All Chelation Is Not The Same

If at some time during your life you have expressed some interest in health, nutrients, good eating or other natural pursuits, you are no doubt on at least one and probably multiple mailing lists from various "natural health-oriented" publications selling products. You may well also subscribe to at least one or more health newsletters. From some of these sources, you have most likely been exposed to various promotions touting oral chelation therapy. The typical promotion refers to improvements in various symptoms of chronic degenerative diseases. The promotion goes on to say something about the results of an intravenous chelation therapy program can be obtained by taking oral chelating agents. The promotion cleverly states that it will take longer with the oral chelating agent than with the real chelation therapy program.

Chelation as defined in the Dorland's Medical Dictionary is "combination with a metal in complexes in which the metal is part of a ring". The definition of chelate includes "chelates are used in chemotherapeutic treatments for metal poisoning". The medical profession, in general, and the area of toxicology more particularly, view and treat toxins and toxic reactions from the acute viewpoint. Chronic long-term toxic exposure is not popularly viewed, diagnosed or treated. 8 of 10 Americans die from cardiovascular disease (heart attacks or strokes) and/or cancer. These have been clearly associated with chronic toxic metal exposures. The good news is that this wonderful body we live in has the potential of chelating or ridding itself of toxic metals to some degree. Problems arise when the total load of the toxic metal exposure exceeds the body's ability to rid itself of them on an ongoing basis. Metals then become entrapped in various tissues in the body and their presence leads to chronic degenerative disease development, as well as speeding the aging process.

Chronic degenerative disease development and the aging process are also impacted upon by metastatic calcium. Metastatic calcium is calcium that is deposited in soft tissue where it is not supposed to be, such as in arteries, tendons and ligaments. Calcium's presence in soft tissues contributes to stiffening and hardening. Iron and copper, and calcium are essential for normal function in the human body but can also contribute to damage and contribute to chronic degenerative disease development, as well as the aging process. While natural oral chelating agents can have an impact to some degree on toxic metal excretion, they do not have an effect on calcium and iron and copper, and handling these minerals along with the toxic metals is essential for the restoration of the quality and quantity of life and the retardation of chronic degenerative disease development and the aging process.

Real chelation therapy (properly prescribed comprehensive chelation therapy program) has been helping hundreds of thousands of people in this country and around the world over 50 years. We know from observation what the intravenous chelation treatment plus the rest of the properly prescribed comprehensive program can do. When any single oral chelation product can duplicate this 50-year history with the thousands of references that have been developed over that 50-year period, then we will talk. In the meantime, I am going to continue my own chelation therapy program and continue to prescribe it to others. As an aside, I might mention that a recently developed carotid artery ultrasound protocol, which uses a patented computer program to evaluate the inner most lining of the artery, that I had done last spring showed that while my chronological age at the time was 68, my arterial age was 42. I have been on a preventive chelation therapy program for about 25 years.

Iodine, The Forgotten Element
Iodine is an essential element. Any element that the body cannot produce but has to be introduced into the body from the outside is essential. We are totally reliant on eating or drinking it. Iodine's main function is in the production of thyroid hormones, which are in turn essential for cellular energy production. Without iodine, the thyroid hormones will not function. Hypothyroid (below-average function of the thyroid) results in numerous symptoms and life quality issues, including virtually every cell and tissue and organ system.

Additionally, there has been evidence of insufficient levels of iodine and the presence of fibrocystic breast disease, as well as ovarian and uterine cancer.

A study published in Physiological Reviews in 1943 spoke about the use of iodine to inhibit the development of atherosclerosis in rabbits fed cholesterol. Another fascinating observation in the experiment was that the lipid (fat levels) in the blood were elevated, but in spite of that, the atherosclerotic process was impeded by the addition of iodine. A previous study published in 1935 demonstrated the same findings.

In the early 1960's potassium iodate was used as a dough conditioner in the making of bread and as a result, many people had improved or adequate iodine stores. Late in the 1970's into 1980's, bakers replaced the iodine with bromate as a dough condition. Both elements are halogens. Bromide unfortunately causes goiters and is carcinogenic. The Japanese consume at least 100 times the USA RDA for iodine. Inorganic iodine is safe and effective. The organic iodine that is used in drugs and X-ray dyes is not.

There is a simple way to determine whether you have an iodine insufficiency. It involves taking four specially prepared iodine tablets and then a laboratory specializes in the procedure measures the amount of iodine, and the iodine insufficiency that is identified can be easily remedied by taking a special iodine preparation orally.

