  
CHELATION THERAPY
CHELATION THERAPY
NEW HOPE FOR VICTIMS OF
ATHEROSCLEROSIS AND AGE-ASSOCIATED DISEASES
by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.
Intravenous chelation therapy, a simple
office procedure using ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) reverses and
slows the progression of atherosclerosis and other age-related and
degenerative diseases. Symptoms affecting many different parts of the body
often improve, for reasons that are not yet fully understood. Blood flow
increases in blocked coronary arteries to the heart, to the brain, to the
legs, and all throughout the body. Heart attacks, strokes, leg pain and
gangrene can be avoided using this therapy. Need for bypass surgery and
balloon angioplasty often disappears after chelation. Published research
also shows that chelation therapy acts as a preventive against cancer.
The free radical
theory of disease (caused by free oxygen radicals) provides one scientific
explanation for the many observed benefits following chelation therapy. Many
scientific studies
published in peer reviewed medical journals
provide solid clinical evidence for benefit. This non-invasive therapy is
very much safer and far less expensive than surgery or angioplasty.
Chelation therapy is a safe and effective
alternative to bypass surgery or angioplasty and stents. Hardening of the
arteries need not lead to coronary bypass surgery, heart attack, amputation,
stroke, or senility. There is new hope for victims of these and other
related diseases. Despite what you may have heard from other sources, EDTA
chelation therapy, administered by a properly trained physician in
conjunction with a healthy lifestyle, diet, and nutritional supplements, is
an option to be seriously considered by persons suffering from coronary
artery disease, cerebral vascular disease, brain disorders resulting from
circulatory disturbances, generalized atherosclerosis and related ailments
which can lead to senility, gangrene, and accelerated physical decline.
Clinical benefits from chelation therapy
vary with the total number of treatments received and with severity of the
condition being treated. On average, 85 percent of chelation patients have
improved very significantly. More than 90 percent of patients receiving 35
or more chelation infusions have benefited enough to be grateful for this
therapy—even more so when they also followed a healthy lifestyle, avoiding
the use of tobacco. Symptoms improve, blood flow to diseased organs
increases, need for medication decreases and, most importantly, the quality
of life becomes more productive and enjoyable.
When patients first hear about or consider
EDTA chelation therapy, they normally have lots of questions. Undoubtedly
you do, too. Here are the answers to those most commonly asked questions,
explained in non-technical language.
WHAT IS "CHELATION"?
Chelation (pronounced KEY-LAY-SHUN) is the
process by which a metal or mineral (such as calcium, lead, cadmium, iron,
arsenic, aluminum, etc.) is bonded to another substance―in this case EDTA,
an amino acid. It is a natural process, basic to life itself. Chelation is
one mechanism by which such common substances as aspirin, antibiotics,
vitamins, minerals and trace elements work in the body. Hemoglobin, the red
pigment in blood which carries oxygen, is a chelate of iron.
WHAT IS CHELATION AS A
MEDICAL THERAPY?
Chelation
is a treatment by which a small amino acid called ethylene diamine
tetraacetic acid (commonly abbreviated EDTA) is slowly administered to a
patient intravenously over several hours, prescribed by and under the
supervision of a licensed physician. The fluid containing EDTA is infused
through a small needle placed in the vein of a patient’s arm. The EDTA
infusion bonds with unwanted metals in the body and quickly carries them
away in the urine. Abnormally situated nutritional metals, such as iron,
along with toxic elements such as lead, mercury and aluminum are easily
removed by EDTA chelation therapy. Normally present minerals and trace
elements which are essential for health are more tightly bound within the
body and can be maintained with a properly balanced nutritional supplement.
IS IT DONE JUST ONCE?
On the contrary, chelation therapy usually
consists of anywhere from 20 to 50 separate infusions, depending on each
patient’s individual health status. Thirty treatments is the average number
required for optimum benefit in patients with symptoms of arterial blockage.
