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Finding the Cause of Alzheimer’s
By Dr. Bruce Semon

Why haven’t we found the cause of Alzheimer’s? It’s simple: our biomedical research establishment is not looking for a cause.

What would they find if they only looked? Cottonseed.  Millions of tons of toxic cottonseed are fed to animals each year. Toxic cottonseed chemicals then find their way into our food. Toxic cottonseed chemicals have been identified as causing Alzheimer’s,heart attacks, strokes and bleeding.The government should protect us from this toxic cottonseed by removing it from animals’ food supply.

Here’s how we would benefit:

One. Identifying and removing the cause of Alzheimer’s would mean that rates of Alzheimer’s wouldfall — gradually at first, then dramatically — without expensive drugs. Cottonseed in our food literallyis causing the destruction of peoples’ brains as they age. If we stop this destruction, older people will behealthier and have healthier minds.

Two. Rates of heart attacks and strokes would also fall dramatically. Cottonseed also contains achemical which increases cholesterol and causes artery disease. If cottonseed were taken out of thefood supply, cholesterol counts would fall and there would be less artery disease. The removal ofcottonseed and its cholesterol-raising poison from our food would mean that we would no longer haveto have a quarter of the population taking statin drugs. With this poison out of people’s blood, the ratesof stroke and heart attack would decline.

Three. Health care costs would fall. The cost of Alzheimer’s care, stroke care and heart attack care runsin the hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Even if the rates of these disorders fell by only 25%,90 billion dollars a year could be saved. The savings could be much higher than that. Compared toeven the minimum amount of money we’d save, the value of the entire cottonseed crop looks small.

Four. Governments could bring their budgets back into order because of decreasing health care costs.Behind the squeeze on other government programs, from public university budgets to the defensedepartment budgets, are large health care costs that keep on increasing. Government could keep otherimportant programs going if health care costs fell. This is important, because it would mean we’d haveless political fighting over every remaining dollar coming into the Treasury.

Five. The general level of anxiety in society about getting Alzheimer’s with increased age would alsodecline. The cost of Alzheimer’s is not just the care of individuals with Alzheimer’s. The toll alsoincludes people’s anxiety about their future.But, instead of eliminating toxic cottonseed from animals’ diets, the government promotes its use. Itsubsidizes the growing of cotton which leads to more cottonseed’s being fed to animals. This is veryunwise. Instead, the government could either buy the entire cottonseed crop or prohibit farmers fromusing cottonseed as a feed. The savings in health care costs would be tremendous.

Dr. Bruce Semon is author of Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.






I’m a doctor and I have a PhD in nutrition. Like everyone else, I would like to keep my brain going and not develop Alzheimer’s.  Today no one knows how to prevent Alzheimer’s. But as a doctor and medical researcher, I came across some knowledge almost no one knows about which helps me avoid concerns about developing Alzheimer’s.  Let me tell you what I know that helps me.  The following information all comes from my new book Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain, available on and other outlets!

Agribusiness is pouring millions of pounds of poison into the human food supply every year with no regulation and no public knowledge.  So?  Big deal.  I think it is a big deal.  Why?  I could call these poisons the “Swiss cheese”poisons, not because I have something against Swiss cheese, but because of the way the brain looks after animals eat these poisons.  These are cottonseed poisons.  I’m talking here about one of these cottonseed poisons, which goes to your brain.  When cottonseed is fed to animals, so many brain cells die that the brain develops big holes and looks like Swiss cheese.  This is what the brain looks like after a rat has been fed cottonseed:

Image 125
Photo of a section of a rat’s brain with holes from eating cottonseed

In addition to making holes in the brain, the cottonseed poison ties up other structures in the brain.   This is what Alzheimer’s is all about.

If you want to avoid developing Alzheimer’s, you don’t want this poison going to your brain.  You don’t want holes in your brain, and you don’t want tangled structures in your brain.

Is it worth it to you to avoid these poisons?  I think most of us do not want our brains to look like Swiss cheese.  But you can’t avoid this poison unless you know where it is coming from.

As I said above, the poison comes from cottonseed.  These are the seeds that are part of the cotton balls.  Cotton farming has a huge by-product, millions of pounds of cottonseeds.   Because the seeds contain protein, the seeds are fed to farm animals.  Also, the seeds contain oil, so the oil is processed into foods that you and I eat.

The problem is that cottonseed is poisonous!  Yes, cottonseed contains poison, lots of poison.   Farmers feed as much cottonseed to the animals as they can without the poison killing the animals.  The amount of cottonseed that will kill animals is well known.

