Undoubtedly, you know someone who’s had a heart attack or stroke. Or maybe your own health has suffered from restricted blood flow. It wouldn’t be surprising.
According to the World Health Organization, ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers, accounting for a combined 15 million deaths in 2015. These diseases have remained the leading causes of death globally in the last 15 years.
Closer to home, three Americans suffer a heart attack every minute of every day, totaling well over a million heart attacks each year. Millions more suffer from strokes, high blood pressure or related conditions.
What if there was a way to reverse the damage of cardiovascular disease by reducing cholesterol and blood viscosity, increasing flexibility in the blood vessels, and removing toxins? Well, there is, and it’s even better than you might think … safe, effective, well researched, and—to top it off—inexpensive.
Us Smart was proud to feature Garry F. Gordon, MD, DO, the father of modern chelation therapy, in a question and answer section on how oral chelation is an important safety precaution for everyone who wants to take control of their health and longevity. You’ll learn how Dr. Gordon has helped more than one million people avoid bypass surgery, and why heavy metal toxicity is one of the root causes of cardiovascular disease and many of the other diseases that plague modern man.
Most importantly, you’ll learn Dr. Gordon’s advice on how oral chelation can provide the blood itself with the nutrients and other factors that will restore it to health and cut down your risk of cardiovascular 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.” —
Garry Gordon, MD, DO
Read the interview here: Dr. Garry Gordon Interview: The Health Benefits of EDTA Chelation Therapy
Oral chelation is cheap, available, easy… and you don’t need the supervision of a doctor
Chelation therapy is not new. It’s been around for a long time. EDTA—chelation’s main ingredient, a synthetic amino acid, very similar to four molecules of vinegar—was synthesized in Germany in 1935. It was used during WWII for detoxifying lead from the men who worked in battery factories or painted ships with lead-based paints. Thirty years ago, Dr. Garry Gordon established the first intravenous chelation protocol. And today, EDTA is the standard FDA approved treatment for lead, mercury, aluminum and cadmium poisoning. The American Heart Association also recognizes chelation therapy as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning.1
What is new is this: Thanks to medical pioneers like Garry Gordon MD, DO, we now know that oral chelation therapy can help treat heart disease.
How does oral chelation work?
Chelation comes from the Greek word “claw,” meaning “to grab,” which is exactly what EDTA does. When a molecule of EDTA travels through the bloodstream and gets near a toxic metal such as lead or mercury, it grabs the destructive particle and binds tightly with it, pulling it out of the membrane or body tissue it was embedded in.
Since EDTA is an artificial amino acid, and since the body regards it as a foreign substance, the body eliminates the entire particle—the heavy particle coated with EDTA. The body can’t tell that underneath the coating is some harmful material that it might be willing to keep even though it is harmful. Ultimately, both the EDTA and the toxic substance are delivered to the kidneys, which excrete them in the urine.2
Oral chelation:
- provides a safe, effective, and more convenient method than IV chelation , for gaining the benefits of EDTA.
- supports normal endothelial function, which is vital to a healthy cardiovascular system. (The endothelium is a saran-wrap-like lining inside the 7,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.) For a detailed discussion see the section “What does nitric oxide have to do with preventing heart attack and stroke?”
- prevents the production of free radicals that cause cellular damage in the blood, cells and organs throughout the body.
EDTA is a powerful antioxidant that helps prevent premature aging
EDTA has been proven to protect cell membranes, DNA and enzyme systems by reducing the destructive effects of free radicals.345
You’ve heard the term before, but what exactly are free radicals? Free radicals are reactive molecules that are unstable because they are missing an electron. In an effort to replace their lost electron, they frantically bump into and damage the molecules that make up the cells in your body. In the process, they cause oxidation of body tissues.
It’s impossible to be alive and not have some oxidative damage, because free radicals are produced by normal processes in the body, such as the production of energy and immune function. Free radicals also come from environmental sources including heavy metals, household chemicals, ultraviolet radiation, tobacco smoke, food additives, foods that have been fried in oil that’s been used over and over again (typical in many fast-food restaurants), and other pollutants. Once free radicals are released, they will multiply exponentially in chain reactions, unless they are stopped by antioxidants.
