Interview with Dennis N. Crouse, PhD (No. 2)

On Aluminum, Five Mismatch Diseases, and Discovering Magic in Water that Makes Life Possible on Earth

In September 2024, I interviewed Dennis N. Crouse, a Harvard-trained PhD chemist who had spent over a decade investigating why his mother developed Alzheimer’s disease — and what could be done about it. That interview covered his discovery that orthosilicic acid (OSA), a form of silica found naturally in some mineral waters, can facilitate the removal of aluminum from the human body, and his evidence that aluminum is a causal factor of Alzheimer’s. His mother, after drinking silica-rich Fiji water, regained her short-term memory and lived to 97 without entering end-stage Alzheimer’s. The response to that interview was extraordinary — it remains one of the most shared and discussed pieces I’ve published.

Interview with Dennis N. Crouse, PhD

Dennis has now returned with a new book, Discovering Magic in Water that Makes Life Possible on Earth (2026), and the scope of his work has expanded significantly. He now makes the case that aluminum — a neurotoxin and the third most abundant element in the earth's crust — is not just a causal factor of Alzheimer's, but of five "mismatch diseases": Alzheimer's, autism, cardiovascular disease, childhood epilepsy, and male infertility. The book presents new evidence on how aluminum hardens arteries, damages sperm, and triggers seizures in children, and explains how the body's natural defenses against aluminum have been overwhelmed by modern cultural practices he calls "dysevolutionary." Alongside the science are remarkable anecdotal reports of people reversing carotid artery blockage and improving Alzheimer's scores simply by drinking silica-rich water. With 428 scientific references and a free recipe for making your own silica water at home, this is a book that puts practical, potentially life-changing information directly into people's hands. I'm grateful to Dennis and his wife Laurie Adamson for this second interview.

Please support this work by buying the book.

Discovering Magic in Water that Makes Life Possible on Earth: Preventing and Treating: Alzheimer's, Autism, Cardiovascular Disease, Childhood Epilepsy, and Male Infertility - by Crouse, Dennis N., Crouse, Dennis.

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1. Dennis, when we last spoke in September 2024, you shared how your curiosity about two artesian springs near your childhood home set you on a lifelong scientific path. Your new book opens with that same story but takes it further — connecting those springs to millions of years of human evolution. For readers meeting you for the first time, can you walk us through how a seventh-grader watching water flow from the earth ended up writing five books on the relationship between aluminum, silica, and human disease?

My evolving interest in this subject was initially shaped by teachers who taught me both basic biology and how to perform scientific inquiries. Also, I was driven by curiosity to understand why water from two local artesian springs differed in their support of regeneration in simple organisms. After reading Loren Eiseley’s book on human evolution “The Immense Journey” in which he said “If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water”, I began to focus on discovering what was the magic in paleolithic drinking water that shaped human evolution over the last 2-million years.

The actual discovery of this magic in water has been performed in a series of important steps by many scientists over the last 30 years. My discovery of this body of work was shaped both by people I met while at Harvard and by my mother who was diagnosed with both amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) a precursor of Alzheimer’s (AD) and cardiovascular disease. As a son I wanted my 85-year-old mother to regain her short-term memory and live as long as possible without entering end-stage AD. By drinking paleolithic drinking water my mother regained her short-term memory, required no further stents, and lived to 95 in her home and died at 97 without having end-stage AD.

I published my first book “Prevent Alzheimer’s, Autism, and Stroke” in 2016 based upon my discoveries made by reading the scientific literature published before 2014. My second book in 2018 “Silica Water the Secret of Healthy Longevity in the Aluminum Age” established a correlation between healthy longevity as seen in Blue Zones of the world and high levels of silica in drinking water in those zones. My third and fourth books focused on targeted detox of brain drainers and proving aluminum is a causal factor of AD. My new 2026 book “Discovering the Magic in Water that Makes Life Possible on Earth” explains how we know that humans evolved drinking silica rich paleolithic drinking water and how this led to specific protective evolutionary advantages. This book is evidence based with 428 references to scientific publications of peer-reviewed articles and discusses 17 recent scientific studies (listed in table 4) that were published in 2014 to 2025 showing why aluminum is a causal factor or primary cause of five human diseases.

