Dr Maulfair's Thoughts for Today - Medical Establishment Runs Scared

I am an osteopathic physician, for those unfamiliar osteopathic physicians we are trained and practice in all medical arenas.  The reason we are special is our additional basic training in osteopathic manipulative therapy and idea that symptoms are an indication of abnormal function and not the disease itself.  So although you cannot tell an MD from a DO these days it used to be easy. DO’s used to search for the underlying cause of an ailment and used prescriptive drugs sparingly.  I am very old fashioned.
Just as we are anticipating the National Institute of Health’s results from a study on chelation therapy and its effect in heart disease, comes noise from the American College of Medical Toxicology.  At their recent conference, as described by the newsletter from the Alliance for Natural Health USA www.ahn-usa.org, they attacked chelation therapy as dangerous and this conference was for CME hours for physicians.  If these doctors bought the brainwash, they have relegated themselves to health problems as they age because they will not avail themselves of chelation therapy.  Heart disease, high blood pressure and auto immune diseases await them as they do all of us as well.

We, however, will escape health problems as we age, as will our patients, because we have examined the myriad of medical proof of years of study and hundreds of articles citing the benefits of chelation therapy for the problems of aging including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and the aging process itself.  If you want to age gracefully, with vigor, seek chelation therapy.  You have the backing of the Saunders medical textbook entitled “Cardiovascular Drug Therapy” and its chapter on chelation therapy and how it works along with its 65 references.  Or perhaps you would be more impressed to know that JAMA published an article relating small amounts of lead in the body to the development of high blood pressure.  Although that article did not suggest how to remove the lead, we know how.  They also relate accumulated lead in the body to the development of cataracts in men in a separate article.  Or perhaps you need the assurance that you are on the right track in healing from the article in “Neuro Toxicology Letters” which discussed the relationship of mercury in laboratory animal brains with lesions similar to those of alzheimer’s patients.  Heavy metal in the body causes disease processes.  Medical research has validated that fact.

Now, knowing that, what do they recommend to remove metals?  Apparently they have an aversion to you being helped.  They have no recommendation.  They will do surgery which does not remove lead, they will add to the toxicity of your body by giving you drugs but they will not address the cause of metal toxicity and they will not even test your levels of lead when you turn up with heart palpitations and high blood pressure. Why?  Because it is political, financial and “how do I explain my position to the good ole boys” problem for the establishment and they need the comfort of the masses at the club.

It is Embarrassing

When you seek the advice of your doctor for an ailment and the prescription pad comes out what follows can be months of addiction to a mind altering drug or painkiller.  So many people inadvertently find they are addicted to pain killers and antidepressants when they were not warned it could happen.  It is embarrassing and tough to deal with but it can change.
As it happens there are professionals, and others of course, trapped into a drug habit they cannot kick because to do so would involve time off work and the chance their employers or board of directors will find out they have a problem.  The unresolved pain or condition becomes the  justification for continuing to use medication; still depressed or having panic attacks creates a need to stay on the meds.  Continuing problems  justifies the drug use.  It might help to understand that some doctors have been brainwashed into offering prescriptions as the only treatment choice.  They do not have anything else to offer and some patients do not think they have been helped if they do not walk away with a prescription.  To compound the problem, as a  patient,  you  get the idea,  when  medication suppresses pain or symptoms, the problem is  alleviated.  Suppressing pain is not the answer.  Turning a person into someone who does not care and cannot feel the pain anymore does not heal the problem, it suppresses it.  Actual help is the discovery and alleviation of the underlying cause of the difficulty.  Thankfully this new medical paradigm is becoming readily available in most areas of the country.  There are thousands of doctors who are medical detectives and can help you out with minimal use of prescriptions drugs, often avoiding prescriptions completely.   There is no question we need strong drugs when there are injuries requiring surgery with the aftermath of pain but mind altering drugs as a daily treatment is not a good idea. 

Dr. Maulfair, attending a recent dinner given for doctors in our area as part of the CME requirements, asked the speaker, who was citing serotonin levels as justification for mind altering drug treatment, what the specific  test was for determining serotonin levels in the brain of a patient.  The speaker, paid by the drug company, stammered and said there was not one but “it would not matter anyway”.  He thought there might be some new blood test that would measure some such thing.  Fact is – no test to measure such things.  The science does not exist to justify these drugs.