Some patients eventually receive more than 100 chelation therapy infusions
over several years. Other patients receive only 20 infusions as part of a
preventive program. Each chelation treatment takes from three to four hours
and patients normally receive one to five treatments each week. It is the
total number of treatments that determine results, not the schedule or
frequency. Over a period of time, these injections halt the progress of the
free radical disease. Free radicals underlie the development of
atherosclerosis and many other degenerative diseases of aging. Reduction of
damaging free radicals allows diseased arteries to heal, restoring blood
flow. With time chelation therapy brings profound improvement to many
essential metabolic and physiologic functions in the body. The body’s
regulation of calcium and cholesterol is restored by normalizing the
internal chemistry of cells. Chelation has many favorable actions on the
body.
Chelation therapy benefits the flow of
blood through every vessel in the body, from the largest to the tiniest
capillaries and arterioles, most of which are far too small for surgical
treatment or are deep within the brain where they cannot be safely reached
by surgery. In many patients, the smaller blood vessels are the most
severely diseased, especially in the presence of diabetes. The benefits of
chelation occur simultaneously from the top of the head to the bottom of the
feet, not just in short segments of a few large arteries which can be
bypassed by surgical treatment.
DO I HAVE TO GO TO A
HOSPITAL TO BE CHELATED?
No, in
most cases chelation therapy is an out-patient treatment available in a
physician’s office or clinic.
DOES IT HURT?
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO BE CHELATED?
Being "chelated" is quite a different
experience from other medical treatments. There is no pain, and in most
cases, very little discomfort. Patients are seated in reclining chairs and
can read, nap, watch TV, do needlework, or chat with other patients while
the fluid containing the EDTA flows into their veins. If necessary, patients
can walk around. They can visit the restroom, eat and drink as they desire,
or make telephone calls, being careful not to dislodge the needle attached
to the intravenous infusion they carry with them. Some patients even run
their businesses by telephone or computer while receiving chelation therapy.
EDTA chelation therapy is relatively
non-toxic and risk-free, especially when compared with other treatments.
Patients routinely drive themselves home after chelation treatment with no
difficulty. The risk of significant side effects, when properly
administered, is less than 1 in 10,000 patients treated. By comparison, the
overall death rate as a direct result of bypass surgery is approximately 3
out of every 100 patients, varying with the hospital and the operating team.
The incidence of other serious complications following surgery is much
higher, approaching 35%, including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots,
mental impairment, infection, and prolonged pain. Chelation therapy is at
least 300 times safer than bypass surgery.
Occasionally, patients may suffer minor
discomfort at the site where the needle enters the vein. Some temporarily
experience mild nausea, dizziness, or headache as an immediate aftermath of
treatment, but in the vast majority of cases, these minor symptoms are
easily relieved. When properly administered by a physician expert in this
type of therapy, chelation is safer than many other prescription medicines.
Statistically speaking, the treatment itself is safer than the drive in an
automobile to the doctors office.
If EDTA chelation therapy is given too
rapidly or in too large a dose it may cause harmful side effects, just as an
overdose of any other medicine can be dangerous. Reports of serious and even
rare fatal complications many years ago stemmed from excessive doses of EDTA,
administered too rapidly and without proper laboratory monitoring. If you
choose a physician with proper training and experience, who is an expert in
the use of EDTA, the risk of chelation therapy will be kept to a very low
level.
While it has been stated that EDTA
chelation therapy is damaging to the kidneys, the newest research
(consisting of kidney function tests done on 383 consecutive chelation
patients, before and after treatment with EDTA for chronic degenerative
diseases) indicates the reverse is true. There is, on the average,
significant improvement in kidney function following chelation therapy. An
occasional patient may be unduly sensitive, however, and physicians expert
in chelation monitor kidney function very closely to avoid overloading the
kidneys. Chelation treatments must be given more slowly and less frequently
if kidney function is not normal. Patients with some types of severe kidney
problems should not receive EDTA chelation therapy.
WHAT
TYPES OF EXAMINATIONS AND
TESTING MUST BE DONE PRIOR TO BEGINNING CHELATION THERAPY?
Prior
to commencing a course of chelation therapy a complete medical history is
obtained. Diet is analyzed for nutritional adequacy and balance. Copies of
pertinent medical records and summaries of hospital admissions may be sent
for. A thorough head-to-toe, hands-on physical examination will be
performed. A complete list of current medications will be recorded,
including the time and strength of each dose. Special note will be made of
any allergies.
