CHELATION THERAPY

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CHELATION THERAPY
By Dr. Lawrence Wilson
January 2015, L.D. Wilson Consultants, Inc.
All information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is not for
the diagnosis, treatment, prescription or cure of any disease or health
condition.

Chelation therapy is the use of specific

chemical substances, either synthetic
chemicals or natural ones, to remove a few
toxic metals from a persons body. It is used
mainly by holistic doctors and naturopaths. It
is not an officially approved therapy for most
conditions in conventional medical care today.
It is most commonly used to remove calcium
deposits from the arteries.
The word, to chelate, means to grab onto
something. Thus, chelating agents are
substances that have a strong ability to grab
onto toxic metals.
Not the same as chelated minerals.
Chelation therapy is completely different from
the concept of chelated minerals. The latter
are minerals that are tightly bound to specific
mineral transporters so that they are absorbed
faster and better into the body inside the
intestinal tract. In fact, our bodies naturally
chelate or bind minerals in the stomach and
intestines in order to absorb them properly.
Chelation therapy, however, has nothing
to do with absorbing minerals. It has to do
with removing minerals by the use of a
chemical that binds to them tightly.
Overall recommendations. I would

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definitely avoid chelation therapy. True, it is

safer than bypass surgery, and less costly, but
it is not needed, and it is not safe enough.
Many people today are told that the more
they chelate their heavy metals, the
better. This is insane advice, as this
article will explain.
I wish I could recommend chelation
therapy, but I cannot. Everything that can be
done with chelation therapy can be done better
with a complete nutritional balancing program,
so that is what I suggest.
A CHELATION TESTIMONIAL
Here is an email I received. One can
argue that the timing of his stroke was purely
coincidental, and not related to his chelation
therapy. However, I think this is unlikely.
The patient was a young adult, and
seemingly healthy at the time he had
chelation. Today, unlike the past, people who
seem healthy may not be that healthy, and this
can complicate chelation therapy.
Dear Dr. Wilson,
I was treated by my naturopath with 2
chela on treatments to remove heavy metals in
June 2012. The day a er the second treatment
I had a severe migraine, that Tylenol not Advil
would help at all. The morning of the next day
the headache con nued un l I collapsed at
work. My rst aid a endant at work called 911
and I was in emergency room in 17 minutes,
where they scanned and found I had a brain
stem hemorrhage. The doctors said that in
another 30 minutes I would have died.

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My blood pressure was so high I was put

into drug-induced coma, where I remained for
the next 9 days! When they took me out of the
coma, my kids were told your dad is alive, but
will likely have "serious deciencies".
Incredibly, I have made a good recovery, but can
no longer do a lot of the lifestyle I enjoyed.
My immediate short term memory is
poor. I was ac ve and enjoyed hard work, and
ac vi es like windsurng, kayaking, rock
climbing, etc. The doctors advise against these.
- J.S.
PROBLEMS WITH ALL CHELATION
THERAPY
These include the following:
1. Random and erratic removal of vital
minerals. All chelating agents, both natural
and synthetic, remove some essential mineral
compounds from the body. This is a serious
problem today for two main reasons. First,
many people are already extremely deficient in
many essential minerals such as zinc,
chromium, selenium, manganese and others.
If one removes even a little of the essential
minerals, the person can become much more
ill, even though the deficiency state can be
subtle.
The other problem with removing some
essential minerals is that it further unbalances
or upsets the body chemistry, often in ways
that are difficult to repair. For this reason,
removing vital minerals from the body in a
random way is usually the worst problem with
all chelation synthetic or natural - that we

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observe.
Physicians that offer chelation say they
replenish the vital minerals with either oral
supplements or minerals added to an
intravenous chelation bottle. However, in our
experience, this is not true. The proper foms
of the minerals often come from food and
cannot be duplicated with pills or IV minerals.
In fact, replenishing minerals in the human
body is a delicate, exacting process and it
cannot be done by just dumping them into the
bloodstream or with mineral supplements.
I believe that a complete nutritional
balancing program can replace the vital
minerals lost through chelation therapy,
however. For more about this, please read
Introduction To Nutritional Balancing on this
website.
2. Unbalancing the body. Chelation rips
toxic metals out of the arteries, veins and
some tissues without regard for the overall
balance of the body chemistry. Replacing
minerals with IV pushes and piles of vitamin
pills does the same thing, or worse.
If one unbalances the body, the vitality
always suffers, even if symptomatic
improvement occurs. This is a major problem
with chelation, using either natural and
synthetic chelating agents.
3. The toxicity of many chelating
agents. All chelating agents are toxic, or
potentially toxic. The synthetic chelators such
as EDTA, DMPS, DMSA, penicillamine,
deferoxamine and other drugs are known to be
toxic for the kidneys, in particular. Kidney