Depression, anxiety attacks, and pain are solved by doctors who care to discover the underlying reason of the symptom.  Taking high quality mineral nutrients is the answer for some, the proper bio-identical hormones for others and life style and dietary changes for others works.  Long walks and high dose vitamin D can be an answer as well.  Is your doctor making such recommendations?  Are they asking you questions that might reveal an underlying cause of your pain, whether physical or emotional?  Are they recommending searching diagnostics to discover the reasons why?  Do you need a chiropractor or physical therapist?

Why should we care?  Because being happy, feeling well and strong is so important.  Life cannot be easy and productive when you do not feel well.  You cannot feel well when you are drugged, high, uncoordinated, or somehow miss seeing your actual environment.  You cannot duplicate intentions of people and conversations when you are drugged, you misunderstand and do nonsequitur things causing upsets with the people around you; so it is a vicious cycle of not doing well both in life and physically.  All this becomes very important when you find yourself 40+,  the consequences of bad medical care start to add up and  compound as we age.

Find a doctor who has more to offer than a pharmaceutical drugs.  Use prescriptions only when they are essential and strive to lessen their use and you will be and feel better!  When you ask for less medication and better recommendations than a prescription you will bring about  change in the medical profession that is so badly needed.  Doctors want to help you and you will get them thinking about another way to go about healing.  When that happens we will have restored the patient/doctor relationship.

More on Science of Chelation Therapy

The chemistry behind chelation therapy was not invented; it was discovered.  The Swiss Nobel Laureate Alfred Werner in 1893 suggested the chemical structure that was later confirmed by others.  This chemical structure which involves an organic molecule surrounding a metal ion was defined and termed “chelation” in 1920 and in 1913 the Nobel Prize was awarded for discovery of chelation chemistry.
The complex, of the organic molecule, when it surrounds a metal nullifies the reactive charge on the metal which is what causes certain metals to have undesirable reactions.  Again, this chelation complex was not invented in a laboratory; it was discovered as existing in nature.  It is a part of nature and it is a part of us.  Examples of chelation chemistry existing in nature include chlorophyll which is a chelate of magnesium, hemoglobin which is a chelate of iron, vitamin B12 which is a chelate of cobalt.  The coenzyme, cytochrome C, and the enzymes, catalase and peroxidase, are chelates of iron.

Chelation therapy as a medical treatment, in part, is the use of a chelating agent (organic molecule) introduced into the body, ideally as an infusion (intravenously).  As it circulates around the body, suspended in the bloodstream, it will attract and surround a metal ion.  The resulting complex, chelating agent (organic molecule) and the surrounded metal ion will eventually pass through the kidneys.  The kidneys recognize this complex as not being food and not needed or wanted and it is filtered from the bloodstream through the kidneys into the urine and then eliminated from the body.  More in a moment about why the activity of deburdening the body of minerals and metals can be so therapeutic.

The consideration of using this chelation chemistry therapeutically in man began to be formulated in the era around World War II as an antidote for arsenic-containing poison gasses.  Arsenic is a metal, that if immobilized, would decrease the effectiveness of the poison gasses.  Around the same time, the chelating agent EDTA (ethylenediamine tetra-acetate acid) appeared on the scene in 1947.  Studies were done in Georgetown University and at Walter Reed Army Hospital on patients utilizing the chelating agent EDTA.  An entirely different application of chelation therapy in vascular disease and related disorders began to be reported in the medical literature around 1950.  Back to minerals and why they are so important in health and in disease.