2. One of the most striking ideas in your new book is the concept of “mismatch diseases” — a term you’ve borrowed from Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman. You argue that Alzheimer’s, autism, cardiovascular disease, childhood epilepsy, and even male infertility all belong in this category. Can you explain what a mismatch disease is and why you believe aluminum is the common thread connecting all five?

Professor Lieberman defines a mismatch disease as being caused by increasing exposure to an environmental toxin at levels that are mismatched with human’s evolved protective mechanisms for dealing with that toxin. After reading Liberman’s book “The Story of the Human Body” in 2013, I wondered if my mother was suffering from two mismatch diseases: AD and cardiovascular disease caused by the same environmental toxin.

To prove causation of a disease by a toxin requires several important factors:

Dose-response relationship (i.e., Increasing amount of and/or exposure time to a toxin increases odds of getting the disease)

Targeted intervention (i.e., Increasing exposure to something that specifically detoxifies the toxin decreases the odds of getting the disease)

Correlation of Rates (i.e., Increasing rate of production of a toxin and increasing prevalence of the disease)

Correlation of Biomarkers (i.e., Exposure to the toxin results in the same biomarkers as the disease)

Mechanism of Causation (i.e., proven biochemistry that results from exposure to the toxin and in turn results in one or more biomarkers characteristic of the disease)

After reading the existing scientific literature, I found statistically significant relationships of some, if not all, of these factors with the toxin being aluminum and the diseases being AD, cardiovascular disease, autism, childhood epilepsy, and male fertility.

3. Your new book traces the “magic” in water all the way back to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, where our ancestors lived for nearly two million years drinking from volcanic springs rich in orthosilicic acid. What was it about the geology of that area — particularly Mount Lemagrut — that made the water there so protective, and why does that matter for us today?

The magic discovered in water is orthosilicic acid (OSA) a dissolved form of silica made of oxygen and silicon, the first and second most abundant elements in the earth’s crust. Drinking water rich in OSA immediately lowers the level of aluminum in blood and over a period of time will lower the body burden of aluminum in organs including the brain and bones. Aluminum is both a neurotoxin and the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust. Because of this, life would not be possible on earth without the magic of OSA in drinking water.

Our human ancestors, proven to live in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania over the last 2-million years, drank paleolithic water rich in OSA. This is known because OSA flows in rain water from Mount Lemagrut a 10-thousand-foot-high dormant volcano just south of the gorge. The core of this volcano is dunite that is over 90% olivine. Rain water dissolves olivine making OSA rich (i.e., 50-200ppm) paleolithic drinking water that flows to ancient artesian wells found in the gorge.

Dissolved silica as OSA is in almost all drinking water, but not always at a sufficient concentration to facilitate the elimination of aluminum from the body. This matters today because humans evolved for over 2-million years to concentrate OSA in several organs of the body for protection from aluminum toxicity. By not drinking sufficient OSA today, humans are susceptible to mismatch diseases.

4. You describe in fascinating detail how humans have evolved specific biological machinery — aquaporins, OSA transporters, nephrons, sweat glands, even the placenta — to use orthosilicic acid for aluminum detoxification. This is a major expansion from your earlier work. Can you walk a non-scientist through how the body actually uses OSA to grab onto aluminum and flush it out?

OSA above a certain concentration reacts with aluminum to form a relatively non-toxic chemical that is excreted in urine and sweat. The OSA concentration in the blood is maintained by the body to be constant and below the level necessary for this reaction to occur in the blood. But in the kidney and sweat glands with the help of specific little-organs (i.e., organelles called aquaporins) OSA is concentrated to a level necessary for this reaction to occur. Also, the placenta has evolved OSA transporters that allow the human fetus to sequester OSA at a higher concentration than their mother for protection from aluminum a causal factor of the mismatch disease autism.

5. You present some remarkable data about pregnant mothers and their babies — showing that mothers give almost all their OSA to the developing fetus, leaving themselves severely depleted. What are the implications of this for pregnant women who aren’t supplementing with silica-rich water, especially those receiving aluminum-containing vaccines during pregnancy?

