Chelation (key-LAY-shun) comes from the Greek
Word chele meaning "to claw" or "to bind."
Chelation therapy is used to rid the body of unnecessary and toxic
metals, and is employed by a growing number of physicians to reverse
the process of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). The reversal
is accomplished in part through the removal of the calcium content
of plaque from the artery walls through the injection of chelating
agents. By restoring good circulation to all the tissues of the body,
chelation therapy can help to avoid bypass surgery, reverse gangrene,
alleviate intermittent claudiction (cramps) of the legs, and restore
memory. Due to its ability to remove toxic metal ions, chelation therapy
reduces internal inflammation caused by free radicals (highly reactive
destructive molecules), and as a result can ease the discomfort and
disability from degenerative diseases such as arthritis, scleroderma
(a hardening that occurs in skin and certain organs) and lupus.
"According to
current drug safety standards, aspirin
is about three and
a half times more toxic than EDTA."
Chelation therapy has been used safely on more than five hundred
thousand patients in the United States for the past forty years, but
EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), the drug used during the infusions,
has yet to receive FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval for
anything other than lead and heavy metal toxicity. Still, there are
over one thousand physicians who recommend and use chelation therapy
for cardiovascular disease and related health problems. Following
the treatment protocol set by the American College of Advancement
in Medicine and the American Board of Chelation Therapy, FDA-approved
studies are currently underway to establish the safety of EDTA.
How Chelation Therapy is Administered
Chelation therapy is performed on an outpatient basis, is painless
and takes approximately three and a half hours. For optimal results,
physicians who use chelation therapy recommend twenty to thirty treatments
given at an average rate of one to three per week, with patient evaluations
being made at regular intervals.
The patient reclines comfortably and is given an intravenous solution
of EDTA with vitamins and minerals. To monitor the patient’s
progress, James Julian, MD of Los Angeles, recommends that the following
tests be taken before, during and after chelation:
- Blood pressure and circulation
- Cholesterol and other blood components
- Pre- and post vascular
- Blood sugar and nutritional
- Kidney and organ function
- Tissue minerals, if indicated
A whole foods, low-fat diet and appropriate exercise are normally
recommended as part of a full treatment program. According to Garry
Gordon, MD of Tempe, Arizona, a carefully tailored program of vitamin
and nutritional supplements should also be part of the treatment,
and can include ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), heparin, selenium, chromium,
copper, zinc, and manganese. Smoking is strongly discouraged and alcohol
should be consumed only in moderation. The cost per treatment can
vary, depending in part on the nutritional ingredients the doctor
may choose to use.
Conditions Benefited by Chelation Therapy
By 1948, the US Navy had begun using EDTA to safely and successfully
treat lead poisoning. At the same time, EDTA was being used to remove
calcium from pipes and boilers. Norman Clarke, Sr, MD, Director of
Research at Providence Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, hypothesized
that because calcium plaque is a prominent component in atherosclerosis,
EDTA would be an effective treatment for heart conditions. His experiments
with EDTA chelation treatments for heart patients validated his theory.
Patients with angina reported dramatic relief from chest pain. Healing
was also reported by patients with gangrene. For many patients, memory,
sight, hearing, and sense of smell improved, and most reported increased
vigor.
EDTA chelation therapy has since proven to be safe and effective
in the treatment of ailments linked to atherosclerosis such as coronary
artery disease (heart attacks), cerebral vascular disease (stroke),
peripheral vascular disease (leading to pain in the legs and ultimately
gangrene and amputation), as well as arterial blockages from atherosclerosis
elsewhere in the body. According to current drug safety standards,
aspirin is nearly three and a half times more toxic than EDTA.
CHELATION THERAPY VERSUS
BYPASS SURGERY AND ANGIOPLASTY
In 1988 nearly one million Americans
died of cardiovascular disease, making it the number one killer in
the United States. Each year nearly three hundred thousand bypass
surgeries and two hundred fifty thousand angioplasties are performed
in the United States. Furthermore, nearly twenty thousand deaths occur
each year as a result of these procedures. In 1992, Nortin Hadler,
MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School
of Medicine, wrote that none of the two hundred-fifty thousand balloon
angioplasties performed the previous year could be justified, and
that only three to five percent of the three hundred thousand coronary
artery bypass surgeries done the same year were actually indicated.