Energy production is the most basic and essential activity in the body.  Impaired energy production will result in impaired health and is a major factor in the development of chronic degenerative diseases and the aging process as well.  The body’s energy is a composite of cellular energy production.  An average body has approximately 7,000 billion cells.  In order for cellular energy to proceed effectively and efficiently, enzymes must be present.  Enzymes are proteins which accelerate the cellular chemical reactions that result in the cellular energy production.  There are hundreds of enzymes.  This enzymatic reaction must have a coenzyme or cofactor to have an effective reaction.  Many coenzymes must have a mineral and/or a vitamin as an essential ingredient.  Magnesium and zinc, for instance, are coenzymes necessary for hundreds of cellular chemical reactions, so….if there is a deficiency of an essential coenzyme mineral it blocks the enzyme needed to insure that the cellular chemical reaction happens and that determines the cellular function, and consequently the health and function of the organ and other systems where the malfunctioning cells are located.

There is yet another way in which minerals affect health.  We have just learned of the essential nature of certain minerals in cellular health and therefore, body health.  Energy production of all kinds depends on this activity.  Toxic minerals can compete for positions with the enzymes.  Toxic metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, uranium and others are particularly adroit at replacing the essential mineral (magnesium, zinc and others) on the cellular receptors.  This toxic mineral (wrong coenzyme/cofactor) prevents the enzyme from being active; therefore, the cell energy and function suffers and the body’s health and function suffer,  disease ensues and symptoms eventually follow and resulting symptoms are the central concern of standard medical treatment.

A chelation therapy program, as one of its modes of action, provides a solution for mineral imbalances, both essential and toxic, increasing the essential minerals and decreasing the toxic minerals and metals.  A chelation therapy program is a common sense comprehensive program that when properly designed and followed can restore health, cellular health resulting in increased energy and bodily health.

Heart Disease - Recent Study Says It's Not Cholesterol - Could Be Lazy Medical Care

A recent study conducted by the UCLA School of Medicine found 75% of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had LDL cholesterol within the so called safe range- below 130mg/dl.  (21% of the patients were taking a statin cholesterol-lowering drug.)  The study also found that 50 percent of the patients had LDL less than 100mg/dL, considered to be optimum levels.  The data base used records from 541 hospitals across the country and the American Heart Journal published the study in 2009.
What is the take away here?  There is the obvious take away but then there is the “how do we use this to sell more drugs?” take away.  If you are a pharmaceutical company selling cholesterol lowering drugs you are thinking one way and if you are honest and a doctor or patient you should take another view.  It is a serious threat to your health because the die-hards businessmen and drug companies think we are not lowering cholesterol enough!!  That is completely lame.  Drug companies and insurance companies want the cheapest way to treat you!  But are years and years of taking drugs that cost a great deal over time coupled with the prospect of a hospitalization due to heart problems really the least expensive? 

This study is important in its implications for the individual patient.  The other important data to keep in mind is the steep rise in elderly people (and the not so elderly) who have developed Alzheimer’s disease.  Have they taken cholesterol lowering drugs?   Couple these data together and you have some answers as to what might be happening with our health profiles in this country.

In clinical practice the doctors, in a rush to see as many people as possible, take the easy way out.  The guidelines and “standards of care” determine the prescription of a cholesterol lowering drug in the case of someone with “high” cholesterol or heart disease.   You do not have to have much face time when you do a blood test for cholesterol and prescribe a drug and send the person on his way with advice to stop eating foods that drive cholesterol up.  It is fast, cheap and easy. 

Here is what should be happening; a physician with a thorough education knows the liver produces cholesterol and the body needs it for health.  He knows that cholesterol is a major constituent of every cell membrane in the entire body.  He knows cholesterol is protective of the nervous system and the basic building block of hormones and vitamin D.  A very important substance for health!  He also knows the likely causes of heart problems and looks for them.  He knows heavy metals are implicated in the development of high blood pressure and found in the muscle wall of the heart at autopsy in people with some forms of heart disease.  He will offer diagnostic tests that look at toxic metals and mineral nutrient status of his patients.   He knows ionic calcium (not the kind in bones) gets stuck in the muscle wall of the artery and in plaque causing “hardening of the arteries”. If he is really good he will recommend or provide IV chelation therapy to lower the levels of lead, ionic calcium, antimony, cadmium and other metals throughout the vascular system improving over all circulation.  One other benefit for the doctor is the happiness of people who feel great and are active and healthy.  Be a hero, do what is right with the scientific evidence provided by this study.