With the first-born child having drained the mother’s OSA reservoir, it is not surprising that the second-born child is 50% more likely to have autism than the first-born child. Also, the risk of autism is the highest when pregnancies are closely spaced (i.e., 12 – 24 months) apart because it takes time to restore the OSA reservoir. Especially if the mother is not supplementing by drinking OSA rich water.

This situation is made worse by the mother being vaccinated during pregnancy with aluminum containing DTaP and/or HEP vaccines. Aluminum readily crosses the placental “barrier” entering the fetus and negatively impacting brain development. Also, between birth and the fourth month of life the newborn infant is given a number of aluminum containing vaccines before their blood-brain barrier has matured.

6. Your chapter on declining male fertility worldwide presents an alarming picture — average sperm counts dropping by 50% since 1973, which you correlate with rising aluminum production. What’s the evidence that aluminum is specifically damaging male reproductive capacity, and is this something a man could realistically address by changing his habits?

Spermatogenesis is the process by which sperm are produced. Aluminum inhibits spermatogenesis in humans resulting in lower sperm counts and inhibits sperm motility. Men with high sperm counts have low levels of aluminum in their semen while men with low sperm count have high levels of aluminum in their semen. Drinking OSA rich water will lower aluminum levels in semen resulting in a higher sperm count and greater male fertility.

7. The term “dysevolutionary cultural practices” was coined by Professor Lieberman for things we do that work against our evolved defenses. You list eight of them, from adding aluminum to drinking water to cooking in aluminum pans to avoiding sweat. Which of these do you think is doing the most harm to the most people right now?

Good question. Since an all-continent meta-analysis of 38 studies indicate average sperm counts worldwide from 1973 - 2018 have declined by 50%, a dysevolutionary cultural practice is ignoring this data that is impacting at least 50% of the male population of the world. In developed countries the largest sources of this aluminum are baked goods (dysevolution is using aluminum as a leavening agent) and drinking water (dysevolution is adding aluminum to drinking water in order to coagulate impurities). In undeveloped countries and areas of poverty in developed countries dysevolution is using aluminum cookware. A worldwide dysevolutionary cultural practice that is being ignored among females is the production and purchase of aluminum containing lip stick and lip gloss. People need to use their buying power to select for purchase only products not containing aluminum.

8. The book contains a powerful anecdotal report about a 75-year-old man whose carotid artery went from 78% blocked to just 9-12% blocked after drinking one liter of Fiji water daily for about a year — with no other changes. You also present an 89-year-old whose MMSE score jumped from 19 to 25 in two months on Fiji water. How do you explain results this dramatic from something as simple as mineral water?

Because we evolved specific protection from aluminum, using something that is simple – just drinking OSA rich water – makes it appear to be as dramatic as a magic act when it is used to treat a disease.

We live in a society dominated by “western medicine” where medication used to treat diseases only comes from pharmaceutical companies and must be prescribed by doctors. After diagnosis you are given a glossy brochure printed by a pharmaceutical company that features healthy looking people as proof of efficacy and extensive lists of side effects due to the prescribed drug. People do not view bottled drinking water purchased at the local grocery store as medicine and the companies that bottle the water do not and can not advertise the medical benefits of their water.

Frequently when my wife Laurie and I receive anecdotal information it is with a comment that although drinking silica water successfully treated the disease by facilitating the elimination of the root cause, they could not even tell their doctor what they did for fear of being criticized for using something outside of western medicine.

The problem is that it is not well-known in the medical community that OSA in water is sequestered by both plants and human fetuses to protect them from aluminum toxicity. Also, that drinking OSA rich water can be used to prevent and treat a number of mismatch diseases. These are examples of a holistic system of primary healthcare called naturopathy that focuses on using natural therapies that stimulate the body’s evolved protective mechanisms to prevent disease and treat the root cause.

My new book is an effort to make it more well known that drinking OSA rich water can be used naturopathically to prevent and treat the five mismatch diseases presented in my new book.

9. You’ve identified four biomarkers that indicate aluminum accumulation in the body — urinary aluminum, pTau217, the AB-42/AB-40 ratio, and C-reactive protein. For someone reading this who wants to know where they stand, which of these tests would you recommend starting with, and what should they be looking for in the results?