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problems can cause high blood pressure, or

worse damage to the body.
Dr. Paul Eck found that IV chelation
therapy tends to lower the sodium/potassium
ratio on a hair mineral analysis. This is always
a bad sign that may be related to kidney
toxicity.
The nature of the damage is that
methylation in the kidney seems to be
affected. I know this because giving clients
who have had chelation therapy in the past
with DMPS, DMSA or EDTA some
trimthylglycine or TMG seems to help them a
lot. TMG is a powerful methyl donor.
The toxicity may not be apparent,
although some chelation protocols demand that
the doctor check the patients liver and kidney
function periodically, for this reason.
Unfortunately, normal liver and kidney blood
tests are not sensitive enough to detect subtle
damage due to chelating agents.
Natural chelators such as high-dose
vitamin C, zeolite, chlorella, cilantro extract,
distilled water, reverse osmosis water,
charcoal tablets and others are less toxic, but
still damaging in various ways, and should be
avoided. The safest agents are sulfur amino
acids, garlic, modified citrus pectin, and the
alginates. While safer, these are quite yin in
Chinese medical terms and must be used
sparingly, if at all.
4. Removal of toxic metals is not
thorough enough. Most, if not all of the
chelating agents only work in the blood and in
the tissues and organs located near larger
blood vessels. Repeated use of the chelating

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agents can go somewhat deeper, but then the

hazards of chelation such as removing more
essential minerals also increase.
In contrast, nutritional balancing science
begins at the cellular level and works at this
level. The metals can slowly be removed at
much deeper levels, as a result, and much
more thoroughly. Several patients of mine had
previously undergone 40 or more chelation
treatments. This is usually considered enough
to rid the body of lead, mercury or other
metals. However, when these patients went
on a nutritional balancing program, they began
to eliminate significant amounts of these toxic
metals that supposedly had already been
removed. The only explanation I can think of
is that deeper deposits were now being
removed that were not reached by the
chelating agents.
5. Chelation does not remove a dozen
toxic metals very well. Chelating agents are
somewhat helpful to remove mercury, lead,
cadmium, arsenic, copper, iron, aluminum and
perhaps a few other toxic metals. However,
they will not remove very well about a dozen
other toxic metals for various reasons that are
not well understood. By contrast, nutritional
balancing science will remove all of the toxic
metals, along with hundreds of toxic chemicals
as well.
6. Chelation does not address some
deeper causes of illness, and indeed often
makes body chemistry more unbalanced.
While toxic metal removal is helpful in some
cases, many times the metal accumulation is

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due to many other bodily imbalances. These

include Yin Disease, Sympathetic Dominance,
mineral deficiencies, chronic infections,
imbalanced mineral ratios and more.
Nutritional balancing approaches the
problem of toxic metals from a different
perspective. First one balances the body and
renourishes the body. One also removes the
need for adaptations to stress. Toxic metals
often function as adaptations to the stress of
mineral deficiencies and other things.
When one balances and renourishes the
body in a particular manner, the body
automatically begins to remove the metals by
itself. Our bodies have millions of years of
experience removing toxic metals, and the
body can do this easily when it is balanced and
nourished properly.
When metal removal is done this way, the
toxic metals also will not tend to reaccumulate
nearly as much, so less therapy is actually
required.
Also, the process is much safer. The toxic
metals can actually perform a useful function
to balance certain mineral ratios. Just pulling
them out can be like pulling ones finger out of
a hole in a dike that was holding back the
water. This is why patients sometimes have
very bad reactions to chelation therapy. Such
reactions do not occur as much with nutritional
balancing science because the emphasis is on
balance and nourishment first.
7. Stopping mental and spiritual
development. One of the problems with
bypass surgery is that the anesthesia drugs
from a long and complex surgery often cause