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Dr. Maulfair has not retired. For several years pronouncements of my retirement have filtered to us. I can categorically state that not only have I not retired, but I am more active than ever and continue to expand and plan to do so well into the future. My father practiced to age 87. My goal is to surpass that, so you will be seeing me for a long time.

Hints on Choosing a Doctor
There is a wildly held believe in society primarily I guess based on observations of people within the society, that as you get older, life quality decreases, chronic degenerative diseases occur, arthritis, hardening of the arteries, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and that is natural. The notion that aging is synonymous with loss of life quality is specious. There are areas in the world where people live to well in their 80's, 90's and beyond with health. Health is a normal state, disease is the aberrated state.

Physicians are trained to diagnose and treat disease. As a consequence, we do not have a healthcare system in this country. We have a disease care system. If your ideal scene is to live a long, healthy life, then waiting until you have symptoms of chronic degenerative disease and advanced aging and then hoping standard medical philosophy with total reliance on drugs and surgery to correct the loss of health is going to be ineffective and will probably hasten the loss of health. If you have been told or know of others who have been told by a number of the medical profession that "after all you are getting older", some way explains the occurrence of the symptoms and the loss of health and it is to be expected. In other words, if the physicians that you consult have a basic disease-oriented approach and believe that it is normal to lose life quality as you age, then you should be prepared to accept loss of life quality as you age as a result of that medical viewpoint. You need to know, however, that you can change your mind at any time about anything. If you decide that getting older does not have to be consistent with illness and loss of life quality, then you need to seek a physician who shares that viewpoint with you. The bottom line is your life quality can be high right up until you die at an old age. If you do not see that as your future, you need to make some changes now.

Social Diseases
Years ago, the term "social disease" was used to refer to usually sexually transmitted venereal diseases. It was also used to refer to other diseases that are related to social or economic factors, such as tuberculosis. That definition does appear in Webster's Dictionary, but "social disease" does not appear in the Dorland's Medical Dictionary that I looked at. I suggest that the term "social disease" be reinstituted in medical dictionaries and that the term should include coronary artery disease, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, arthritis and peripheral vascular disease. These diseases have become so prevalent in our society that they are social diseases. I guess the standard medical profession's inept handling of these diseases, their prevalence, prevention and treatment would not allow them to admit that the frequency does indeed categorize them as social diseases. This is not a healthy country. We are not healthy people. All it requires is that you change your mind, become educated, ask questions, do not accept something just because it is popular, learn about what you can do to control your future health. Do not wait until your health is gone to try to reclaim it. You have got to maintain it. Disease does not start and as a result you lose your health. Health begins to disappear long before disease becomes evident. Treating disease does not restore health, it just treats disease. Restore and maintain health and there is no room for disease. The two cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

Chelation Therapy: Confused by claims of benefits? Oral chelation is not created equal!

Although oral chelation is promoted as “safe, fast and cost effective” by its manufacturers, it cannot produce the results of intravenous treatments given under the supervision of trained doctors who carefully monitor your progress with sophisticated diagnostics. And you may not want to guess when it comes to preventing or treating the main reason people have circulatory and heart disease, or other degenerative problems.

Conventional medicine has been using various intravenous chelation approaches since deployed troops were poisoned with the heavy metal arsenic during the First World War. Coined from the Greek chelè, meaning claw — to reflect their capacity to bind metals within a “claw-like” molecular structure, which is then excreted without further interaction with the body — the first medically-used chelating agent was developed at the start of WWII as an antidote to anticipated use of arsenic gas by the Germans. Today, chelation therapy is the recognized, U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved, medical treatment for heavy metal intoxication by lead, cadmium, aluminum, mercury, arsenic, and even iron.

Despite decades of medical use in response to large-scale heavy metal exposures along with overwhelming scientific rationale and evidence, chelation therapy is often overlooked as a solution to the adverse health effects caused by more gradual build-up of toxic metals. Why? you ask. There are a number of reasons:

1. The controversy between newer oral chelation supplements and the intravenous treatments used for decades is confusing. Because oral chelation is regulated as a supplement, it does not come under the same scrutiny as physicians offering intravenous chelation therapy in their clinics.

2. Well-done scientific research that supports use of intravenous chelation treatment is used to justify claims made by manufacturers of untested oral supplements.

3. Because most exposures are not large-scale, occuring gradually at low levels from living in industrialized nations, for most of us the exact cause of our symptoms is hard to pin-point, or our symptoms are subtle, or we may not have symptoms but are trying to prevent disease from occurring.

4. Subtle symptoms, or worse, diseases one is trying to prevent, are very, very difficult to study. This makes FDA approval for use with chronic degenerative diseases difficult (and very costly) as supporting research must show cause and effect. Keep in mind that chelation therapy is approved for use when someone has a known heavy metal exposure.

