I've been thinking about the late Iris Murdoch's Alzheimer's recently [with the new book about to be published by her widower, John Bayley].

One of the charming things about their married life was the domestic messiness and lack of obsession with "lifestyle enhancements" that people of their class are so often enchanted by. However, an aspect of this was that they very often ate canned food - baked beans, tinned meat etc - far more than most people do. And if Dame Iris were susceptible to metal poisoning [her mother also suffered dementia I think, so the susceptibility was inherited] there is the most likely cause of the illness in my opinion.
It's shocking that such a mighty mind could have been felled by such a mundane axe.