On a daily basis, our bodies come in contact with harmful compounds that can cause numerous health challenges and a decreased quality of life. Harmful toxins are found in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink.
One toxin that is often overlooked by even the medical community is heavy metals. Common metals such as lead, mercury, aluminum, cadmium and arsenic are widespread toxic elements that are exceptionally harmful to humans.
A “heavy metal” is a metal with high atomic weight and specific gravity greater than four. Slow and prolonged (chronic), as well as acute exposure to inorganic heavy metals, causes systemic intracellular and extracellular cytotoxins to the brain, nervous system and body. Just about any contact with inorganic heavy metals is harmful. Therefore, it’s important to understand this for prevention and removal when one is exposed.
There is also a fundamental difference between organic and inorganic metals and minerals. Organic metals and minerals occur naturally with carbon attached, generally in whole-food sources. For example, the common banana contains organic calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese and selenium. In trace amounts these are not harmful; in fact, they are required and essential to maintain health. The body can process and utilize these natural elements when consumed in their organic (containing living carbon) form. Inorganic sources, those without active carbon, come from synthetic (inert) chemicals and toxic environmental substances; they are inhaled, absorbed through skin, or otherwise ingested to the detriment of the patient.
These natural elements, which are beneficial in an organic form, can be highly dangerous in an inorganic arrangement.
Heavy Metals and Health Issues
Heavy-metal toxicity could lead to a number of health problems, including, but not limited to: damaged or reduced mental and central nervous function, lower energy levels, and damage to the brain, blood composition, lungs, kidneys, liver, and other vital organs. Long-term exposure may result in slowly progressing physical, muscular, and neurological degenerative processes that mimic Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, muscular dystrophy, and multiple sclerosis.1
While acute toxicity is relatively easy to diagnose due to immediate and severe symptom onset, chronic symptomology is generally more difficult to associate to a specific cause because the symptoms generally develop slowly over years of sustained exposure. Patients may fail to seek treatment or diagnosis due to the chronic nature of symptoms, which may present as various other diseases or ailments such as:
- Nausea
- Impaired cognitive, motor, and language abilities
- Nervousness and emotional instability
- Insomnia
- Allergies
- Auto-immunity
- Muscle and joint pain
- General and chronic malaise
- Weakened immunity
- Intestinal dysbiosis, irritable bowels, etc.
- Pain and inflammation
Testing for Heavy Metals
Several valid testing methods are effective in determining the level of heavy metals in the body, such as fecal and urinalysis, hair and/or blood analysis. Each type of test will yield a different picture of what is going on in the body at a specific time.
Hair analysis can give a snapshot of what heavy metals were in the body at the time of the hair’s growth. Toxic elements may be 200-300 times more highly concentrated in hair than in blood or urine; therefore, hair has become one of the tissues of choice for detection of recent and chronic exposure to heavy metals.
Specific blood analysis can measure the level of heavy metals in the body at the time the blood is drawn.
Fecal and urinalysis can measure the level of heavy metals being excreted by the body pre- and post-treatment.
None of these tests is meant as stand-alone, but to be used in conjunction with one another to present a comprehensive view of the role heavy metals are playing in a person’s body. Ultimately, a clinical diagnosis of a person’s symptoms is extremely telling.
Chelation / Detox Therapy
The human body has no physiologic or metabolic capacity or ability to remove toxic heavy metals from extracellular spaces, interstitial fluids or fatty tissue. Because of this, chelation or detoxification therapy has become the treatment of choice for this process. It helps reduce or even eliminate the levels of heavy metals in the body, thereby reducing the production of free radicals and preventing peroxidation or breakdown of cell membranes, DNA, enzymes, lipoproteins and many other key metabolic and neurological functions.
Additionally, reducing “free-radical” threats and damage may free up the body’s natural healing mechanisms so it can focus on halting and possibly even reversing the progression of disease.
Editor's Note: Part 2 of this article (October issue) discusses the history, research and clinical applications of ETDA therapy for heavy-metal detoxification. References supporting in-text citations for both parts accompany pt. 2.
