Chelation Therapy

What is chelation therapy?

Chelation therapy removes harmful minerals and heavy metals from the body. These metals can be toxic in extremely small amounts, and thus it is critically important that we have effective treatments to deal with them. For example, both lead and mercury are highly toxic and especially threatening to infants and young children during the brain’s developmental stage. Adults too can suffer a myriad of symptoms from heavy metal toxicity, which can cause or increase risk of insomnia, tics, numbness and tingling, poor cognition and a variety of other neurological disorders, kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, thyroid disease, diabetes, anemia, to name a few.

Chelation therapy using EDTA was first introduced in 1948 as a highly effective treatment for lead poisoning. Besides EDTA, a variety of substances are currently used to remove various harmful metals from the body.

These metals can enter the body from foods (such as mercury and arsenic from seafood), fillings (‘silver’ fillings contain mercury), contaminated water sources, industrial exposures, etc. Since these metals can cause disease, it is sometimes important to test for – and treat for – heavy metal toxicity. A person can have have heavy metal toxicity either from a sudden large exposure, or from exposure to small amounts of a heavy metal over a long time.

One rare but severely disabling form of heavy metal toxicity is due to gadolinium, which is contained in contrast dyes, given to patients intravenously before MRI scans. Although safe for the vast majority of patients, some patients develop gadolinium deposition disease, which causes symptoms including: burning skin pain, pain of joints and bones, thickening and tightness of skin and tissues, brain fog, and headaches. There are specific treatments that can help patients suffering from gadolinium deposition disease (GDD).

A new hope for heart disease patients

At Vitality Integrative Medicine, chelation therapy is used not only for removing metals but also in the treatment of heart disease. In the TACT trial performed by the National Institute of Health (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy), patients who had had a heart attack underwent a series of intravenous chelation treatments. The study authors concluded that the chelation therapy reduced the composite endpoint of death from any cause, stroke, second heart attack, surgical cardiac revascularization, and hospitalization for angina. This is a very significant finding, one that supports the finding of clinicians, who have used EDTA therapies for the treatment of atherosclerosis for over 50 years, and have observed such benefits as decreased angina and improvement in intermittent claudication.

How does it work?

As an intravenous treatment, chelation introduces a substance called EDTA  (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), or alternatively DMPS or DMSA, into the bloodstream.  These substances act as ‘magnets’, latching onto heavy metals like lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium, which cause damage to the body.  Some heavy metals are more likely to cause neurological damage, others are associated with heart disease or other symptoms. Chelation reduces the body burden of these metals, reducing disease risk and improving health outcomes.

From a blood poisoning treatment introduced in 1948 to a modern day treatment for heart disease, chelation therapy does more than just ‘get the lead out’!