Psychology Today – Denture Adhesives Bite Back
Psychology Today reports on its Household Hazards blog:
In 2009, a hyper-specialized biomedical journal called NeuroToxicology published a fascinating piece of poison sleuthing (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19732792). The article documented a disturbing series of 11 cases all of whom shared an unusual and crippling constellation of troubles comprised of profound impairment of the nervous system and an inability to produce an adequate number of blood cells. The specific neurological problems included damage to peripheral nerves (called neuropathy) and the nervous system of the spinal column (called myelopathy). Four of the eleven were wheelchair-bound and four others required a walker for assistance. Moreover, these were not cases selected from an elderly, infirmed population: on average they were 46 years-old at symptom onset (the youngest was 31).
The treating physicians solved part of the puzzle early on. They established that a rare but recognized cause of combined cause of nervous system damage and bone marrow damage was at work – copper deficiency. Copper is an essential nutrient metal. We all need to take in certain amount of copper in our diets. Evolution has allowed for this to be tightly regulated in order to protect us from too much copper getting into our bodies. In fact, a failure of this system is manifest in a serious genetic illness of copper overload (Wilson’s disease). In contrast, too little copper is a hard achieve, although sometimes it is seen after gastric surgery or prolonged intravenous nutrition insufficient in copper.
There is one other well appreciated cause of copper deficiency: chronic excess intake of zinc, a practice that interferes with normal copper absorption. This problem is linked to the overuse of zinc-containing dietary supplements. A rare source of exogenous zinc is the pathological ingestion of coins associated with severe psychiatric illness; this has emerged as a particular problem following the substitution of zinc for copper as the major metal constituent of the U.S. penny. Early on for these 11 cases, the treating physicians not only documented the presence copper deficiency, but also showed that there was concomitant excess zinc. Then they hit a roadblock. Each of the patients denied knowingly ingesting heavy amounts of excess zinc; mysteriously, supplementation with copper corrected the blood deficiency yet elevated zinc levels persisted.
Tags: copper, denture adhesive, denture cream, neuropathy, zinc, zinc poisoning
