Every time you breathe, eat, drink, or touch certain materials, you are exposed to trace amounts of toxic heavy metals. While a single exposure is unlikely to cause harm, these metals can accumulate in your body over time and can lead to significant health issues, including cardiovascular disease, organ toxicity, and inflammation just to name a few. What many don’t realize is that heavy metals can not only affect your health in a negative way, but they can also harm your brain. Keep reading to learn how toxic heavy metals are to our brains.
1. Heavy Metals are Neurotoxins
Many heavy metals, like mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic, are neurotoxins. They can break through the blood-brain barrier, causing oxidative stress and inflammation that damage brain cells. This can lead to cognitive decline and neurological issues. (Source) (Source).
2. Impacts Poor Memory
Memory is crucial for everyday tasks, from recalling important dates to learning new skills. Heavy metals like lead and arsenic can impair memory function. Studies show that prolonged exposure can lead to a gradual decline in cognitive abilities, with lower IQ scores and poorer memory performance.
This is one of the many reasons why it is important to detoxify heavy metals from your body. Several studies have found that exposure to heavy metals can damage your memory.
Adults who are exposed to lead are shown to have significantly lower learning and memory scores and can result in progressive decline in memory (Source) (Source). Arsenic exposure is also linked to deficits in verbal intelligence and long-term memory (Source).
3. Increased Mood Disorders
Heavy metals can also impact your mood. Mercury exposure, for example, can cause irritability, mood swings, and anxiety. Higher levels of lead and cadmium in the blood have been linked to depression and anxiety disorders as well.
While external events can drive your mood, researchers have found that heavy metals can have a surprising impact on how you feel as well.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mercury exposure can cause mood swings, irritability, nervousness, and excessive shyness (Source). Scientists have also discovered that higher levels of lead or cadmium in the blood are associated with depression and anxiety (Source, Source).
4. Lower IQ & Intelligence
Chronic exposure to heavy metals, especially in childhood, can reduce IQ levels. Children with higher heavy metal levels tend to have significantly lower cognitive scores. Lead and mercery exposure is particularly harmful to intellectual development. I am not only referring to children, but women who are pregnant and exposed to these metals and how that can impact the growing fetus.
But IQ is not a one-way street. Your IQ can also decrease over time. One way your IQ can be negatively impacted is through chronic heavy metal exposure, especially during childhood.
Just one example comes from a study out of China that found that children who had higher levels of heavy metals in their blood had significantly lower IQ scores compared to children with fewer heavy metals in their system (Source).
5. Weakened Executive Function
Executive function refers to essential cognitive skills like attention, organization, and emotional regulation. Research indicates that even low levels of lead or arsenic can impair these functions, making tasks like decision-making and problem-solving more difficult.
There are several things you can do to strengthen your executive function, with meditation as one of the best methods (Source). Another effective way is to avoid things that weaken executive function, such as heavy metals. Research has revealed that even low levels of arsenic or lead exposure can compromise your executive function (Source).
6. Poor Fine Motor Skills
Your brain and nervous system control fine motor skills. Heavy metals affect these fine motor skills, which are essential for tasks like writing, playing instruments, or using a smartphone. Adults exposed to mercury may experience muscle weakness and coordination loss, while children and unborn babies are particularly vulnerable to developmental delays. (Source).
When children are exposed to mercury, it becomes much more of an issue. There are multiple studies that have shown children and unborn babies can experience developmental delays in fine motor skills when they are exposed to mercury (Source).
7. Accelerated Cognitive Decline
While some cognitive decline may be considered a normal part of aging, heavy metal exposure can speed up this process. Long-term exposure to metals like aluminum, mercury and lead can contribute to conditions like dementia, intensifying the symptoms of aging and impairing brain function.
If your brain is chronically inflamed and under constant oxidative stress as it is with heavy metal exposure then your cognitive function can increasingly get worse. When this happens, the symptoms of cognitive decline are magnified, and the brain eventually stops working as it should.
How to Protect Your Brain from Heavy Metals
Now that you are aware of how heavy metals can cause your brain harm, it’s only natural that you want to avoid this fate. To protect your brain, it’s important to minimize heavy metal exposure and regularly detoxify your body. Metals like cadmium, lead, and mercury can remain in your system for decades. So regular detoxification is crucial and there are ways you can do this naturally and safely. If you want to learn more about how heavy metals enter the body, you can read about that here.
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