The fatigue, discomfort, and moodiness of low-level exposures
Ever-increasing use and accumulation of pollutants in general, and persistent organic pollutants in particular, have received recent attention for their long-lasting adverse health effects. Gradual exposure to hazardous toxins is becoming more prevalent especially in overpopulated and industrialized parts of the world. Such exposure contributes to increased health risks [1]. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to protect or intervene against diseases associated with exposure to these insidious environmental pollutants.

Many pollutants, including heavy metals and persistent organics, bioaccumulate (pass up the food chain to humans) and build up in our bodies where they cause damage both locally to the tissues where they accumulate, including contributing to the formation of cancer, vascular disease, accelerated aging as well as altering the normal patterns of hormones — patterns that effect everything from energy level to fertility to mood.

Exposure to heavy metals can occur via many common sources: house paint (lead), dental fillings (mercury), vaccines (mercury), cigarettes (cadmium), food, drinking water and hazardous waste sites. Over 4000 articles in the medical literature connect small amounts of lead in the body and high blood pressure. Elevated mercury and antimony have been found in hearts of heart disease patients at autopsy [2].

Unlike many chemicals that can now be detected in the human body, the toxic effects of heavy metal exposures are well understood and many sources of exposure are regulated. Despite this, millions of Americans suffer from chronic, low-level, exposures to heavy metals, including lead, mercury, arsenic, antimony and cadmium.

A Center for Disease Control report states that 10% of American women of childbearing age (7 million women each year) have mercury in their blood at levels that are potentially unsafe for the developing fetus [3]. Clear evidence now links exposure to toxins such as mercury, lead, pesticides, and in utero smoking exposure to higher levels of autism and/or ADHD [4]. Despite the clear benefit to health of eating fish as a source fatty acids, many of us avoid fish because of its high mercury content — knowing that mercury is linked with cardiac disease [5;6].

Getting rid of unwanted contaminants
Many doctors argue — have argued for decades — that chelation therapy can address low level metal exposures and consequent degenerative diseases. Recent understanding of how pollution contributes to the formation of blocked heart arteries, by contributing contaminants — inflammation-causing molecules known as “free radicals” — many of which are heavy metals, has lead to investment in large-scale clinical trials to gather more data on the effectiveness of chelation therapy to treat our number one killer, heart disease.

The National Institutes of Health's alternative medicine center recently funded a large experiment — 2,372 heart-attack survivors. Led by Dr. Gervasio Lamas of the Mount Sinai Medical Center-Miami Heart Institute, the five-year study began enrolling participants at about 100 sites around the country in 2003.

Lamas said he decided to design the study when one of his own patients asked about chelation. "While my answer, as a very conventional cardiologist, was initially, 'No, that's silly,' as I looked into it I realized I didn't really have the evidence base to say that," Lamas said. With hundreds of thousands of people seeking chelation therapy annually, "now we'll see what the real truth is."

The efficacy of chelation therapy has been clinically demonstrated with positive results in hundreds of thousands of cases where this treatment was utilized [7]. In one smaller study, the results with intravenous chelation were so pronounced that the control group was taken off placebo and given chelation therapy so as to not withhold beneficial care [8].

The safety of this therapy, when properly administered, is also well known. It is estimated that over 500,000 patients nationally have been safely treated with this therapy by physicians utilizing the protocol developed by the American College for Advancement in Medicine without a single fatality attributed to I.V. EDTA. Surgical procedures or even taking aspirin have a much greater fatality rate.

Effective chelation therapy is administered in I.V. form over the course of several hours. Although thousands of websites promote oral chelation agents — it is important to understand why this approach does not work:

1. Effective chelation therapy depends on whether the chelating agents are able to remove heavy metals that are circulating in the blood or deposited in cells in the body — the chelator must get into the blood and cells.

2. Only about 5% of the oral chelation agent, EDTA, gets into the bloodstream.

3. Further, oral chelation may prevent absorption of certain nutrient metals that are required at low levels for proper nutritional health.

4. Oral chelation agents do not effect the build-up of calcium, iron, or copper within the cells – a build-up that can lead to stiffening and hardening of tissues and other degenerative diseases.

The ABC’s of Chelation Therapy
Maulfair Medical Center gets you started on your chelation program with a thorough medical examination and a series of key tests. The necessary laboratory tests vary from patient to patient, but there are a few tests everyone will need. These tests include: toxic metal and mineral status, comprehensive metabolic panel and a complete blood count.

Other tests may include a pre and post-provocative challenge for heavy metals. Some tests will be repeated periodically, to monitor your kidneys efficiency in removing metals.