Blood and urine specimens will be obtained
in a battery of tests to insure that no conditions exist which may be
worsened by chelation therapy. Kidney function will be carefully assessed.
An electrocardiogram is usually obtained. Noninvasive tests will be
performed, as medically indicated, to determine the status of arterial blood
flow prior to therapy. A consultation with other medical specialists may be
requested.
Not at all. Chelation's earliest
application with humans was during World War II when the British used
another chelating agent, British Anti-Lewesite (BAL), as a poison gas
antidote. BAL is still used today in medicine.
EDTA was first introduced into medicine in
the United States in 1948 as a treatment for industrial workers suffering
from lead poisoning in a battery factory. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Navy
advocated chelation therapy for sailors who had absorbed lead while painting
government ships and dock facilities. In the years since, chelation therapy
has remained the undisputed treatment-of-choice for lead poisoning, even in
children with toxic accumulations of lead in their bodies as a result of
eating leaded paint from toys, cribs or walls.
In the early 1950’s it was speculated that
EDTA chelation therapy might help the accumulations of calcium associated
with hardening of the arteries. Experiments were performed and victims of
atherosclerosis experienced health improvements following chelation—diminished
angina, better memory, sight, hearing and increased vigor. A number of
physicians then began to routinely treat individuals suffering from
occlusive vascular conditions with chelation therapy. Consistent
improvements were reported for most patients.
Published articles describing successful
treatment of atherosclerosis with EDTA chelation therapy first appeared in
medical journals in 1955. Dozens of favorable articles have been published
since then. No unsuccessful results have ever been reported (with the
exception of several recent studies with very flawed data presented by
bypass surgeons in an attempt to discredit this competing therapy). There
have also been a number of editorial comments of a critical nature made by
physicians with vested interests in vascular surgery and related procedures.
From 1964 on, despite continued
documentation of its benefits and the development of safer treatment
methods, the use of chelation for the treatment of arterial disease has been
the subject of controversy.
Absolutely. There is no legal prohibition
against a licensed medical doctor using chelation therapy for whatever
conditions he or she deems it to be in the best interests of their patients,
even though the drug involved, EDTA, does not yet have atherosclerosis
listed as an indication on the FDA-approved package insert. The FDA does not
regulate the practice of medicine, but merely approves marketing, labeling
and advertising claims for drugs and devices in interstate commerce.
It costs many millions of dollars to
perform the required research and to provide the FDA with documentation for
a new drug claim, or even to add a new use to marketing brochures of a long
established medicine like EDTA. Physicians routinely prescribe medicines for
conditions not yet included on FDA approved advertising and marketing
literature.
The American College for Advancement in
Medicine conducts educational courses in the proper and safe use of
intravenous EDTA chelation twice yearly. They also publish a physicians’
Protocol which contains professionally recognized standards of medical
practice for chelation therapy.
On the
question of legality, courts have expressed the
opinion that a physician who withholds information about the availability of
other treatment choices, such as chelation therapy, prior to performing
vascular surgery (along with all other treatment modalities) is in violation
of the doctrine of informed consent. Withholding information about a form of
treatment may be tantamount to medical malpractice, if as a result, a
patient is deprived of possible benefit. Thus, it is the doctors who refuse
to recognize and inform their patients about chelation who are risking legal
liability—not those chelating physicians informed enough to resist peer
pressure and provide an innovative treatment which they feel to be the
safest, the most effective and the least expensive for many of their
patients.
Physicians with extensive experience in
the use of chelation therapy observe dramatic improvement in the vast
majority of their patients. They see angina routinely relieved; patients who
suffered searing chest and leg pain when walking only a short distance are
frequently able to return to normal, productive living after undergoing
chelation therapy. Far more dramatic, but equally common, is seeing diabetic
ulcers and gangrenous feet clear up in a matter of weeks. Many individuals
who have been told that their limbs would need to be amputated because of
gangrene are thrilled to watch their feet heal with chelation therapy,
although some areas of dead tissue may still have to be trimmed away
surgically.