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permanent mental impairment. However, the

effects of chelation therapy can be as bad, in
my experience. The reason is that by
removing tiny amounts of certain forms of
minerals such as zinc and selenium, chelation
therapy easily stops the development of some
of the finer brain centers. Unfortunately, these
effects are difficult or even impossible to
reverse, in my experience to date.
When this type of mental development is
stopped or damaged, people report, for
example, that they feel less connected to God
or the holy spirit. This can be devastating for
them. Please consider this when tempted to
opt for chelation therapy instead of a
nutritional balancing program.
8. Chelation removes toxic metals in
an unnatural order. In nutritional balancing,
all of the toxic metals are removed in the
bodys own order. This is a complex and
delicate process. The practitioner simply
keeps balancing and supporting the overall
stress response by balancing the key mineral
ratios and oxidation rate, and the body does
the rest.
Chelation therapy is more of a
sledgehammer approach that literally rips the
toxic metals out of the enzyme binding sites in
a totally unnatural order. This can cause
problems such as those described in the email
above.
In addition, because the order is
unnatural, some reaccumulation of the toxic
metals might occur, necessitating more
chelation therapy in the future. It is also
possible that toxic metals that the body either

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cannot remove well enough or that

reaccumulate for other reason will end up in
more vital organs. This does not occur with a
properly designed nutritional balancing
program.
9. Cost and necessity. Intravenous
chelation can be somewhat costly, although it
is far cheaper than bypass surgery, for
example. Neither one, however, are needed,
in our experience.
10. Redistributing toxins in more
critical organs. This is related to the toxicity
of some of the synthetic chelators such as
EDTA and DMPS. These drugs can bind to and
mobilize some toxic metals that are stored in
relatively safe or benign locations in the body.
The toxic metal bound to the chelator then
moves to the kidneys, for example, where the
body may have trouble removing it due to the
nature of the chelator. In this way, some toxic
metals are redistributed by chelating agents to
more critical organs, where they may do more
damage.
11. No matter what anyone claims,
chelation therapy is an allopathic, or drug
approach to healing. By this I mean that it
does not address underlying imbalances, it is
somewhat toxic, it never balances the body,
and it usually reduces the overall vitality of the
body.
This is important because naturopaths and
holistic doctors claim to avoid allopathic
approaches, but often offer chelation. While it
is an alternative to bypass surgery for heart

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disease, for example, it is still very allopathic

in its philosophy and methodology.
Granted, it may extend life because it can
remove calcium deposits from the arteries of
the heart, brain, liver and elsewhere.
However, this is not the same as improving
overall vitality and health.

OTHER TOPICS RELATED TO CHELATION

THERAPY
IS DRINKING DISTILLED OR REVERSE
OSMOSIS WATER A FORM OF CHELATION?
Not exactly because it does not involve a
chemical or herb. However, the effect is very
similar. That is, drinking mineral-free water
will bind to and leach out of the body some
minerals. It is sometimes called hungry
water. Unfortunately, it does not just leach
out toxic metals, but also removes vital
nutrient minerals, as well.
For this reason, please do not drink
reverse osmosis or distilled water. The only
exception is that distilled water is occasionally
helpful during a healing crisis for a few days or
a week if one is eliminating toxic metals and
needs to get them out faster.
There are other problems with distilled and
reverse osmosis water, even though they are
fairly pure and chemical-free. For more on this
important subject, please read Water For
Drinking on this website.
HOW EFFECTIVE IS CHELATION THERAPY?

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Heart disease (arteriosclerosis).

Chelation therapy definitely removes some
toxic metals that lodge in the arteries. By so
doing, it can improve blood flow to the heart
and other organs. Over one thousand studies
confirm this.
However, chelation therapy for heart
disease is not medically accepted. The likely
reason for this is that it competes directly with
heart bypass and other common surgeries that
are major sources of income - literally in the
billions of dollars - for physicians, hospitals,
drug companies and others who sell or supply
various medical items.
The claim that chelation is not
well-researched, or that it is more dangerous
than most heart surgery, is false. The
ignorance and deception by the medical
journals and authorities on this subject are a
sad reflection upon a medical profession that
supposedly exists to help people, rather than
to harm them or take their money.
The statistics on bypass surgery, for
example, show clearly that there are many
side effects that would be prevented if
nutritional balancing, chelation or other
methods such as sauna therapy were tried
first. The cost of chelation and natural
methods is often one tenth to one-one
hundredth of bypass surgery. Thus, bypass
surgery is quite insane today. Unfortunately,
chelation therapy is also unsafe, in my
experience. It is also not needed because a
properly designed nutritional balancing
program will clear the arteries and do it better
than chelation possibly can.

