How Water Causes Memory Loss and What Counteracts It

You know that drinking enough water is essential to your health.

But in January 2016, researchers at the Institute of Ethnomedicine and the University of Miami Brain Endowment Bank published a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B that is truly the stuff of nightmares.

Drinking water could cause dementia and other degenerative neurological diseases. Wait…what?

They discovered an environmental toxin, sometimes present in our drinking water, that directly causes degenerative neurological diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and motor neuron disease.

The story began in the 1940s and 1950s, when an unusually large number of Chamorro villagers on the Pacific Island of Guam started dying of a mysterious neurological disease.

On further investigation, researchers discovered that their water and some seeds and flying bats they were eating were contaminated with something called BMAA. BMAA, short for beta-n-methylamino-L-alanine, is a toxin produced by common algae.

Next, a pathologist discovered BMAA in the brains of nine Canadians who had died of Alzheimer’s disease. This discovery gave rise to this new study.

The scientists gave BMAA-contaminated fruit to vervet monkeys to see if they could produce the biological beginnings of these neurological diseases.

After 140 days, they were horrified to find that the constant exposure to BMAA had produced neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits in the brains of these monkeys that were as bad as those found in the brains of the Pacific Islanders who had died.

As part of the experiment, they fed another group of vervets with normal fruit, and another group with fruit dosed with both BMAA and the dietary amino acid L-serine.

Predictably, those fed the normal fruit developed no tangles and plaques; but, surprisingly, those fed with BMAA and the amino acid developed few of them than those fed the BMAA alone.

So even if constant exposure to BMAA causes the neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid plaques in the brain that give rise to Alzheimer’s disease and other deadly neurological diseases, it seems as L-serine, an amino acid, can counter this process.

This study obviously needs to be replicated to verify that it is right, but the authors recommend that water authorities are made aware of the need to test for BMAA in our drinking water before these degenerative neurological diseases become an epidemic.

If you are particularly worried because your drinking water comes from a dam you suspect is laden with algae, you can try L-serine, but again, more studies need to be carried out to verify that it can counter the formation of the tangles and plaques characteristic of neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

L-serine is sold as a supplement to treat everything from depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic pain.
If you don’t want to buy a supplement, just eat lots of soy, egg whites, and spirulina to consume enough of it in your diet.

But if you really want to boost your brain health, do the easy exercise found here…