Preface
This book does not replace previously published books on chelation therapy by this or other authors. It is a brief and updated ‘cookbook of chelation therapy’, listing chelating agents with the potential to alleviate chronic metal intoxication. The information provided is based on present evidence.
Antidote treatments of chronic overexposure are relatively new. The treatment methods described in this book are the outcome of antidote usage that focused on acute intoxications only. Due to the increasing awareness of environmental problems, a modulated treatment approach became necessary, one that is considerably less aggressive, yet still effective. Such protocols as listed here are aimed specifically at chronic overexposures rather than acute intoxications.
There is one main difference between an acute intoxication and a chronic overexposure. An acute intoxication often is a life-threatening event that necessitates an aggressive medical approach; a chronically overexposed patient rarely requests such measures. Generally, an acute intoxication happens suddenly; a chronic overexposure happens over time. This also means that an acute poisoning immediately overwhelms the body’s defense mechanism, but in the case of a chronic intoxication the body has had time to adjust. Symptoms developed over time.
Another, most distinct difference is that symptoms of acute intoxications are usually easily identified, whereas chronic overexposure symptoms are mostly vague and thus are difficult to identify. Furthermore, chronic ailments are often multicausal. Today’s environmentally challenged patient shows multiply burden. The diagnosis may identify insignificant exposures to numerous toxins and this accumulation of minor amounts to multiple toxins results in a respectable burden, which overwhelms enzyme systems and other vital bodily functions. Chronic disease follows in time.
By reducing a chronic burden, we reduce or eliminate related symptoms. Another difference in the treatment approach of acute poisonings vs chronic overexposures is the element of time. When treating an acute case of poisoning, we are rushed to prevent acute damages, even death; when treating overexposures, we have time to dismantle the hill of toxic garbage that has piled up over time. When we improve the bodily environment, we improve health.
Since 1984, I have actively worked in metal toxicology, commonly referred to as chelation. Throughout this book, I refer to detoxification therapies as ‘chelation’ as this is the name widely used and recognized for metal detoxification procedures.
How did chelation therapy develop? In the Seventies and Eighties, a group of medical physicians, many of them cardiologists, were determined to set new standards and guidelines for the treatment of atherosclerotic and vascular disease. These dedicated minds set out to change medicine’s surgical approach in cardiology and eventually branched out into what is now called chelation therapy. Despite opposition from conventional cardiologists, these ‘chelation doctors’ founded organizations and achieved recognition for a treatment method they deeply believed in.
I have met prominent pioneers of chelation therapy, spoke and corresponded with notable doctors and initiators of ‘alternative medicine’. I like to mention Dr. James Frackelton of Ohio, Illinois, Dr. James Puckette Carter of Lousiana (both deceased), and Dr. Peter van der Schaar of Leende, Netherlands, all founders of organizations that stood up for chelation and other ‘alternative’ medical practices. Their teachings remain, but an increase in knowledge due to research necessitates updates. Hence this book.
In Germany, chelation has long been part of medicine. Due to chemical warfare threats of WWI and WWII, antidotes like BAL and DMPS were developed in England and Russia. Na2EDTA has a history of being used in German industries for its calcium-binding ability, which explains why the term ‘chelation’ has long been familiar to European and Russian industries and in medicine, long before ‘chelation therapy’ was propagated in the US and other countries.
Yet American physicians like Dr. Elmer Cranton MD who had served as Chief-of-Staff at a U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Oklahoma, turned EDTA-Chelation into an alternative treatment method for cardiac disease. Other pioneers such as Michael B Schachter MD of New York and Terry Chappel MD of Ohio are still active notables along with Dr. Ephraim Olszewer of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the study he conducted and published 1990 in cooperation with FC Sabbaq and JP Carter was one of the first important research papers published. This widely recognized study, a pilot double-blind study of sodium-magnesium EDTA in peripheral vascular disease, was one of the first providing evidence to the usefulness of MgEDTA. (Olszewer 1990)
During that time, the ACAM movement focused on NaMgEDTA chelation. Calcium i.e. plaque removal was its aim. In Germany, environmental physicians focused on mercury and the amalgam movement, thus relying on DMPS, and from 2000 on chelation groups organized in various countries around the world. Established chelation protocols were adjusted for the treatment of chronic overexposures. Articles and books were written, and a growing number of physicians became interested in chelation therapy.
In the years since, official protocols involving an