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Chelation for other diseases such as

dementia, diabetes, impaired circulation,
and others. Fewer studies support the
benefits of chelation therapy for other
conditions, but it may help reduce some
symptoms because toxic metals cause so many
ailments in modern day society.
HOW I RECOMMEND REMOVING TOXIC
METALS
Toxic metal exposure is universal today.
Everyone has toxic metals. To read why I say
this, read Everyone Is Toxic. All children are
born with some toxic metals that pass through
the placenta from their mothers. This is why
removing toxic metals with a nutritional
balancing program BEFORE one becomes
pregnant is very critical if one wishes to have
healthy children. It does not matter how
beautiful a young woman looks, or even if her
blood or hair tests indicate that she does not
have toxic metals. They are just hidden in
these cases.
After birth, vaccine exposure is an
important source of mercury and aluminum,
along with food, drinking water,
pharmaceutical drugs of many kinds, over-thecounter drugs, cosmetics, and other
environmental sources. These include, but are
not limited to air pollution, dental amalgams
and other dental materials, and contact with
toxic metals at home and at work.
In nutritional balancing work, we assume
that everyone has toxic metals. I have yet to
work with anyone who is not quite toxic. Toxic
metals are not the most important

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assessment. It is far more important to figure

out a persons energy level, exact oxidation
rate, ability to eliminate toxic metals, ability to
digest and assimilate nutrients and a few other
parameters of health.
Once this is done, Dr. Ecks system
involves designing a healing program that
includes at least 20 methods to gently and
safely remove ALL the toxic metals and ALL
toxic chemicals in the body at the same time.
They include improving the vitality level,
balancing the autonomic nervous system (see
Understanding The Autonomic Nervous
System), improving the eliminative organs, the
use of antagonists and synergists and much
more. For the specifics of these methods, read
Toxic Metals And How To Remove Them on this
site.
WHERE DO SAUNAS AND COFFEE ENEMAS
FIT IN FOR TOXIC METAL REMOVAL?
In my experience, saunas are the
finest single additional modality with a
nutritional balancing program for toxic metal
elimination. They combine a number of effects
that together produce wonderful results. They
are also safe and very cost-effective. One can
build or buy a light sauna for several hundred
dollars or less. Click here for information
about saunas.
In essence, sauna therapy helps
rejuvenate the skin, the largest eliminative
organ in the body. It helps decongest the
internal organs by shunting blood to the body
surface. It helps to spare and protect the
kidneys, as most all toxins eliminated by the

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kidneys can be eliminated in the sweat.

Heating the body assists it to kill
pathogenic microorganisms, and helps destroy
weaker, toxic metal-laden cells. Saunas also
drastically increase circulation, assisting to
dislodge stored toxins and assisting nutrients
to reach all the cells to improve energy
output.
The sauna is also a powerful inhibitor of
the sympathetic nervous system. According to
Guyton's Textbook of Medical Physiology, when
heat is supplied from outside, normal heat
production, a sympathetic activity, shuts
down. Also, shunting blood to the body
surface to remove heat requires and causes
inhibition of the sympathetic system.
Infrared energy supplied by far
infrared and infrared light saunas adds other
benefits such as deep tissue heating,
decoupling of toxins from water molecules,
production of heat shock proteins that help
regenerate cellular structures, and more.
Saunas also have a long history of safety that
extends over literally thousands of years..
For all these reasons, saunas are the
finest single modality for toxic metal removal.
As added benefits, they are also the best
methods I have found to remove toxic
chemicals, another serious health hazard.
They are also powerful infection-fighters, and
able to dig out old chronic infections that
deplete one's energy and secrete biological
toxins that are hidden causes of systemic
disease.
Coffee enemas. These are also
superb for removing most toxins from the liver

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and large intestine. They should be included in

any detoxification protocol for this reason. For
more information about this unusual but very
helpful therapy that can be done in the privacy
of your home, read Coffee Enemas on this
website.
ANOTHER TESTIMONIAL
One of our clients, Rosemary G., asked
that her experience with chelation be included
in this article. Several years ago, at age 64,
Rosemary was diagnosed with mercury
toxicity. Her symptoms included extreme
fatigue, a kind of free-floating fear, depression,
anxiety, skin problems, and other emotional
disturbances.
She underwent more than 20 chelation
treatments to remove the mercury, using
DMPS and DMSA. She reported that the
treatments did not help her symptoms, but in
fact made her more ill. Her first hair tissue
mineral analysis revealed a 0.4 mg% mercury
level. This is over 10 times normal. She had
been told that her mercury level was normal
using a urine challenge test for toxic metals!
After only three months on a nutritional
balancing program, Rosemary began to feel
normal for the first time in many years. A
retest hair mineral analysis showed an almost
100% increase in her hair mercury level to
0.74 mg%. This indicates an active elimination
in progress. Rosemary is continuing on her
nutritional balancing program and feeling still
better, as there is more mercury yet to be
eliminated.

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