ALUMINIUM in our soils and in our foods can cause toxic reactions and deficiencies (by blocking the absorption of some foods). Plants take up not only minerals but heavy metals in the soil as well. If these levels reach toxic point, the health of animals and people are in jeopardy.

Aluminium is everywhere - not only from man's conscious addition of it in our food and water chain (in baking powder, as a dehydrant as aluminium oxide to prevent caking in packaging, in aluminum cans, cookware, and the public health's common use of it to precipitate solids in our drinking water as part of their purification system), but the most serious contamination comes from the acid rain falling on earth's soil.

Aluminium is a mineral that makes up 30 percent of the earth's crust as serpentine rock. It is held in a molecularly bound state but is released to a free ion with acid rain. The aluminium ion is then freely taken up by roots of plants grown in that soil, or filters down into the subterranean waters and then contaminates wells, streams etc.

Aluminium has a predilection for the nervous system: the brain, and systemic nerve ganglia that innervate every organ in the body; chronic degenerative changes in all organ systems ensue as well as neurological behavioural changes.

In recent years many Dermatron tests on sick animals and including hair analyses have showed aluminium at toxic levels - cases that have been meticulously documented with supportive orthodox tests (blood, urine, lab tests) hair analysis results, food testing and clinical records. They have been sent to the FDA and the head veterinarian of Animal Health and Public Health at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA but these orgainisations never gave more than the reply that they "were looking into it!"

Aluminium is a very serious cause of chronic degenerative disease and has been implicated as one of the factors in mental illness (paranoia, schizophrenia) and learning disabilities. They have even found aluminium nodules in the brains of Alzheimers patients, at necropsy. Aluminium lowers blood oestrogen levels. It also competes with calcium in the body. It prevents hydrochloric acid production by the stomach's cells in carnivores (and man) thus producing improper digestion or metabolism of the proteins in the early stages of digestion.

Aluminium was in every dog and cat food on the market in 1985 - the kibbled form was the worst because of the mechanics of drying the food - the aluminium content increases over that of wet or canned food. Dogs and cats often presented the symptoms of aluminium poisoning when they visited their vets. Many of the spring or drinking water sources in California contained aluminium at varying levels and it differed with the time of year too - during the summer it increased (water underground is more concentrated during the dry times of the year).

The symptomatology of chronic aluminum toxicity in animals was similar to chronic chemical toxicity (especially the pesticide/herbicide/fungicide group).

Central nervous system symptoms - chewing wallboards and door knobs and trying to catch imaginary objects in the air, and aggressive, violent behaviour. Many animals that were switched into vagatonia (overriding of the parasympathetic nervous system to the sympathetic system), had suppressed immune systems - chronic dermatitis, coryza and nasal discharges and loss of black pigment on the nose pad.

Endocrine gland dysfunctions included hypothyroidism, hyperactivity of the parathyroid due to the lowered calcium levels of the body, adrenal hyperfunction at first then progressed to adrenal hypofunction as continued chemical stress influenced the medulla of the adrenals, hypoglycemia, diabetes, lack of pancreatic digestion enzymes, lowered stomach HCI (needed for protein digestion) resulted in signs of poor nutrition (dry, lustreless hair coat, skin dry and flaky) increased intestinal fermentation, constipation and dehydration, low-grade fever, liver, kidney and heart pathologies.

Blood tests showed increased creatinine (kidney damage), decreased platelets in the circulating blood (for blood clotting) elevated cholesterol levels (liver, pancreas damage). The diets of such animals had to be changed to home-made because the grain, meat, oils, kelp and bone meal supplements were contaminated with chemicals and heavy metals. One method of detoxification of fresh foodstuffs is by soaking in dilute clorox (half teaspoon per gallon of water) solution for 20 to 45 minutes as needed (dowse with pendulum or do muscle testing) until cleared, then rinsing in bottled water.

The animals were also given corresponding homoeopathic nosode of aluminim, lead, mercury, etc. as well as other holistic supportive treatment and orthomolecular medicine of vitamin and mineral balancing (hair analysis results are invaluable here). Once the animals had the aluminium (and other chemicals) chelated out of their systems with the nosodes and the electrolyte/mineral balanced, they began to recover and did very well as long as a strict detoxification diet was followed.

Today aluminium is still used in a wide range of products to be used externally or as part of the food chain for both animals and humans. While it is not used as prolifically as it was a couple of decades ago it is still a toxic substance and a watchful eye needs to be trained on any canine (or human) product that is either eaten or used on the skin or hair etc.

It must be remembered that while a little aluminium a few times a year may not harm, a little every day in perhaps two, three or more products is a different story and will likely have a different outcome.