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From the Townsend Letter
July 2007

 

Chelation, Heavy Metals, Heart Disease, and Health: An Oral Detoxification Program That Is Now Essential for Optimal Health and Longevity (Part Two)
by Garry F. Gordon MD, DO, MD (H)

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Getting the Lead Out
Of course, good medical practice requires identifying specific extra sources of exposure. This can be amazing, and I have saved lives by being a Sherlock Holmes.

Why not devise a program that helps to deal with all the heavy metals in my patients and never stops working, one that can be most likely implemented for less cost than might be spent dealing with just the dental contribution to the overall body burden of toxic heavy metals?

I have identified and removed major sources of toxicity in my years of following up on abnormal blood, urine, and hair heavy metal testing as director at one time of MINERALAB, then the largest trace element testing lab in the world, subsequently acquired by Doctor's Data. I have written books that identify all the possible contributors that can aggravate the overall toxicity that I am focusing on in this article. These toxins include certain eating utensils to lead paint in homes, even lead linings in bathtubs and, of course, lead paints and lead in drinking water. Again, we need to learn to look at the total body burden of toxins and not simply focus on just one problem, such as the obvious mercury exposure in vaccines, dental amalgams, or particular fish. Lead is always there and easy-to-treat. For any heavy metal exposure, always try to deal with the lead too, as it makes the other exposures worse, and treatment is both easy and cost-effective. This approach is essential if we are to provide optimal benefits to patients, whether you are dealing with a depressed mercury-exposed dentist, who may also have associated cardiovascular disease, or a hyperactive child.

Anytime my ODP does NOT find significantly improved levels on toxic metal retesting in any tissue three to form months after starting, my experience has been that we have a persistent source of heavy metal that must be identified and removed. Anyone being treated for mercury should also be treated for lead, since lead makes mercury up to 100 times more toxic. That is why my ODP uses many metal-binding agents, including EDTA, DMSA, selenium, garlic, etc.

Remember, all heavy metals drag down the immunity, so there, almost routinely, will be an increased total body burden of pathogens that may need concurrent treatment with something, perhaps, oxidative therapies, or antibiotics, etc. which I will be helping teach at the oxidative workshops offered by ACAM.

Autism and Metal Toxicity
I have reviewed extensive documentation, from Doctors Data, involving over 10,000 data points from our autism protocol research. The children on that program always saw substantial improvement, even after all prior attempts had failed completely (or even made the child worse), no matter the age. Whether the patient is five years old or 20, the potential for favorable response to the program does not diminish, although, admittedly, the protocol for autism requires more detail than I am covering in this article. That protocol requires great attention to all details, as covered on my DVDs and in the books on autism that I have co-authored (please see www.gordonresearch.com).

The program that I have helped teach and have written about extensively has convinced me that there are genetic issues involving methylation in all autistic children. I find those same genetic issues also contribute to many other chronic, neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, etc. These mutations impair the body's ability to excrete heavy metals and control viral infections. This helps set the stage for lowered immunity, which then permits the infections we all carry to take off. Effective methylation is essential for effective detoxification as well as for infection control throughout life. A total program is necessary, taking a few years to gradually but continuously achieve success.

The autistic children studied generally have also been shown to have live virus. Some of their viral load seems to be the same as the virus injected with their MMR vaccinations. These vaccinations for a time were being given with thimerosal- (an organomercurial; i.e., mercury). Of course no one is doing routine genetic testing yet on all newborns, so no one knew that these children were genetically "at risk." The environmental degradation that pollutes our environment with increasing mercury simply sets the stage for more children to be unable to handle the stress of vaccines. Although since much of the thimerosal has now been removed from those vaccines, there seems to be some decrease in the overall incidence of autism. However, environmental toxicity just increases. For instance, we have the new coal-burning power plants in India and China that may fill that "void" and bring mercury levels back up to that time when all vaccines contained mercury.

The vaccines clearly have often been reported by parents to be the straw that pushes the child over the brink. Soon after the vaccines, these children change; they lose speech. Many different infections are complicating the diagnosis and treatment of heavy metal poisoning; there are numerous infections documented to hold heavy metals. Study this by learning that Coxackie infections can hold 70 times too much cadmium in the infected tissues. This is a vital point about detoxification requiring concurrent treatment of the pathogen load if we hope to get at the critical heavy metals that are impairing function such as loss of speech in a child. These infections fool doctors into believing there are no more heavy metals to treat, leaving patients treated incompletely.

