There is no question in my mind that if American seniors, and seniors in all other “Western” countries, had access to a few cups of Coca Leaf tea every day that many of those souls far gone into the depths of Alzheimers/Dementia could benefit and perhaps even recover, and those who have not yet begun their descent into that hellish place could go on to live out their lives free of this scourge.

I cannot begin to describe my feelings about the policies of the US government, and the other governments of the “West” that prevent people from having access to this harmless, non-addictive, natural remedy for what is surely as bad as any form of torture ever dreamed up by our own, or any other government in the world.

In my Alzheimers posts I have noted that the United States is far and away the world leader in the sheer numbers of people who die every year of Alzheimers/Dementia, as well as in the ranking of these diseases as a leading cause of death.

Alzheimers/ementia ranks second only to Coronary Heart Disease as a cause of death in the US, and ranks above Stroke (#4), Diabetes (#6), Breast Cancer (#11), Lung Cancer (#3), Stomach Cancer (#31), Colon-Rectum Cancer (#7), HIV/AIDS (#34), Prostate Cancer (#16) – in fact Alzheimers/Dementia is such a pervasive, and quite possibly preventable cause of death in the US that I found myself wondering where it ranks in other countries around the world.

You may be as surprised as I was. I went to a website that gives comprehensive WHO data on the leading (top 50) causes of death for each country, and here is a sample of what I found. I didn’t include data for every country in the world – you can go to the website if you’re curious about a country not listed here.

Before presenting the data I would like to point to a few things that stand out to me – you may very well see other interesting things in these numbers.

First, the hugely disproportionate numbers of people dying of Alzheimers/Dementia in the US don’t appear to be a function of life expectancy. Many of the countries in every part of the world have the same or longer life expectancy as the US, and nowhere near the numbers of people dying of A/D.

Second, although most of the countries listed have fewer people than the US, the “Rank In Country” number levels that playing field. The “Rank” indicates the number of Alzheimers/Dementia deaths per 100,000 population, which corrects for differences in the absolute numbers of people between countries. When we see that Alzheimers/Dementia ranks #2 in the US and #60 in Peru, for example, it is irrelevant that Peru has far fewer people than the US.

Another aspect of the data that smacks me in the face is that with the exception of Australia and Germany, almost all of the “Western” countries rank pretty high in deaths attributable to Alzheimers/Dementia – although only Switzerland also ranks A/D deaths as #2. But then when you look at Asian, Latin American and African rankings only Uruguay and Chile ( #5 and #4 respectively) come anywhere near the rankings of the industrialized countries of the Western Northern hemisphere. In fact in most of the rest of the world deaths from Alzheimers/Dementia rank WAY down the scale.

So what is going on? What is it that the countries of the “West”, primarily in the Northern hemisphere, have in common with each other but not with the rest of the world?

A highly industrialized food chain comes to mind. A medical industry dominated by corporate pharmaceutical companies is another distinguishing factor. Recently we have learned of the impact of RoundUp in the food chain – could this whole atrocity be something as simple as Monsanto being a mass murderer for profit?

It certainly can’t be environmental pollution – many of the countries with very low rankings for deaths from Alzheimers/Dementia have far more polluted air, water and soil than the “West”.

It also probably cannot be genetics, because many of the countries in the West now have highly diverse demographics, and unless data can be found that shows that people of Anglo-Saxon origin are the reason for the high rankings of the Western countries, we can probably dismiss race as a factor.

I don’t have any solutions to propose regarding the “Why”, but I am adamant that we should find out whether or not Coca leaf therapy could be effective in reversing and/or preventing Alzheimers/Dementia. If the US won’t do it, why not one of the more enlightened countries in the “West” bloc – say The Netherlands, or France? I know that this blog has readers from all of the countries in the “West”, so please take a look at the numbers for your country and try to break open the inexplicable resistance to Coca leaf therapy at the highest levels of your own governments.

It doesn’t matter, as far as Alzheimers/Dementia goes, that Coca Leaf is readily accessible in Peru and Bolivia – Alzheimers/Dementia is not a significant problem in those countries. But in every one of the countries in the “West” these diseases are the cause of the suffering and deaths of so many individuals and the horrible suffering of those who love and try to care for them – why must this continue?

And what is the cause – because there clearly is a cause, and it has to do with something that the countries of the “West” have in common with each other and not with the rest of the world.