When a free radical comes in contact with the inner lining of your arteries, microscopic injuries result. This process is called lipid peroxidation (the process that causes fats to become rancid) and is recognized as one of the underlying causes of atherosclerosis. Eventually the build-up of fat, cholesterol, toxic metals and other substances at the site of injury narrows the arteries. The key is to neutralize free radicals before they damage your arteries … and that’s done with antioxidants.
Stop free radicals before they attack
Antioxidants are the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, or other chemical compounds— such as EDTA—that give up an electron to stop the production of free radicals. And EDTA actually reduces free radicals even before they have a chance to get started. Here’s how: When metals, minerals and other toxins are in the body, they act as the catalyst for oxidation reactions, including lipid peroxidation. This triggers the production of free radicals.
But when EDTA is in the blood, it removes the metals and minerals before they get a chance to catalyze, or start the oxidation reactions. The result? The production of free radicals is dramatically reduced and their destructive influence is prevented — which means DNA and cells stay healthy — so YOU stay healthier and live longer!
EDTA removes toxins …
So you can maintain a healthy body in an unhealthy world.
Our bodies continuously struggle to get rid of the chemicals we ingest through water, food and air. Many of the chemicals we’re exposed to on a daily basis didn’t exist twenty-five years ago. Even vaccines routinely contain a preservative called Thimerosal, which is made up, in part, from mercury! 6 Hard to believe but the average six-month-old infant has already been exposed to his/her lifetime EPA quota of mercury!
“Human exposure to heavy metals has risen dramatically in the last 50 years as a result of an exponential increase in the use of heavy metals in industrial processes and products,” says Maile Pouls, Ph.D (Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, July 1999). In addition to the chemical hazards at home and outdoors (see “10 Ways To Protect Yourself From Environmental Toxicity”), many occupations involve daily, heavy metal exposure.
More than 50 professions entail exposure to mercury alone. If you are a physician, pharmaceutical worker, laboratory worker, hairdresser, painter, printer, welder, metalworker, cosmetic worker, battery maker, engraver, photographer, visual artist, potter or involved in any dental occupation, you are exposed to heavy metals on a daily basis.7
But lead toxicity has been around for a long time. Greek physicians gave a clinical description of lead poisoning in 100 BC. US medical authorities diagnosed childhood lead poisoning in 1887. Leaded gasoline went on sale in select markets in 1923. And in 1932, the British Medical Journal cited lead poisoning as “slow, subtle insidious saturation of the system by infinitesimal doses of lead extending over a long period of time.”8
Dr. Claire Patterson of the California Institute of Technology did a study in 1965 called “Contaminated and Natural Lead Environments of Man,” which offered first hand proof that high lead levels in industrial nations are man-made and endemic. In fact, the study showed that the average bone lead level of a deceased person today averages approximately 1000 times higher than that of deceased people who lived 400-500 years ago.
According to Dr. Gordon, “Claire Patterson went to the Arctic and the Antarctic, drilled into the icecaps and discovered that lead got into our environment during the Industrial Age. It was creeping up fairly slowly for the first several hundred years and then, to make matters worse, Ethyl Corporation put lead into the gasoline.” Dr. Patterson used radioactive carbon testing of plugs of snow and ice to show the increased levels of lead in every drop of snow and rain around the world, added Dr. Gordon.
Luckily, Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the primary phaseout of leaded gas in the US was completed in 1986. The Environmental Protection Agency says that the control of lead exposure in the US is now focused on risk reduction from drinking water, lead-based paint, household dust and contaminated soil.
Unfortunately, however, there are significant amounts of lead deposits in the soil near heavily trafficked highways and in urban areas, which can become airborne at times. It may enter dwellings via windows and doors, and contaminated soil can also be tracked inside.
“The good news is that blood lead levels continue to decline among children overall,” said Eric Sampson, PhD, of the (CDC) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Environmental Laboratory. “However, other data show that children living in environments placing them at high risk for lead exposure remain a major public health concern.”
As you can see, unless you live in a glass bubble, you can’t escape exposure to heavy metal toxins.