The problem is that the cottonseed poisons remain in the meat and fat of the animals, so when we eat the meat from the cottonseed-fed animals, or drink the milk from the cottonseed-fed cows, we get the cottonseed poisons in our food.

How do you prevent Alzheimer’s?  You avoid eating cottonseed poisons.

In my forthcoming book, Rottenseed!  Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain (Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition, LLP, 2013), I tell everyone where the cottonseed poisons are and how to avoid them.  I explain the scientific basis of this problem, and the practical solutions.  I also explain why you can stop eating cottonseed now, even if you are older, and still be healthier.

Rottenseed! Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain is the first book to shed light on this hidden problem in our food supply.  My book is based on scientific research, and is the first to suggest that you can prevent major health problems by not eating cottonseed, directly through oil or indirectly through meat, fish, poultry and milk.

So you can do what I do every day.  You can start now, even if you are older.  This is what I do as a doctor and PhD nutritionist.  This is not just for the young!





By Dr. Bruce Semon, M.D., Ph.D.  © 2013

According to a new report, the costs of Alzheimer’s care will increase significantly in coming years.  Why?  Baby boomers will become old enough to develop Alzheimer’s and nobody can prevent this disorder.  At the same time, another study came out saying that researchers now have developed a rat with many genetic defects which will lead to Alzheimer’s in this rat.  Scientists will then study this genetically defective rat to learn how to develop new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s.  The highlight of this Alzheimer’s research is to create drugs to treat the disease in the future, not prevent it.

Scientists seem to have given up on Alzheimer’s prevention.  Perhaps we should not give up so quickly on prevention.  Is there any information which would help us to determine a way to prevent Alzheimer’s?

Let’s look at another trend.  Scientists know from existing research that people who eat less meat or are vegetarian develop less Alzheimer’s.  The scientists don’t know why.  But these studies point us in the right direction, and led me to perform a study that showed why people who eat less meat develop less Alzheimer’s.

How are these trends related? How is eating more meat related to Alzheimer’s?  And how can we prevent Alzheimer’s by looking at meat?

Let’s answer these questions.  Meat contains a cottonseed poison called “gossypol”.  I have performed a study on what happens when rats eat cottonseed and gossypol.  This study strongly suggests that Alzheimer’s can be prevented by eliminating this poison “gossypol” from our diet.

I explain all of this and more in my new book, Rottenseed!  Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain , now in print and available through, Barnes & and many other sources.

How does gossypol get into meat and then cause Alzheimer’s?    Cottonseed is fed to animals.  Cottonseed is a byproduct of cotton farming, and is a large part of commercial animal feed.  Cottonseed contains gossypol.  Gossypol becomes part of our food by staying in the meat, fat, and milk of animals who are fed cottonseed.  Scientists have long studied gossypol to figure out just how much can be fed to animals without killing them.

Why does feeding cottonseed to animals cause Alzheimer’s in humans?  The cottonseed toxin gossypol is highly toxic, stable, long-lasting and hard to clear.  It remains in the meat and fat of animals, and in the milk of dairy cows.  We eat it.  We drink it.  It circulates in our bodies.  Gossypol goes to the brain.    Not only is gossypol  poisonous to animals, it is also poisonous to us.  Cottonseed is truly a Rottenseed.


We know from existing studies that when cottonseed is fed to animals, gossypol remains in the meat of animals and can be found in the milk of dairy cows.  When people eat meat and drink milk, they are eating gossypol. The gossypol circulates throughout our bodies and goes to the brain, accumulating and binding randomly to important structures, making those structures inactive.  This includes supporting structures of cells.    The cell dies without supporting structure.   In my recent study, when small amounts of gossypol were mixed into the diet of rats and fed for a lifetime, the brains showed signs of Alzheimer’s.

But can this really be true? Why has cottonseed become such a major part of the food chain without someone noticing this?  How can it be that scientists have known for a century that cottonseed is highly toxic to animals, without bothering to study whether feeding cottonseed to humans over their lifetimes is toxic to humans?  Has anyone else tested gossypol for seeing if it causes Alzheimer’s?  And if it does, why does the biomedical research community not know about this?

These questions are complex and I answer them more completely in my book, Rottenseed!  Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.

Briefly, though, understand that incredibly, there are no labs currently looking at cottonseed and Alzheimer’s.  This appears to be for two reasons.  First, because the scientific community generally appears to be uninterested in the question of whether what we eat causes disease in general and Alzheimer’s in particular, and second, because answering the question requires very long-term studies which are hard to do in today’s funding cycles.  These are simplistic answers, but I go into great detail about these two problems in   Rottenseed!  Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.