Yet a cost comparison study prepared for the Great Lakes Association
of Clinical Medicine in 1993 estimated that $10 Billion was spent
in the United States in 1991 on bypass surgery alone. At a symposium
of the American Heart Association, Henry McIntosh, MD, stated that
bypass surgery should be limited to patients with crippling angina
who do not respond to more conservative treatment. Chelation therapy
offers a viable alternative. In a 1988 study of 2,870 cases, Efrain
Olszewer, MD and James Carter, MD, head of nutrition at the Department
of Applied Health Science, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
at Tulane University, documented that EDTA chelation therapy brought
about significant improvement in 93.9 percent of patients suffering
from ischemic heart disease (coronary artery blockage).
Warren Levin, MD, of New York City, once administered chelation therapy
to a psychoanalyst on the staff of a major New York medical center.
"He was in his fifties and looked remarkably healthy, except
that he was in a wheelchair. He had awakened that morning to discover
his lower leg was cold, numb, mottled and blue, with two black-looking
toes. He rushed to his hospital and consulted the chief of vascular
surgery, who recommended an immediate amputation above the knee. He
asked this world-renowned surgeon about the possibility of using chelation
in this situation, and was told, ‘Don’t bother me with that
voodoo.’
"The ailing man decided to get a second opinion. This physician
also urged him to have an immediate amputation. When asked about chelation,
therapy, the second doctor’s response was, ‘You can try
it if you want, but it’s a waste of time.’
"Through his own tenacity, the psychoanalyst showed up in my
office. We started emergency chelation and after approximately nine
treatments – one taken every other day – he was pain free
and picking up. After approximately seventeen chelation treatments,
he was walking on the leg again. He never had an amputation, and he
lived the rest of his life without any further complications."
Anecdotal stories of patient success tend to mean little to a medical
researcher like Morton Walker, DPM. "But," he writes, "what
must an investigative medical journalist do when exposed to story
after story of potentially imminent death, blindness, amputation,
paralysis, and other problems among people, and upon visiting those
people to check their stories, finds them presently free of all signs
of their former health problems? About two hundred individuals who
were victims of hardening of the arteries are . . .[now] vibrant,
productive, youthful looking, vigorous, full of zest, and enthusiastically
endorse chelation therapy as the cause of their prolonged good health.
I have turned up not a single untruth."
Chelation therapy could save billions
of dollars each year by preventing unnecessary coronary bypass surgeries,
angioplasties, and other expensive procedures relating to vascular
disorders.
Medical journalists Harold and Arline Brecher, who have written extensively
about chelation therapy, note that physicians who use it not only
advise it for their patients, but use it themselves, unlike many of
their orthodox colleagues. "We have yet to find a physician who
offers chelation to his patients who does not chelate himself, his
family and friends," they report.
Research is needed to validate the effectiveness of chelation therapy
in reversing atherosclerosis and related circulatory conditions.
If approved by the FDA as a treatment for atherosclerosis, chelation
therapy could save thousands of lives annually.
One study documented significant improvement in ninety-nine percent
of patients suffering from peripheral vascular disease and blocked
arteries of the legs. Twenty-four percent of those patients with cerebrovascular
and other degenerative cerebral diseases also showed marked improvement,
with an additional thirty percent having good improvement. Overall,
nearly ninety percent of all treated patients had marked or good improvement
as a result of chelation therapy.
A double-blind study in 1989 revealed that every patient suffering
from peripheral vascular disease who was treated with chelation therapy
showed a statistically significant improvement after only ten treatments.
In another study published in 1989, eighty-eight percent of the patients
receiving chelation therapy showed improvement in cerebrovascular
blood flow.
Other documented benefits of chelation therapy include:
- Normalization of fifty percent of cardiac arrhythmias
- Improved cerebrovascular arterial occlusion
- Improved memory and concentration when diminished circulation
is a cause
- Improved vision (with vascular-related vision difficulties)
- Significantly reduced cancer mortality rates (as a preventive)
- Protection against iron poisoning and iron storage disease
- Detoxification of snake and spider venoms
According to Elmer Cranton, MD of Troutdale, Virginia, chelation
therapy has a profound effect on overall health. "In my clinical
experience there is no doubt that intravenous EDTA chelation therapy
to some extent slows the aging process," says Dr. Cranton. "Allergies
and chemical sensitivities also seem to improve somewhat due to a
better functioning of the immune system. All types of arthritis and
muscle and joint aches and pains seem to be more easily controlled
after chelation, although it is not a cure. In most cases, the progression
of Alzheimer’s disease will be slowed, and in some cases the
improvement is quite remarkable and the disease does not seem to progress.
Macular degeneration, a major cause of visual loss in the elderly,
is often improved and almost always arrested or slowed in its progression
by chelation therapy."
