Have you ever wondered if there's a natural way to lower your high blood pressure,

guard against Alzheimer's, lose weight, feel better?

Well, it turns out there is.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Are your pots and pans and aluminum foil toxic?

Today we start out by looking at the DNA damage that may be caused by certain uses of aluminum cookware. Over the last decades, the toxicity of aluminum for humans has been heavily discussed

and still not completely clarified.

Those occupationally exposed to aluminum and like like, smeltered plants, suffer from oxidative

stress, free radicals that can damage their DNA.

But what about just using aluminum cookware?

Articles suggesting an unrecognized public health risk was limited to the developing world,

where cookware is made in informal shops by casting liquid aluminum melted from a collection

of scrap metal, including the likes of lead batteries, which is how you can get so much lead

leaching into people's food. But then this study was published, suggesting

the aluminum itself may be harmful. Most of our aluminum exposure comes from processed junk.

That contains aluminum-containing food additives, including those within some processed

cheeses, baking powders, cake mixes, frozen dough and pancake mixes.

But approximately 20 percent the daily intake of aluminum may come from aluminum cooking utensils,

such as pans, pots, kettles, and trays. To see if this may be causing a problem, they took

blood from consumers that used aluminum cookware versus those that

did not, and found that not only were the aluminum users walking around with twice the level

...