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Needed to pass this information on of a families experience with aluminium, in the hope that it just may help someone.Where aluminium pans can have such an influence on a person's well-being.Or getting rid of them!

This is a serious warning about the use of old aluminium pans.

In our family, various illnesses occured, which disappeared when stainless steel pans were used instead!

My father suffered for thirty years with a persistent eczema, which could not be cured by the doctor's he consulted. My mother suffered for years from headaches, which increased in severity. Finally the headaches caused vomiting and protein deficiency and she was admitted to hospital. However specialists couldn't find the cause of her deficiency. The amazing fact was that during her stay in hospital her protein level slowly recovered but on her return home, the deficiency started again.

She then came to stay at our home and sursprisingly, after two weeks, the protein in her blood was nearly doubled! After this improvement we still didn't realise aluminium pans were the cause.

Afraid for a repeat, she switched to another doctor who was also a homeopath. He came, looked at the patient and asked to have a look in the kitchen. He took the pans one after another from the shelf and looked inside.

"These are the culprits" he said and he pointed at little black pits inside. His diagnosis: "Aluminium poisoning".

Because this was not immediately accepted by the patient, laboratory tests were taken. The result confirmed that she was very much alergic to aluminium.

Stainless steel pans were procured and in a few weeks the complaints disappeared!

Also, after some weeks, the eczema of the husband was gone!

Years late, when he entered a retirement home, the eczema on his arms returned!

The Directors" answer on the obvious question was "The meals here are cooked in stainless steel kettles". Again a mystery! But the solution came some days later, when he said "Sorry, but the meals for the saltless diets are indeed cooked in aluminium pans". And he was on the 'saltless' diet!

The message is clear, change any old aluminium pans for stainless steel pans. Also enamel pans, if the layer inside is no longer sound, can cause health problems.

This has helped relatives and friends who suffered from persistent headaches, eczema and rheumatism.

We use cast iron, as we were told that was the best for health and as we do not eat meat that we may get some iron from the pan. Do not know how true this is.

Probably the safest of all metal cookware is cast iron as ingesting iron or iron oxide in small amounts through cooking contact had not shown to be dangerous to human health. I am skeptical, about getting iron into your diet, because the iron from cookware, being non organically derived is also non-chelated and therefore not digestible for any nutritional benefit.

Solely from the safety point of view, lead-free glass cookware is probably the safest.

The primary reason is glass, which is made from silica or sand is totally inert and does not react even with the acid from vinegar or those naturally present in sour food like tomatoes.

The only downside about using glass cookware is its heat energy conduction inefficiency, fragility and light induced loss of nutrients in food prepared in transparent glass cookware, as infra-red light from the fire or heating element can destroy light sensitive nutrients in food which are otherwise unaffected by other opaque cooking utensils.

I know those visiting here would not use toxic teflon, but if you know of anyone who does.
The EPA's Science Advisory Board considers PFOA (aka Teflon) a likely carcinogen, and it can come off on your food at high temperatures and with the use of sharp cooking utensils.
From Asparagus Cookers to Zabagliones, the best cookware from around the world!visit A cook's Wares http://www.cookswares.com/pans.asp