After my last blog and email blast many people have had questions on Chelation Therapy, so I want to share some of my thoughts.
Health is a by-product of restoring the eco-system of the body. One of the most disruptive insults to the body is a high heavy metal burden--most importantly lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. Heavy metals can interfere with all of the biochemical processes of the body, and there really is no safe level of them. (Do not confuse a normal range that shows up on a laboratory test with an optimal level.)
So the first questions people usually ask about chelation are: when to start, when to stop, and how frequent should their treatments be. While we all have a certain level of metals in our body, I like to use some testing or markers that we can use to track improvement. In our office we use a couple of different instruments to estimate the health, or compliance, of the arteries. It has been said long ago that you are as young as your arteries, and that is true. We also use challenge (chelation) urine tests to try and draw out the heavy metals to give us a better estimation of body burden, since many people have poor mechanisms for excreting heavy metals. Some other doctors use hair analysis, which may have some utility in certain cases, but I believe a better estimation on the body burden of metals is done with a challenge--or provoked urine test.
How frequent the treatment should be depends on the amount of metals in the body or the level of vascular dysfunction. It also depends on the condition of the patient. Some patients are very sensitive to the chelating agent, so they will have a slower, or more protracted, chelation schedule.Those with a very high metal level or poor vascular health may need to have more frequent treatments. Everyone’s treatment protocol is prescribed on a case-by-case basis. In general, as the symptoms or testing improves the treatment frequency can decrease. With all the variables, this is as much a clinical art as a science.
With children, chelation is done slowly, gently and almost exclusively orally. Many people have seen improvements in autism and ADD/ADHD with a safe chelating protocol. Unfortunately, the opposite can be true; many have been injured with an improper protocol.
When to stop chelation is a personal decision. This is where the value of testing and retesting comes in. But I think the answer for people who want to remain healthy their whole lives is never. We are living in a world of ever increasing pollution (think more and more coal burning fireplants in China and the burning of electronic waste that spews metals into the air), and we will need some kind of chelation maintenance program (once a month, for example) to protect our investment in wellness and prevent the re-accumulation of heavy metals.
Health is a by-product of restoring the eco-system of the body. One of the most disruptive insults to the body is a high heavy metal burden--most importantly lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. Heavy metals can interfere with all of the biochemical processes of the body, and there really is no safe level of them. (Do not confuse a normal range that shows up on a laboratory test with an optimal level.)
So the first questions people usually ask about chelation are: when to start, when to stop, and how frequent should their treatments be. While we all have a certain level of metals in our body, I like to use some testing or markers that we can use to track improvement. In our office we use a couple of different instruments to estimate the health, or compliance, of the arteries. It has been said long ago that you are as young as your arteries, and that is true. We also use challenge (chelation) urine tests to try and draw out the heavy metals to give us a better estimation of body burden, since many people have poor mechanisms for excreting heavy metals. Some other doctors use hair analysis, which may have some utility in certain cases, but I believe a better estimation on the body burden of metals is done with a challenge--or provoked urine test.
How frequent the treatment should be depends on the amount of metals in the body or the level of vascular dysfunction. It also depends on the condition of the patient. Some patients are very sensitive to the chelating agent, so they will have a slower, or more protracted, chelation schedule.Those with a very high metal level or poor vascular health may need to have more frequent treatments. Everyone’s treatment protocol is prescribed on a case-by-case basis. In general, as the symptoms or testing improves the treatment frequency can decrease. With all the variables, this is as much a clinical art as a science.
With children, chelation is done slowly, gently and almost exclusively orally. Many people have seen improvements in autism and ADD/ADHD with a safe chelating protocol. Unfortunately, the opposite can be true; many have been injured with an improper protocol.
When to stop chelation is a personal decision. This is where the value of testing and retesting comes in. But I think the answer for people who want to remain healthy their whole lives is never. We are living in a world of ever increasing pollution (think more and more coal burning fireplants in China and the burning of electronic waste that spews metals into the air), and we will need some kind of chelation maintenance program (once a month, for example) to protect our investment in wellness and prevent the re-accumulation of heavy metals.
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