You're welcome to enter Alzheimer’s (disease or dementia) and aluminum into PubMed, but I don't think you'll find any paper that says it's the definitive cause. It's still just a hypothesis. And aluminum is all over the place. Try aluminum and environment also.
That's right. They always hold up short. I've read several studies, including one from Harvard, that will acknowledge the correlation between aluminum and Alzheimer's, but they won't say that it causes it.
My Grandmother, rest her soul, had Alzheimer's before they new what it was. Every morning, probably for 30 years she perked coffee in an aluminum pot.
Because of its unique atomic valance, it is not found in elemental form in nature. It is so tightly bound to oxygen that it requires extreme pH conditions followed by intense electrolysis to arrive at it's metallic state. Because of that, it remains very unstable in anything other that neutral pH conditions. This process was not economically feasible until the 40's when aluminum began to be used widely in everything including the food industry. Coffee and, even more so, tomatoes will dissolve aluminum. If you then consume those products, you are taking it into your body in its elemental form.
I will not eat at an Italian restaurant that cooks in un-anodized aluminum cookware.
The correlation between aluminum and Alzheimer's has been know for at least 20 years. I first heard of it when reading an account of the high incidence of Alzheimer's in the native population on Guam where the ground water is high in aluminum due to the volcanically derived soil. Yet, over the years the only one I ever heard mention this perspective was my geochemistry professor.
Well, if I'm wrong, at least I'm in good company.