Oral Chelation
There are a variety of substances that act as oral chelating agents,
according to Garry F. Gordon, MD of Tempe, Arizona. "Oral chelation
is a well-documented, firmly established medical practice," he
says. He points out that penicillamine, a drug used to treat heavy
metal poisoning, rheumatoid arthritis and Wilson’s disease (a
rare metabolic disorder resulting in an excess accumulation of copper
in the liver, red blood cells and the brain), works in a fashion very
similar to EDTA. "Some of the benefits derived from penicillamine
in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis are undoubtedly related to
the control and removal of excess free radicals. And EDTA itself,
when taken orally, provides most of its chelating activities in the
body even though only about five percent of it is actually absorbed.
The chelating effects are less dramatic and slower than when received
intravenously, but the oral approach has several major advantages,
including convenience, potential long-term continuous health maintenance
and low cost."
Dr. Gordon also uses many nutritionally based substances as oral
chelators, such as garlic, Vitamin C, carrageenan, zinc, and certain
amino acids like cysteine and methionine. "Cysteine, for instance,
is very effective in the treatment of nickel toxicity," he says,
"and it seems to also increase glutathione in the body, which
in turn helps to control free radicals."
In his patients who use oral chelation formulas, Dr. Gordon has consistently
observed a reduction of serum cholesterol by an average of twenty
percent or more, which he feels significantly decreases the likelihood
of atherosclerosis. "The thousands of patients who visit my clinic
each year and follow our recommended oral chelation program have all
successfully avoided strokes, and heart attack rates were also greatly
diminished," he says. "We’ve never had more than two
heart attacks per year among all of our patients, even among those
with a history of severe heart disease. I firmly believe that an oral
chelation program can do more for your overall longevity than you
can do even with the most prudent lifestyle possible because of the
continuous nutritional protection chelation offers against a stressful
and polluted world."
Dr. Gordon does not recommend oral chelation as a substitute for
intravenous chelation therapy, however. "There is significant
difference in both the rapidity and degree of benefits achieved with
intravenous chelation over any currently available oral chelation
agents," he says. "And the intravenous approach is clearly
the proper choice for patients who have only a few months to get well
before facing surgery or worse." But for patients whose conditions
are not as drastic as well as for those who want to optimally safeguard
themselves against free radicals and plaque buildup, Dr. Gordon views
oral chelation as an effective, noninvasive, inexpensive choice.
CHELATION THERAPY AND CANCER
Beginning in 1958 a lengthy study
was conducted in Switzerland on 231 adults who lived near a well-traveled
highway and had a higher rate of cancer mortality than other people
of the same city who lived in traffic-free areas. The study group
also suffered from a higher incidence of nervous disorders, headaches,
fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders, depression, and substance abuse.
The researchers suggested that their symptoms might be due to a higher
level of exposure to lead from automobile exhausts. Then in 1961,
fifty-nine patients from the group received ten or more EDTA chelation
treatments plus Vitamins C and B1, while the remaining
172 members of the group were untreated and served as control subjects.
An eighteen-year follow-up study of the group conducted by Walter
Blumer, MD, of Nestal, Switzerland, revealed that only one of the
fifty-nine treated patients died of cancer (1.7 percent) as compared
to thirty deaths (17.6 percent) form cancer among the nontreated subjects.
This is a ninety percent reduction of mortality from cancer. Dr. Blumer
found that death from atherosclerosis was also reduced among the treated
patients. His findings were based upon Swiss death certificates and
statistical evidence showing that EDTA chelation therapy was the only
significant difference between the control group and their treated
patients. Commenting on Dr. Blumer’s study, Garry F. Gordon,
MD, of Tempe, Arizona, says, "Anything that reduces your burden
of toxic metals, which feeds the fire of free radicals, sufficiently
safeguards your immune system so that your body can more efficiently
handle early cancers." Dr. Gordon prefers to view chelation therapy
in terms of cancer prevention and not as a treatment itself. "Cancer
has been linked to free radical pathology and EDTA chelation removes
elements, such as iron, which can accelerate this pathology,"
he says. "Therefore, chelation treatments can minimize one’s
risk of developing cancer."
How to Find the Right Doctor
Patients interested in chelation therapy should choose a doctor who
follows the protocol of the American Board of Chelation Therapy or
the American College of Advancement in Medicine (ACAM).
Prior to chelation, a complete physical examination that includes
a heart function test, hair mineral analysis, an electrocardiogram,
a stress test, and a doppler flow analysis should be conducted.
Kidney function must also be checked.
EDTA dosage should be individualized for each patient according
to age, sex, weight, and kidney function, and should be administered
slowly over a period of three or more hours.