It is shocking but true that often the toughest children we have treated would have previously shown only very little or no mercury excretion after IV DMPS, with the well-meaning doctors who treated them. Sometimes doctors gave up and mistakenly informed the parents that there was no mercury in their autistic child. They conclude erroneously that any heavy metal detoxification with chelation would not help. I hope this article helps gets the right information out to everyone.

That information was totally wrong. The total detoxification program we developed always increases excretion of heavy metals, and when this begins, we see substantial clinical improvement follow. We only need to use gentle oral EDTA, malic acid and/or garlic, MSM, lipoic acid, etc. (i.e., ODP) as our primary oral treatment, and over time, we almost invariably start to find mercury released – or tin or antimony or cadmium or aluminum or lead. These metals were not coming up with previous use of IV chelators because of genetics and infection problems. There is always increased excretion of toxic metals seen with the correct program, sometimes more in feces than in urine.

There is, however, no rhyme or reason regarding what comes first. Sometimes these metals would almost be off the chart in some children when we used fecal and or urine testing with Doctor's Data, even though the poor results with standard IV provocation caused the family and doctor to think that there was no mercury or other toxic metal present. Sometimes tin is the metal excreted for three months, then antimony for three months, then lead, and finally, a year later, mercury or aluminum.

These metals will not come out, even with intravenous application of DMPS, until a total program is developed and followed wherein the body's overall health is raised sufficiently to permit overcoming these infections. That, in addition, with immune supporting and RNA-based therapies permits the patient's body to overcome this total body burden of infection. When the viral load finally starts to leave the body, we often find immediately thereafter significant spikes in the excretion of the heavy metals, which many times had not been chelatable before that anti- pathogen treatment began to work, even with aggressive intravenous application of chelating agents in these children.

Infections may promote local tissue increases in metallothionein, which can be a very potent chelator, and may have a higher stability constant, thus sequestering the metal in the infected tissue more tightly than the concentration of chelating agent in the affected tissue, even when the EDTA and/or DMSA or DMPS or other chelators were being administered intravenously. (I seldom use DMPS as I do not like the benefit-to-risk ratio.)

We can turn around even the toughest cases, given time and adequate family support. Remember, there is no cure for these infections that are holding the metals, so we have to help the child get well enough to overcome the infections. This can be even more difficult when these is also be a genetic component, such as the COMT gene. From birth, these patients are markedly impaired in their ability to excrete heavy metals. This means we have to using our comprehensive protocol, which concurrently treats all aspects of the problem; ideally, this needs to be personalized, based on genetic test results. Also, always, we remove all suspect foods from our patients' diets; these may include all gluten foods – not just wheat, dairy, and corn – and any other foods where testing or history makes them suspect. I also have these patients eliminate all soft drinks, particularly those with high fructose corn syrup. In addition, we have to clean up their total environment, including chemicals stored in the home. We also must treat the total body burden of pathogens, and many will be excited to learn more about how to do this with oxidative therapies at ACAM. This is particularly vital for most chronic degenerative diseases, including heart disease, multiple sclerosis to Parkinson's, etc. not just autism.

I also have been impressed with Alinia and Daxon as drug treatments that deal with frequently under-diagnosed serious parasite issues. These are commonly missed with standard stool testing. This parasite problem is almost another subspecialty and needs motivated and trained specialists to diagnosis and treat. I sometimes treat empirically, as we do for horses and dogs, as I am convinced that far too many of the parasites today are not amenable to simple herbal therapies. I recommend learning about drugs like Alinia – or Daxon, as it's known in Mexico, where the drug is less expensive.

Summary
It is not the purpose of this article to duplicate the over 60 hours of teaching we have done in the past three years at our semi-annual conferences, all of which are on DVDs. I only want to cover a few highlights that might stimulate a broader interest on the part of all Townsend Letter readers to learn that, whatever your practice, you probably have been given misinformation regarding metal binding, bio-inorganic chemistry, and chelation, and that misinformation is most likely seriously impairing your ability to serve your patients optimally.

Our lifetime accumulations of heavy metals begin at conception, and I advocate detoxing prospective parents. This means we need to start ODP as early as possible, at preconception, and continue though gestation. This means pregnant patients must always also be on their mandatory concurrent aggressive oral supplementation problem. You may also check for malabsorption so that no potential zinc deficiency develops. There can be legitimate criticism regarding use of ODP during pregnancy, particularly if you include EDTA. EDTA was reported in rodents to induce mutagenesis, but the evidence showed that adequate zinc replacement eliminated that problem. My website covers informed consent issues for problems like Coumadin replacement to nutritionally based practices. I am convinced that most chronic health conditions in any human or animal will respond better to the chosen treatment plan for their condition if concurrent use of my ODP were employed.