Toxins in the air we breathe
Everybody is subjected to toxic exposure from a wide variety of pollutants in the air they breathe, including:
- Carbon monoxide and lead from fuel exhaust (As stated above, most of the lead has been reduced in the United States, but it is still found elsewhere.)
- Hydrocarbon pollutants from industrial waste
- By-products from the burning of fossil fuels
- Radiation leakage from nuclear power plants and radon in the home
We’re also exposed to:
- Contaminants found in tap water, including lead, cadmium, industrial chemicals, pesticides, and other farm chemicals that have seeped through the soil to contaminate the water table
Toxicity results in health problems
Symptoms of heavy metal exposure can include a wide range of problems from neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, to attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities … to excessive free radical production and dangerous blockages in the arteries, which lead to cardiovascular disease. Even the rise in fatigue disorders, cancers and autoimmune diseases could be related to a toxic burden of heavy metals in the body.
Anyone reading this can assume that you already have some degree of heavy metal exposure, even if you don’t have overt symptoms. You won’t necessarily wake up one morning with a specific illness. But slowly over time, you may lose your energy, feel more aches and pains in your muscles and joints, or notice that your mental clarity and memory have diminished. And rather than blame all these symptoms on aging, researchers are discovering that many modern illnesses are due to an accumulation of toxic substances and free radicals in our cells and tissues. To add injury to insult, even a low level of lead or mercury toxicity can have a far more adverse effect in a poorly nourished body.
Now there’s proof that heavy metal overload has a direct correlation to heart disease and stroke. According to Dr. Gordon, “Congestive heart failure patients have recently been reported to have 22,000 times more mercury and 14,000 times more antimony in their hearts. We all get too much mercury, both from our silver amalgam fillings and even from the fish we eat.”
But you can take control of the situation and remove toxins safely, effectively and efficiently. Keep reading to find out how.
The bottom line is this: Heavy metals prevent the optimal production of nitric oxide, which is crucial to cardiovascular and overall health.
The key is to remove heavy metal build-up with oral chelation
What does nitric oxide have to do with preventing heart attack and stroke? Plenty! Inside your body nitric oxide is produced by endothelial cells that line your blood vessels, and acts as a messenger molecule by telling the blood vessels when to relax and expand. When adequate nitric oxide is produced, it causes the release of an “endothelial relaxing factor,” which is needed by the arterial system to expand and contract with each heartbeat. This helps regulate blood flow and pressure, so that oxygen-carrying blood is delivered to your tissues and organs.910
“Nitric oxide causes all of the capillaries and little blood vessels to relax and go to their biggest open position,” says Dr. Gordon. This allows unrestricted blood flow.
But if the endothelial cells contain lead or other heavy metals, nitric oxide production is impaired, resulting in endothelial dysfunction, or the inability of the arterial system to expand and contract. This is a major cause of hypertension and has also been linked to high cholesterol, atherosclerosis, diabetes, blood clots, infection, and heart failure.11 In this case, “the capillaries and blood vessels are in a half-closed or tightly-closed position, as you’d find in someone with high blood pressure, or someone who is in a state of fear and panic with ice cold hands,” says Dr. Gordon.
Fortunately, “EDTA and the way I use it in oral chelation, gets the lead out of the endothelial cells so they feel good again and can do their job, which is to produce nitric oxide,” he adds.
Endothelial cells both produce and respond to nitric oxide in a self-regulating way, something like this. Say you have a garden hose with a sprayer attached to it. When you squeeze the handle, pressure is released within the hose as the water flows. As you release the sprayer, pressure builds and the hose swells.
Nitric oxide acts in a similar way. Think of it as the handle on the garden hose, or as a messenger regulating the pressure and flow of the blood inside the capillaries and blood vessels. When nitric oxide is produced inside the endothelium, it rapidly spreads through the cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells. Their contraction is turned off by nitric oxide, resulting in a dilation of the arteries. This is how nitric oxide controls the blood pressure and its distribution.
Nitric oxide also helps prevent blood clots because it prevents blood aggregation or platelets from being excessively sticky. “When platelets are not sticky they can go single file through capillaries,” says Dr. Gordon. “When they’re stuck together there’s a whole bunch of platelets trying to get through a capillary at once.” That’s when we get into trouble with restricted blood circulation and the formation of blood clots.