Treatments should be administered by well-trained staff members
who are readily available to deal with any symptoms that might occur
during the process, such as weakness or dizziness from low blood
sugar levels.
If a patient decides to have chelation therapy, it should be performed
by a doctor with several years experience, who has completed the training
conducted by ACAM. If the therapy is administered by a nurse or nonphysician,
a qualified physician must be on the premises at all times during the
procedure.
The Future of Chelation Therapy
Because the patent for EDTA has expired, it is unlikely that any
pharmaceutical company will invest the money necessary to fund studies
for FDA approval of chelation therapy, despite the overwhelming evidence
of its effectiveness. Robert Haskell, MD writes, "Of all the
regimens you can use to help a patient combat degenerative disease
and restore health, chelation therapy is the most powerful. It produces
the greatest number of benefits to the body – far beyond those
of improved blood flow. If you want to get your prescribed nutrition
to those parts of the body in which they must work . . . chelation
therapy is the way to do it."
CAUTION:
EDTA should not be used during pregnancy, severe kidney failure,
and hypoparathyroidism (low blood circulation).
Where to Find Help
As in all the specialties of medicine, board certification assures
that a particular physician has been trained, and his or her knowledge
has been demonstrated to be at the highest level. For more information
on chelation therapy, contact one of the following organizations:
American Board of Chelation Therapy
70 West Huron Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
(312) 266-7246
ABCT established the protocol of chelation therapy
in 1983, and has been certifying physicians trained in the specialty
of chelation therapy. A letter or phone call will provide the names
of board-certified physicians.
American College of Advancement in Medicine
PO Box 3427
Laguna Hills, CA 92654
(714) 583-7666
ACAM seeks to establish certification and standards of practice
for chelation therapy. It provides training and education, and sponsors
semiannual conferences for physicians and scientists. It provides
referrals and informational material, including a directory listing
of all physicians worldwide who have been trained in preventive medicine
as well as in the ACAM protocol. The directory is updated monthly.
The organization also provides a copy of the ACAM protocol for chelation
to the public. For more information, send a stamped, self-addressed
envelope.
Great Lakes Association of Clinical Medicine, Inc.
70 West Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60610
(321) 266-7246
Members of this association are MDs and DOs who practice preventive
and nutritional medicine and offer chelation therapy. This association
presents a biannual workshop in chelation therapy that eventually
leads to certification the ABCT.
The Rheumatoid Disease Foundation
5106 Old Harding Road
Franklin, TN 37064
(615) 646-1030
This nonprofit, charitable organization has a listing of physicians
who perform chelation therapy. Send a legal size, stamped, self-addressed
envelope, along with a donation, when requesting information.
RECOMMENDED READING
Bypassing Bypass. Cranton, Elmer.
Troutdale, VA: Hampton Roads 1990.
Dr. Cranton’s book discusses metals, free radicals and cross
linking in relation to chelation therapy. His work on preventive medicine
can enhance the benefits of surgery, as well as prevent surgery.
Chelation Extends Life. Julian, James, MD.
Hollywood, CA: Wellness Press, 1982.
This book shows you how to prevent and/or reverse arteriosclerosis.
All medical terms are explained in the glossary at the beginning of
the book before you meet them in the text.
The Chelation Way. Walker, Morten, DPM.
Garden City Park, NY: Avery Publishing Group, Inc. 1990
A complete how-to book on chelation, including over-the-counter
chelation agents, where to find them, and how to use them.
40-Something Forever. Brecher, Harold and Arline
NY: Healthsavers Press, 1992.
A consumer’s guide to chelation and a healthy heart.
The Healing Powers of Chelation Therapy. Trowbridge, John
P, MD
and Walker, Morten, DPM. Stamford, CT: New Way of Life, Inc. 1992
a primer for the layperson on IV chelation therapy.
The Scientific Basis of EDTA Chelation Therapy. Halstead,
Bruce
Colton, CA: Golden Quill Publishers, Inc. 1979
Provides the scientific basis of chelation therapy for the more
technically oriented reader. This book includes detailed illustrations.
A Textbook on EDTA Chelation Therapy, Special Issue of Journal
Of Advancement in Medicine, Volume 2, Numbers 1 and 2.
Cranton, Elmer, Ed. New York: Human Science Press, Inc.
Spring/Summer, 1989.
This text is designed to provide pertinent clinical data and guidance
on how to safely administer the therapy for professionals.
"I believe that you can, by taking some simple and inexpensive
measures, extend your life and your years of well-being. My most important
recommendation is that you take vitamins every day in optimum amounts,
to supplement the vitamins you receive in your food."
• Linus
Pauling, PhD, Two-Time Nobel Prize Laureate