In conclusion, as I summarize both Part One and Part Two of this article, I also offer these key points to remember (in no particular order):

  • IV Chelation therapy can significantly improve cardiovascular status without necessarily reversing atherosclerosis, which in fact occasionally worsens.
  • Optimal Heavy metal detoxification also may need to concurrently lower the total body burden of pathogens.
  • The total body burden of pathogens can be treated with oxidative therapies.
  • Selenium is an extremely low-cost strategy that appropriately used may help significantly help deal with many mercury issues.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency's journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, publishes vital documentation regarding the dangers of lead, mercury, cadmium, tin, antimony, uranium, aluminum, etc. The American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology, under Robert Nash, MD, attempts to help set standards in the area of clinical metal toxicology.
  • Negative provoked urine tests using IV chelating agent(s) do not rule out the significant probability that a patient still has a significantly increased body burden of heavy metals, which may be revealed with X-ray fluorescence, which can determine bone lead levels. Bone lead is not innocuous and is in equilibrium with tissues throughout the body, and therefore elevated bone lead is associated with earlier development of cataracts. This corroborates the obvious fact that lead is then not just in bone but in kidney, spleen, liver, heart and brain, as well as the eye.
  • Ideal metal-binding agents should be those that are quite safe for long-term use. Average bone turn-over for adults is fifteen years; therefore, a realistic program for heavy metal detoxification should always be planned for a minimum of fifteen years. The ideal agents that we find have unique synergy today includes DMSA, EDTA, malic acid, garlic, fiber, selenium, penicillamine, desferoxamine, vitamin C, rutosid, lipoic acid, taurine, silybin. These are some nutrients that are ancillary to enhancing the effectiveness of oral chelators such as DMSA.
  • The growing fetus is used by the mother's body as a toxic dump site for the mercury, and toxic metals all bioaccumulate in the growing fetus, leading to over 600,000 children born with elevated mercury levels at birth.
  • A hair test showing low levels of mercury may mean nothing as it simply may be a patient with a genetic issue impairing the excretion of heavy metals; such a patient may need ODP much more than some patients with higher levels of hair mercury.
  • Rapidly increasing utilization of coal-burning electric power plants in China and other places around the world is dramatically increasing the level of pollution and degrading our environment.
  • Metal-binding agents/chelating agents have many vital functions in the body. Antioxidants, including ascorbic acid, under certain conditions, can become pro-oxidant. There is some research showing the binding of transition metal by metal-binding agents can help avoid that pro-oxidant status.
  • EDTA orally administered with heparin-like compounds (mucopolysaccaride) may be a safe alternative to Coumadin, Plavix, or even aspirin, decreasing clots and lowering blood viscosity for fully informed and consenting patients. My website, www.gordonresearch.com, has approximately ten thousand pages of information searchable by using the "Search," so a search on mercury will receive over a 181 interesting articles that I have managed to accumulate on that narrowed topic.
  • I find it is not essential to select a treatment that crosses the blood brain barrier to get excellent results in treating chronic neurotoxicity. The simple laws of diffusion support the fact that if you continue slowly to always be pulling more mercury and other toxins out of the body than is coming in, over time, you will have lower and lower levels in plasma, serum, extra cellular fluids, brain tissue, etc. We lose ten billion cells everyday.
  • We all need to learn more about bio-inorganic chemistry, which is another word for metal-binding in medicine. There are textbooks with these exact titles. In fact, when I was first researching chelation, the very first book I got was from Lippincott and was entitled Metal Binding in Medicine. It explained how the concept of chelation had virtually leapt from the laboratory into clinical medicine. These were the published proceedings of a conference held in 1959, put on by Dr. Seven. That book changed my life, and I hope I motivate some reader to pick up this subject matter, as pollution will not go away and we need better and better answers.
  • Pathologic calcification of vascular tissues can be effectively diagnosed and treated and even reversed with a program that I have written extensively about the includes vitamin K-2 , along with aggressive vitamin C supplementation along with Pueraria Mirificia, strontium, and boron etc. This program also seems to routinely prevent and even reverse osteoporosis without using the drugs being prescribed, which have very substantial dangerous side effects.
  • Vitamin K2 research particularly Menaquinone 7 clearly has been documented with extensive studies at the University of Maastricht in Holland to be an important part of the answer to dealing with calcification of vascular tissues
  • Everyone adequately tested today will be found positive for some forms of Chlamydia, CMV, herpes, SV40, and possibly Lyme. Appropriately administered oxidative therapies will lower the total body burden of pathogens.
  • EDTA is only 5-18% absorbed, yet even the non-absorbed portion can help save your life. It will increase fecal levels of toxic metals, pulling out the metals we are ingesting. EDTA will also lower the level of free-radical reactions going on in the intestines, decreasing the levels of mutagen and carcinogens in feces, and thus reducing the potential for colon cancer, while also decreasing the potential for entero-hepatic re-uptake of toxic metals. The absorbed portion oral EDTA seems to activate many useful functions, such as a weak heparin-like effect from a mucopolysaccaride synergy, and never fails to consistently lower lead levels.
  • Menopausal women frequently become hypertensive. New research recognizes a relationship between bone loss and increasing release of lead from those bones causing low-level lead toxicity. This may lead to increased blood pressure as well as adversely affecting all aspects of the immune system. This suggests that long-term lowering of bone lead stores can have many hidden benefits.
  • We now have an epidemic of disabled children, including those affected by autism, and evidence of dramatically increasing levels of heavy metals in all living organisms everywhere on earth. We now have extensive documentation regarding the adverse effects of these heavy metals on our lifespan, on all causes of morbidity and mortality, and on our IQ and worker productivity, etc. My work in the field of autism confirms that beyond question there are many infections in these children. These infections are responsible for holding onto toxic metals including antimony, tin, uranium, aluminum, lead, mercury, cadmium.
  • As the world becomes more toxic, even farmers will have to look into their cost benefit ratio in considering life time detoxification of their herds. This may lead to preventatively treating hogs, chickens, beef and work animals. My work with performance animals has indicated that those who were treated with the Beyond Fiber, the Beyond C and the Essential Daily Defense products that I formulated for Longevity Plus were able to go from average performing, non-Blue Ribbon winning average horses to Grand Prix champions.