Dr. Maulfair relies on thirty years experience utilizing chelation therapy to treat chronic, degenerative diseases including hardening of the arteries, coronary heart disease, carotid artery disease, peripheral artery disease, diabetes, arthritis. Clients of Maulfair Medical Center’s comprehensive chelation program have gained back their quality of life with improved circulation, restored energy, motivation and overall sense of well being.

Dr. Conrad Maulfair
Maulfair Medical Center, Topton PA

Reference List

1. Environmental Working Group. EWG || Human Toxome Project [Web Page]. Accessed 2008 Feb 12. Available at: http://www.bodyburden.org
2. Mottet NK, Body RL: Mercury burden of human autopsy organs and tissues. Arch Environ Health 1974; 29: 18-24.
3. Schober SE, Sinks TH, Jones RL, et al: Blood mercury levels in US children and women of childbearing age, 1999-2000. JAMA 2003; 289: 1667-74.
4. Curtis LT, Patel K: Nutritional and Environmental Approaches to Preventing and Treating Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Review. J Altern Complement Med 2008; 
5. Bouzan C, Cohen JT, Connor WE, et al: A quantitative analysis of fish consumption and stroke risk. Am J Prev Med 2005; 29: 347-52.
6. Landmark K, Aursnes I: [Mercury, fish, fish oil and the risk of cardiovascular disease]. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen 2004; 124: 198-200.
7. Olszewer E, Carter JP: EDTA chelation therapy in chronic degenerative disease. Med Hypotheses 1988; 27: 41-9.
8. Olszewer E, Sabbag FC, Carter JP: A pilot double-blind study of sodium-magnesium EDTA in peripheral vascular disease. J Natl Med Assoc 1990; 82: 173-7.

Chelation Therapy In the News Again!!

The confusion intended by opponents is rampant,  it is as if a conspiracy is afoot.  The Washington Post just printed an article on the FDA cracking down on chelation therapy drugs.  Opponents to independent medical care, opponents to patient choice in treatment, opponents to free markets in health care and opponents to non-pharmaceutical alternatives in health care will feed off this insincere attack on “chelation”.   The confusion about chelation will explode in society at a time when it is already difficult to find out about the efficacy and benefits of intravenous chelation therapy and its role in health care.  Perhaps the goal of the FDA.  The article failed to distinguish between oral chelation  supplements sold on the internet and chelation therapy itself,  a FDA approved medical treatment used  throughout the world since after WWII due to its ability to remove heavy metals from the body.  Yes, FDA approves the use of Chelation Therapy for acute metal toxicity.
Let us straighten out the confusion for you in a very brief form you can continue to research should you be so inclined.  I will provide a list of websites for you and you can find them through our links.  But first, please realize we are involved in the traditional use of chelation therapy in our medical clinic for the prevention and the treatment of circulatory problems related to overloads of heavy metals and ionic calcium (a form of calcium that is not the type in your bones but rather an altered form of calcium that is deposited in arteries and other tissues making them “stiff” and damaging them).  We are very biased toward the proper use of chelation therapy as supervised by physicians who are extensively trained in its use and we come by this bias because of Dr. Maulfair’s forty-year track record in achievement of clinic results for his patients who had serious health problems or wanted to prevent them.  He has the respect of many other physicians  because they see the benefits of chelation therapy programs in their mutual patients.  We are experienced and biased.  Our program is comprehensive and follows the protocol accepted by many physicians’ organizations and associations and accrediting bodies.  Further, Dr. Maulfair does not agree with the use of oral chelation supplements and has written an article delineating the reasons why. 

The main chelating “drug”, not the usual definition of a drug as it is a synthetic amino-acid and not a toxin, is ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid, EDTA.  You would be most familiar with this if you read labels on manufactured foods as it is often in the ingredients as a preservative, it inhibits oxidation, but also it is the “goo” you will see at the bottom of  the tube used in a blood draw at your doctor’s office.  Gee.  Wonder why it is in the blood tube?  Because EDTA acts as an anti-coagulant preventing the blood from clotting and being unusable in a test.  Wow, anti-coagulant properties, think about it.  You see, EDTA is one the few substances that can be introduced into the body but not changed by the chemistry of the body.  It has a negative charge and therefore attracts metals with a positive charge and combines with them (chelates) and leaves the body through the kidneys.  Simple.  It is very effective as one part of a comprehensive treatment program  in improving vascular health therefore restoring delivery of nutrients and oxygen to damaged tissues and removing the toxins that contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Wish it were simple to creat an understanding for you because based on some news lately you would not choose chelation if all you did in research were to read those articles.  Here is one for you.  There is an entire chapter on chelation therapy in a recent medical text, a huge thing of wonder published by Saunders called Cardiovascular Drug Therapy.  Were the FDA scientists or you to read this chapter you would learn a great deal of the mechanisms of EDTA chelation therapy;  its opening paragraph…”The complex pathophysiologic cascade of the development of atherosclerosis, with its major stages of lipid oxidation initiating vascular wall damage, ensuing coagulation, and underlying cell death with calcification, poses a therapeutic challenge.  That these individual processes exist simultaneously at varied sites limits the applicability of therapeutic agents targeted to one or another component of the disease progression.  In this respect, EDTA chelation therapy has an implicit advantage in that it can favorably influence all facets of the disease development.   Thus, it can also provide an alternative to the combination of drugs administered to attain a multiplicity of therapeutic effects.”

