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.

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.