The most reliable test for the adult mismatch diseases discussed in my new book is a total 24-hour urine test for aluminum. Urine is collected at home for 24 hours and the total amount of aluminum is measured. In the U.S. you can order a test online through Request-a-Test and a collection bottle can be picked up at LabCorp and then returned to LabCorp for analysis. Cost is a little over $100 per test. A healthy maximum aluminum amount for adults age 18 and over is 0.48 micromoles per 24 hours. My new book explains how to interpret the results which vary by both age and if you have an adult mismatch disease. For children and those under 18, a pTau217 blood test is recommended.

10. Your chapter on autism makes a detailed causal case — correlations, dose-response relationships, brain tissue analysis, and intervention data — that aluminum, primarily from vaccines, is the primary cause of autism spectrum disorder. You also present nine anecdotal cases of children showing significant improvements on silica water. What has been the response from the medical and research community to this body of evidence?

The medical community as a whole, including pharmaceutical companies, attempt to deny that aluminum in vaccines is a cause or causal factor of autism. They are concerned that information on aluminum causing autism will weaken the faith of people in the safety of vaccines to the point they avoid vaccinating their children. The problem is that without this information there is no pressure to make aluminum-free vaccines. Rather than doing the research required for making aluminum-free vaccines, the medical community including pharmaceutical companies prefer to use obfuscation by continuing to question whether aluminum is a causal factor of autism.

Laurie and I have found a group of doctors that agree aluminum should not be used in vaccines. We have given these doctors a well-received zoom presentation of my new book. There are a group of doctors recommending OSA supplementation.

11. The childhood epilepsy chapter includes an informal survey of 55 parents who gave silica water to children with seizures — with 26 reporting at least a 75% reduction. You also note that aluminum injected into monkey brains produces seizures that continue for at least seven years. Why do you think this connection between aluminum and seizures hasn’t received more attention from mainstream neurology?

In this case the pharmaceutical companies making aluminum containing vaccines put a warning in their product literature that vaccination may cause seizures. However, they do not say the seizures are due to aluminum in the vaccine and they do not say that OSA will usually stop or lower the frequency of aluminum induced seizures. Mainstream neurology does not even want to suggest that aluminum in vaccines may be the cause of seizures, as this would also suggest that aluminum in vaccines is the cause of autism. But in spite of this attempted coverup, it is known that approximately, 25 to 44% of children with autism develop childhood epilepsy (i.e., have seizures) compared with only 1 to 2% of children without autism. This comorbidity strengthens the case for aluminum in vaccines being the cause of both childhood epilepsy and autism.

12. You’ve been drinking your homemade Silicade for ten years now and your biomarkers tell a compelling story — aluminum levels below what Mayo Clinic considers healthy even for young adults, low CRP, and very low pTau217. Your wife Laurie shows similar results. For someone who wants to start making Silicade at home, how easy is it really, and what are the critical steps they shouldn’t skip?

Silicade is a handcrafted paleolithic drinking water containing 146ppm of OSA and is almost identical to Fiji Water that is readily available in U.S. grocery stores. The only difference is Silicade costs 43 cents per gallon (including Brita filter) while Fiji Water is imported and costs significantly more. Making a gallon of Silicade is described in the new book and only involves using two measuring spoons to measure and add two powdered chemicals to an eighth of a cup of tap water, boiling for 30 seconds, and diluting with tap water. This requires only 5 minutes of my time, as I use a 400cc/min peristatic pump to automatically pump unattended a gallon of Silicade through Brita filter refill material (40 gallons per packet) in an Aqua Life filter cartridge. Attending to a gravity-fed Brita filter requires 9.5 minutes per gallon because the gravity-fed flow rate is also 400cc/minute.

Tap water used to make Silicade usually contains aluminum because of both residual aluminum dysevolutionarily added by community water departments to coagulate impurities and leached aluminum from celite in the concrete used to line the inside of drinking water pipes. Because the EPA only recommends the level of this aluminum be below 200ppb, in spite of 180ppb doubling the risk of AD, the filtration step after boiling and diluting is a critical step and should not be skipped. Also, since fluoride increases aluminum accumulation in the brain, I optionally remove 85% of fluoride from Silicade with bone char placed above the Brita filter material in the same Aqua Life filter cartridge. Instructions for making a bone char filter is both in my book “Increasing IQ …” and at my blog on blogger.

