ALA and DMSA

Dear Dr. Gordon:

I appreciate your comments about your products and I have no doubt of your integrity or their efficacy. I just wonder if you could answer the question, which was:
What about ALA and DMSA as an effective oral chelator??

I have had wild success with those two.

I must apologize for not acknowledging your point; of course, we should use anything and everything that makes sense in our efforts to help deal with the epidemic of heavy metal overload from which we all suffer. ALA is very useful and I take it daily; however, I do not bring it up first in my discussions regarding treatment as the best reference I have found for its efficacy as a heavy metal chelator was:

9. Keith RL, Setiarahardjo I, Fernando Q, et al. Utilization of renal slices to evaluate the efficacy of chelating agents for removing mercury from the kidney. Toxicology 1997;116:67-75.

I hope to encourage all physicians to use anything that they find is helping to get their patients well, and I admit I have become very fixated on some provable end point from our heavy metal detoxification efforts. This focus has wound up with my deep interest in affordable, safe, long term, even LIFETIME, ingestible substances that will provably accomplish the task of increased excretion of toxic metals from the body.

I still like DMSA and I will use some DMPS (primarily only the oral form; however, again personal bias) and Penicillamine and even parenteral Desferoxiamine. I expect the doctor determined to learn the entire scope of all heavy metal detoxification to attend many courses, such as that offered by ICIM semi-annually, and I have some doctors, of course, that are routinely using more than 1 chelator in their efforts to help patients. It does seem that the ingestion of say 500 mg of DMSA for 2 days before receiving a IV push of Ca EDTA (along with the routine ingestion of say 15 Essential Daily Defense) and as much as 1000 mg of DMSA the morning that the patient is coming in for their IV push has given tremendous increases in MERCURY excretion on provocative testing. So I would have to conclude that the final protocol is NOT to be determined until collectively we have accumulated far more data.

The contribution of homeopathics to the detoxification has been clearly shown by Dr. Shelton whose protocol is on my website. It is interesting to learn that using the same lab (Doctors Data) at about the same time, Dr. Shelton found that by adding the oral EDD and the homeopathics to the IV push, he proves MERCURY is removed. Whereas, Dr. Whitaker tested ONLY the IV push of Ca EDTA without any of the oral EDD or the homeopathics and virtually no MERCURY was found using just the one agent parenterally. I, therefore, am strongly urging the bright doctors working on this to continue to see what can YOU provably show in YOUR provoked specimens (using a competent lab, as not all labs are qualified to do everything, particularly Mercury testing that is not easy or cheap to perform correctly).

So, in conclusion, yet I like DMSA and ALA and everything that will get patients affordably and safely detoxified, but recognizing that this is really a life-long problem. Read all my references on my PowerPoint presentation (IOMA, Nov. 6, 2002) as found on my website with over 200 slides, and the text and the audio tape free of charge, or purchase 14 hours of audiotapes and 2 hours of video tapes for the 1/2 price of $50.00 from longevityplus.com to really try to get in depth into this entire problem.

So, although you find that ALA and DMSA seem to be very effective, and I agree that they may definitely be used when indicated, however, it appears that unless you take it for at least 7 years, there is no chance that the bones would be cleared of lead. So, when you stop taking it, the bones again will begin to download their remaining burden of lead etc. back into the other tissues of the body.

If you took it for 7 years (average time for total turnover of bone) and then presumably had safe low levels of lead in bone, could you realistically stop chelating? Not with current levels of lead etc. in all food, air and water, since you would then be clean on a dirty planet!

Thus, the conclusion I draw is that chelation appears to be a lifetime necessity for all. Then the issue becomes how fast can we lower toxic heavy metals in our body to allow reasonable levels of functioning for sick patients. This answer will be very different for ALS, MS, etc. as these patients are apparently super sensitive and can show further benefits the lower you bring the lead and mercury. However, many patients show benefits from the first week on with just tying up the level of toxic metals with the presence of chelators in the serum so that biochemical interferences in enzyme systems are effectively attenuated long before we have really cleaned the body and no more remarkable increases in lead or mercury are seen on 24 hour urines. This makes the entire issue a judgment call.

How long do we keep using which chelators by which method of administration? The background issue is always there. No one on planet earth is operating at optimal levels without doing something about the toxic metals. However, we also have the result of those toxic metals, immune system suppression with consequent infection burden increases. Where do we get the biggest bang for the patient's buck and the fastest improvements in health? I believe it is only when we COMBINE detoxification with oxidative therapies to both lower total body burden of pathogens AND lower the toxic heavy metals; neither one of these ALONE is adequate for most patients in my experience.

Of course, the infection burden means we are now also hypercoagulable, so we need either Nattokinase or Endozym to deal with that problem. Fighting this war on all THREE fronts we will see results in most patients. It is this problem that causes me to minimize the importance of which method or which chelator is optimal since, in the final analysis, it is a lifetime problem so COST and SAFETY become as important as efficacy.

If you have a patient that must be convinced that heavy metals are contributing to their problem, we must show them dramatic results with 24 hour urine provocative testing. These patients, for a test, warrant using any and all chelators simultaneously, orally and parenterally, with the selection of agents influenced in my practice by the heavy metals either suspected or seen on earlier hair analysis testing.

Sincerely,
Garry F. Gordon, MD,DO,MD(H)

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