
against the disease,
but tap water speeds up the process, the article stated.
Sparks and his colleague, Bernard Schreurs of the
Blanchette Rockefeller
Neuorsciences Institute in West Virginia, are now analyzing whether other
forms of bottled water or tap water run through reverse osmosis systems
to remove copper is equally protective.
<<<
Return to previous page
|