We need to offer some effective long-term answer to the problems I've detailed in this article, and my ODP provides a long-term solution. It may be a little late to stop the polluters, so we all need the ODP to enhance excretions of these toxins.

Please feel free to challenge these ideas. They represent an overview from my 35 years of involvement in Chelation therapy, during which time, I have been a co-founder 35 years ago of what is now called ACAM and a co-founder of the American Board of Chelation therapy, which has now become the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology, an organization I serve as advisor.

Author's Note: I have extensive references to support the concepts I have expressed here. My last article published in ACAM Journal 2001 has 183 pertinent references. That article, and others mentioned here, can be viewed at www.gordonresearch.com. When there, use the Search feature if you want to learn more about specific topics such as autism, cancer, mercury, multiple sclerosis, etc.

G.F. Gordon, MD, DO, MD (H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
600 N. Beeline Hwy
Payson, Arizona 85541
928-472-4263
ggordon@gordonresearch.com
www.gordonresearch.com

Garry F. Gordon, MD, DO, MD (H) received his Doctor of Osteopathy in 1958 from the Chicago College of Osteopathy in Illinois. He received his honorary MD degree from the University of California Irvine in 1962 and completed a Radiology Residency from Mt. Zion in San Francisco, California in 1964. For many years, he was the Medical Director of Mineral Lab in Hayward, California, a leading laboratory for trace mineral analysis worldwide.

Dr. Gordon is on the Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners for Arizona, Co-Founder of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), Founder/President of the International College of Advanced Longevity (ICALM), Board Member of International Oxidative Medicine Association (IOMA), and an advisor to the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology (ABCMT). He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine.

The Chelation AnswerWith Morton Walker, DPM, Dr. Gordon co-authored The Chelation Answer.( Buy The Chelation Answer)

In addition, he was the instructor and examiner for all chelation physicians. Currently, he is responsible for peer review for Chelation therapy in the State of Arizona.

As an internationally recognized expert on chelation therapy, Dr. Gordon is now attempting to establish standards for the proper use of oral and intravenous chelation therapy as an adjunct therapy for all diseases. He lectures extensively on The End Of Bypass Surgery Is In Sight and The Future of Chelation.

Dr. Gordon is President of Gordon Research Institute and a full-time consultant for Longevity Plus, a nutritional supplement company located in Payson, Arizona. He is responsible for the design of the majority of their supplements, which are widely used by alternative health practitioners around the world.

Dr. Gordon is coauthoring a book about Chelation therapy and heavy metals detoxification with science writer David Jay Brown, tentatively titled, Ultimate Detoxification: EDTA Chelation Therapy and Beyond.

Financial Disclosure
G. Gordon, MD, DO, MD (H), is a consultant to many companies around the world involved in nutritional product formulation, development, and marketing. These include several companies providing metal-binding products for use in his Advanced Nutrition Detoxification protocols, which he is introducing around the world. Dr Gordon has not been paid to write this article.

 

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