13. In the book you make a sharp distinction between OSA and other silica products on the market — colloidal silica, MMST, meta-silicic acid, and various supplements. You’ve tested many of them in your own lab and found most release too little OSA to be effective. What should people look for when choosing a silica source, and what should they avoid?

The only sources of drinkable OSA of sufficient concentration to facilitate the elimination of aluminum from the body is currently mineral water and beer either with or with alcohol (see Appendix I of my new book for both a complete international list of OSA content of mineral waters in Table 12 and OSA content of commercial beers by type in Table 13). Also, In Table 7 of my new book there is a list of 14 silica supplements that do not contain sufficient OSA or have a bad taste. Avoid supplements that are “made from OSA”, or contain “colloidal silica”, “monomethylsilane triol”, “MMST”, “Living Silica”, “G5”, “meta-silicic acid”, and “Silanol”.

14. You note that the Doug Whitney case — a man who carries the Presenilin 2 familial Alzheimer’s gene but has lived 25 years longer than affected family members, potentially because he spent a decade sweating profusely in a ship’s engine room — suggests that sweating may be as important as drinking silica water. How do sweating and silica water work together, and what does this mean for someone’s daily routine?

Humans evolved in an area near the equator with a high concentration of OSA in paleolithic drinking water. Human’s unique niche was running down and killing hairy mammals when they stopped to cool down by panting during the heat of the day. Therefore, it should not be surprising that human sweat glands are lined with aquaporins that facilitate increasing both the concentration of OSA in glandular tubules and the elimination of aluminum in sweat. Avoiding a daily sweat is dysevolutionary. Drinking OSA prior to regular exercise, saunas, or anything that requires thermal regulation by sweating is recommended to facilitate the elimination of aluminum in sweat.

15. Since we last spoke, you’ve published this new book expanding from three mismatch diseases to five, you’ve included cardiovascular disease evidence and male infertility data, and you reference a September 2025 presidential press conference announcement about removing aluminum from vaccines. Where is your research heading next, and how can people follow your work, access your resources, and support what you and Laurie are doing?

President Trump and I share two things in common: we were born 10 days apart in 1946 and we agree that aluminum-free vaccines should be developed. He stated in a September 22^nd 2025 press conference “We want no aluminum in the vaccine”. I can only hope based on this rather cryptic comment that behind the scene steps are being taken to develop aluminum-free vaccines in 2026. If implemented this would substantially reduce the number of children with autism and childhood epilepsy.

Laurie and I will be working for the next several months on marketing and promoting the new book. We would like to reach the new audience of people with cardiovascular disease. Also, Laurie has added childhood epilepsy to our website as a mismatch disease that is prevented and treated by OSA supplementation.

My research will most likely not include another book but instead will focus on moving the naturopathic use of OSA for preventing and treating some mismatch diseases into pill-oriented western medicine. This requires demonstrating that taking a pill containing a proprietary form of OSA will result in the same amount of OSA being released in the gut, absorbed into the blood, and excreted in the urine as drinking a cup (237cc) of Silicade or Fiji Water. This pill will both prevent and provide palliative relief of the symptomology of some mismatch diseases.

Five glossy brochures for doctors and their patients are needed to advertise this pill for each of the five mismatch diseases with pictures of smiling healthy people taking this pill with no side effects and anecdotal information on the efficacy of the pill. With pill and glossy brochures, a pharmaceutical company may be sold on making money on the project by funding clinical studies and promoting the sale of the pill.

The result of this project will be instead of making a gallon of Silicade for 43 cents, people can get a prescription from their doctor for a few months of pills that can be purchased for a 10 to 20-dollar copay at a drug store. The advantage of western medicine is doctors, pharmaceutical companies, drug stores, and the health insurance companies that provide coverage to all three of these groups all make money. In addition, the patient is happy about paying the money because it makes their doctor pleased to see they are using western medicine.

People wishing to follow our work and access our resources are encouraged to periodically check our blog at the website: www.prevent-alzheimers-autism-stroke.com . People reading this interview can support us by sharing this interview with people in other social media platforms. Thanks for reading this interview.