Check out the International College of Integrative Medicine website and ours for links and more information.  There is much to learn and we sincerely hope you realize medicine is a huge business, it is heavy controlled and due to those factors hard to find the truth and treatments that may save your life.

Chelation Therapy Confusion

The news regarding chelation therapy generated by the detractors and critics causes confusion for many people who may be interested in chelation therapy for their family.  Chelation therapy, using a chelating agent that removes toxic metals (EDTA), for people with heart disease has been utilized by physicians since the 50s for many circulatory problems.  Very safe, very effective when using the approved protocols of IV therapy.  Thousands of people have improved health and many with very marked improvements.  Increasing circulation can prevent amputations as well as improve heart disease and the problems for diabetics.
Other chelating agents have been used to remove mercury other metals in children with autism with  very good results.  The critics are busy trying to stop a study of DMSA to chelate mercury in autistic kids.  My information cites that fact that the National Institute of Health developed and funded the use of DMSA to treat lead toxicity in children.  But a study using DMSA to chelate mercury, now underway in Philadelphia, is threatened with discontinuation.  A real shame.  Edit- perhaps a real shame but for the real scoop on how to help kids see Dr. Rashid Buttar’s blog at drbuttar.com/blog/2008/08 to get his view of DMSA.

There is a simple fact at work here.  EDTA is not patentable, the patent ran out years ago.  There is not one single drug company that would not be hurt by its acceptance.  You see, if a patient utilizes chelation therapy they avoid expensive drug treatment and surgeries, jealous medicine can’t stand that.  Pharmaceutical companies squirm.  Keep in mind they want to ban some bio-identical hormone replacement hormones compounded by pharmacies.  On that note, a drug company has a form of one of the hormones soon to be released on the market in combination with other things and the compounding pharmacists are competition.  So big pharma is trying to wipe them out through the FDA.

Back to chelation.  For those a bit in the dark, the most widely used chelating agent is EDTA, it is used as a food additive to preserve food, it appears in the bottom of that little tube they use when they draw your blood. Why?  Because it keeps the blood from clotting so they can run tests.  Interesting.  What is the cause of 90% of heart attacks?  Blood clots.  See the connection.  EDTA chelation therapy can help prevent blood clots by reducing the stickiness of platlets, those little guys in your blood stream that clump together when you cut yourself to make a blood clot so you do not bleed to death.  Preventing abnormal blood clotting is a real plus when you have heart disease.  Think of how many blood thinners you would not have to take.

Now, there is the use of intravenous chelation therapy for kids with autism.  We do not do that in our office so I am not speaking from great observation here but there is a death of child from western Pennsylvania that is cited by the critics to showcase the DANGERS of chelation therapy to scare people away.  What they do not say is the chelating agent used when the child died was the wrong one, it was a drug error.  The technicians used the wrong agent and dropped the calcium levels in the child.  Had they used caEDTA (calcium EDTA)  the child would be fine.  A medical mistake.  Do you know how many people die and are harmed by drug errors improper precriptions and use in standard medical care??   Tens of thousands every year. 

Now to make the matters worse, friends of chelation tout oral chelation as a replacement for intravenous chelation therapy for people with heart disease, diabetes, arthritis or people who want to prevent those things.  I was just on one website selling oral chelation and all the references they cited to back up their claims were studies using INTRAVENOUS chelation therapy.  Apples and oranges, no worse, apples and ice cream.  So there is competition within the ranks of the good guys trying to bring the public a new and effective answer for chronic health problems and the aging process.  EEEEEE GADES.

What remains is that you need to protect yourself with a little study and research and look at the data and if you find something weird, it probably is weird.  Think for yourself and work out for yourself what should be done for health. You are being lied to at every turn.  The more confused you become the easier it is to sell you a bill of goods and take away your rights to good medical care.