-The latest Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine has an excellent and
exhaustive article on the nutritional and environmental aspects
of the cause and possible treatment of Alzheimer's. The JOM issue
in question is volume 15, number 1.

-Earlier works may be found at http://www.orthomed.org/links/dement.htm,
and reprints of the latest can probably also be obtained. 

-This latest article is by Harold D. Foster and deals with how
dietary and environmental aluminum (for Europeans, Aluminium)
is directly involved in the impairment of at least 12 enzyme
systems in the body. Excess aluminum coupled with mineral
deficiencies is strongly related to glucose metabolism impairment,
neurotransmitter abnormalities, brain cell membrane degradation,
and free radical damage.

-Deficiencies or impaired uptake of calcium, magnesium, folate,
vitamins C, E, B12 are confirmed as a contributory factor. Treatment
with these dietary elements plus serine, inositol & choline derivitives,
and selenium has been shown to improve patient status and has
been implicated in several "spontaneous remissions" or improvements.

-The article is very long and contains 250 references, and provides
hypotheses about the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's.

-Avoidance/treatment includes elimination of overt dietary aluminum
and contamination from cooking and food processing, as well as
avoidance of alum-treated ("softened") water and fluorides
contaminated with aluminum; correction of the aforementioned
dietary deficiencies is the probably more important due to the
protective effects of free-radical scavengers and displacment
of aluminum in the biochemistry.

-That Paleohumans probably had a near-zero environmental aluminum
load should seem obvious. Deforestation, a Neolithic activity,
liberates aluminum ions into watersheds that would otherwise be
bound by fulvic acid in organic topsoils. And certainly there
was no metallic aluminum to leach into foodstuffs before
the high-tech electrolytic ore refining of the past century.

-And Oog the caveman did not rub aluminum salts into his armpits,
eat alum-leavened bread or alum-soaked pickles, cook tomato
sauce in aluminum pots, drink from aluminum cans, brush
his teeth with paste from aluminum tubes, "soften" his drinking
water with aluminum salts or wrap his meat in aluminum foil.
And don't even start on aluminum-containing antacids, vaccines
and other medications.

-So this is more for the Paleoeater to think about: not only
what to eat that predates Neolithism, but also ensuring that
Neolithic/industrial contaminants, notibly aluminum,
do not creep into the food along the way. The WOL aspects
are extremely significant.