“We now have a solid and defensible explanation for circulation benefits merely by removing toxic heavy metals, and so we must carefully consider all options for our patients, including oral chelation,” he says.
Oral chelation reduces cholesterol
Millions of dollars are spent each year on cholesterol-lowering drugs. Oral chelation takes care of that, too, without the added risk of taking a drug with potential side effects.
One study, in which ten patients took one gram of EDTA for three months, indicated that seven patients had reduced cholesterol levels and all ten had lowered blood pressure. One of the patients who had been experiencing painful leg cramps reported greater ease in exercising. The same patient’s total cholesterol dropped from 278 mg to 128 mg per 100 ml! Also, four of the patients reported relief from chest pain.12
In another three-month study, 20 patients who took one gram of EDTA per day experienced lowered cholesterol and relief from chest pain. None of the patients experienced any adverse effects.13
Dr.Gordon has consistently observed a reduction of serum cholesterol by an average of twenty percent or more in his patients who use oral chelation. “The thousands of patients who visit my clinic each year and follow our recommended oral chelation program have all successfully avoided strokes. 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.” 14
References
- Pouls, Maile, PhD, Oral Chelation and Nutritional Replacement Therapy for Chemical & Heavy Metal Toxicity and Cardiovascular Disease, Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients July, 1999.
- Walker, Morton MD; Shah, Hitendra, MD Everything You Should Know About Chelation Therapy. Keats Publishing, New Canaan, CT, 1997.
- DiLuzio, N.F. “Immunopharmacology of glucan: A broad spectrum enhancer of host defense mechanisms.” Trends in Pharm. Sci. 4 (1983), 344-347.
- Seljelid, R. “Macrophage activation.” Scand. J. Rheum. Suppl. 76 (1988), 344-347.
- “Beta-1, 3-glucan activity in mice: Intraperitoneal and oral applications.” Research Summary, Baylor College of Medicine, 1989.
- Lyn Redwood, RN, MSN, CRNP, “Mercury and Autism: The growing Crisis of Mercury in Children’s Vaccines,” Vitamin Research News, May 2001, Vol. 15, # 5)
- Barrie, S.A.; Wright, J.V., MD; and Pizzorno, J.D. “Effect of Garlic Oil on Platelet Aggregation, Serum Lipids and Blood Pressure in Humans.” Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine 2 no. 1 (1987): 15-21.
- The Nation: http://www.thenation.com
- Huang, P.L. and E.H. Lo (1998) Prog. Brain. Res. 118:13.
- Moncada, S. (1999) J. Roy. Soc. Med. 92:164.
- Harrison, D.G. (1997) J. Clin. Invest. 100:2153.
- Perry, H. Mitchell, Schroeder, Henry A. Depression of cholesterol levels in human plasma following ethylenediamine tetracetate and hydralazine. J Chronic Diseases, 1955, 2:5, 520-532.
- Schroeder, Henry A. A practical method for the reduction of plasma cholesterol in man. J Chronic Diseases, 1956, 4:461-468.
- Gordon, Gary, MD, Chelation Therapy. Alternative Medicine, 130. The Burton Goldberg Group, Future Medicine Publishing, Inc., Tiburon, CA., 1997.
- Gordon, Gary, MD, Chelation Therapy. Alternative Medicine, 130. The Burton Goldberg Group, Future Medicine Publishing, Inc., Tiburon, CA., 1997.
- Harman, D. The biologic clock: The mitochondria? J Am Geriatr Soc, 1972, 20: 145-147
- Barrie, S.A.; Wright, J.V., MD; and Pizzorno, J.D. “Effect of Garlic Oil on Platelet Aggregation, Serum Lipids and Blood Pressure in Humans.” Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine 2 no. 1 (1987): 15-21.
- Harman, D. The biologic clock: The mitochondria? J Am Geriatr Soc, 1972, 20: 145-147.
- Citric, malic and succinic acids as possible alternatives to deferoxamine in aluminum toxicity. J Toxicol Clin Toxicol 1988;26(1-2):67-79