My interest in cottonseed problems started more than 20 years ago when I was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institutes.  I was working in a lab on diet and cancer.  Gossypol was on a list of chemicals in the diet that may have to do with cancer because gossypol binds to DNA and also causes genetic mutations, which may cause cancer.  But as I looked at gossypol, gossypol looked to be more importantly a possible cause of Alzheimer’s.

After trying for two decades to interest existing national labs in doing such a study, I decided to do it on my own in my own lab using rats as an animal model for humans.  We funded the study with private contributions and profits from our books, Feast Without Yeast: 4 Stages to Better Health (1999), An Extraordinary Power to Heal (2003) and Extraordinary Foods for the Everyday Kitchen (2003).

The challenge was designing a study that would not kill the animals in the process.  If a researcher feeds a lot of cottonseed quickly to an animal, the animal bleeds to death.   So cottonseed needs to be fed to animals in small amounts daily over a long period of time.  I was patient and I got results: the rats that ate the most gossypol over the course of their lives had the most signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains.  The rats that ate no gossypol over the course of their lives had no signs of Alzheimer’s.

This type of study replicates exactly the process of the human diet.  We do not eat huge amounts of gossypol in short periods of time.  Rather, we eat gossypol in meat and dairy and other products in small amounts over the course of our lives.

I published my results for scientists in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Medical Hypotheses, and am publishing them for lay people, as well as more detailed information, in  my forthcoming book–  Rottenseed!  Cottonseed, Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.  I also am engaged in a major replication of this study in an independent lab using larger numbers of animals over the next several years.  The profits from Rottenseed!  will go toward funding this study, as well as other studies on the relationship between what we eat and health.

So, let’s go back to the original question.  Why is it that people who eat less meat develop less Alzheimer’s?  The answer is easy to explain.  They eat less of the cottonseed toxin gossypol.

What can you do now to prevent Alzheimer’s?

  •  First, stop eating everything that contains cottonseed.  Look on packaged and processed foods.  You do not need to become a vegetarian.  Instead of eating commercially raised meat from animals that are being fed cottonseed, buy only meat from grass-fed animals, because they do not eat cottonseed.  Buy fish that is wild-caught, not farm raised.  Buy dairy products that are “pasture raised” or from “grass-fed cows.”  Eat eggs.  Egg-laying chickens do not get cottonseed because it turns the eggs pink.  Eating more eggs will not raise your cholesterol.  By taking these steps now, you can help yourself today.
  •  Second, you can read my new book, Rottenseed!  Cottonseed: Alzheimer’s and Your Brain.   My book will give you much more insight into the problems that cottonseed causes, not only by causing Alzheimer’s, but by raising cholesterol and causing a host of other health problems.
  • Third, you can participate directly in funding research on this subject by contributing to our non-profit, 501(c)(3) research foundation, Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition Research Foundation, Inc.  Your tax-exempt contribution will go directly to funding critical research on Alzheimer’s prevention that the mainstream scientific community is not interested in doing or funding.   Every contribution counts, no matter how small or large.

To participate in research to prevent Alzheimer’s, send a tax deductible contribution to:

Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition Research Foundation, Inc.

P.O. Box 170867

Glendale, WI  53217

For more information, call 1-877-332-7899





“Eating cottonseed may lead to Alzheimer’s,” according to researcher  Dr. Bruce Semon, M.D., Ph.D., of Glendale, Wisconsin.   In a new study, published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses,  Dr. Semon showed that feeding cottonseed to rats in low doses over their lifetime led to development of one of the major  signs of Alzheimers.  These rats developed neurofibrillary tangles, which are clumps of material seen in dead cells that are in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.   According to Dr. Semon, this is important because he fed rats approximately the same dose of cottonseed that humans get in their diet over a lifetime.  Although the clearest results were seen at higher levels, similar results were seen at
levels that people actually eat.

Dr. Semon’s advice:  “Don’t eat cottonseed or anything that contains cottonseed.”  Cottonseed is contained not only in many processed foods, but is in the meat that we eat because cottonseed is a major component of animal feed.  This may explain why people who eat more meat are  more likely to develop Alzheimer’s, as seen in previous studies.

Dr. Semon cautions that more research needs to be done.  He has started a foundation to raise money for funding additional research, Wisconsin Institute of Nutrition Research Foundation, Inc.

To see the abstract, click go to the Journal of Medical Hypotheses!
If you are interested in a reprint of the article, or are interested in assisting in funding additional research, please email Dr. Semon at



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