The approximately 1,500 American
physicians practicing chelation therapy, plus hundreds of others in foreign
countries, have countless files to prove they are able to reverse serious
cases of arterial disease. Men and women often arrive at doctors’ offices
near death with diseases caused by blocked arteries. Weeks or months later,
they’re remarkably improved. There is a wealth of evidence from clinical
experience that symptoms of reduced blood flow improve in up to 85 percent
of patients treated. More than a million patients have thus far received
chelation therapy, almost as many as have undergone bypass surgery.
In addition, several research studies have
been published with results of before-and-after diagnostic tests using
radio-isotopes and ultra sound which prove statistically that blood flow
increases following chelation therapy. Even without blood-flow studies, if
leg pain on walking is relieved, if angina becomes less bothersome, and if
physical endurance and mental acuity improve, such benefits would be quite
enough to justify EDTA chelation therapy. Improved quality of life and
relief of symptoms are the most important benefits of chelation therapy.
A course of chelation therapy for a patient with advanced hardening of
the arteries generally requires from six weeks to six months and costs up to
$4,000 or more for 30 treatments. This is considerable less than bypass
surgery which is normally well over $40,000. A person can expect to pay
approximately $115 per treatment, including the associated kidney tests.
Each chelation treatment takes 3 to 4 hours to complete.
Coronary artery bypass surgery, the
popularly-prescribed procedure in which blocked portions of major coronary
arteries of the heart are bypassed with grafts from a patient’s leg veins,
has never been proven by properly controlled studies to offer much or an
advantage over non-surgical treatments, other that relief of pain in a
minority of patients who cannot be controlled with medicine. It has even
been suggested that the relief of pain following surgery might result from
the cutting of nerve fibers which carry pain impulses from the heart and
which also stimulate spasm of coronary arteries. It is not possible to
perform bypass surgery without interrupting those nerves.
Arteriograms which are done to x-ray and
visualize the arteries prior to surgery utilize a chemical dye which can
cause arterial spasm. It is difficult to determine on the x-rays how much
arterial blockage is permanent and how much is reversible spasm.
Indeed, the most recent research suggests
that many of the more than 200,000 bypasses performed each year for the
relief of pain and other symptoms brought on by clogged or blocked arteries
are not necessary. A good case against rushing into bypass surgery is made
by the findings of a ten-year, $24-million study conducted by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) which compared post-operative survival rates of
"bypassed" patients with a matched group of equally diseased patients
treated non-surgically.
The study uncovered no advantage for the
majority of patients who had been operated upon, compared with those
receiving non-surgical therapy. It is important to note that the
non-surgical therapy reported in that study did not include either chelation
therapy or the newer calcium blocker drugs, and that only half of the
patients received beta blocker drugs. Although studies have been reported to
show that patients with left main coronary artery blockage live slightly
longer after surgery, the studies were done before calcium blockers and
newer beta blockers were available. Those medicines have been scientifically
proven to protect against heart attack. Surgery might have come out a clear
second best if all presently available non-surgical treatments, including
chelation, had been compared to bypass.
Having surgery didn’t improve the chances
for most patients to live longer, live healthier, live better, or enjoy life
more , when the results were statistically analyzed. The incidence of heart
attacks (myocardial infarction) and both employment and recreational status
were the same when comparing a large group of patients treated surgically
with those treated non-surgically, even without using chelation therapy for
the non-surgical treatment group.
Most importantly, cardiovascular surgery
does nothing to arrest or reverse the underlying disease, which exists in
varying degrees throughout the body. It is at best a piecemeal "cure" for a
system-wide problem. Bypassing a tiny portion of the body’s blood vessels
can have little lasting benefit when the same degenerating condition which
caused the most extreme blockage at one or two sites must of necessity be
taking place everywhere, throughout the circulatory network.
One thing the general public is not fully
aware of is that many people who have one bypass operation later need a
second bypass. Sometimes the blood vessels that weren’t bypassed become
clogged and also need bypassing; sometimes the transplanted vessels used in
the first graft become filled with new plaque; sometimes the transplants
malfunction or turn out to be too small for the job. As a matter of fact,
studies have shown that by ten years after surgery, grafted vessels had
closed in 40 percent of patients, and in the remaining 60 percent, half
developed further coronary narrowing. Once you’ve had a bypass, your chances
of needing another go up about five percent a year. After five years, some
specialists estimate, your chances of needing a second operation could be as
high as 30 to 40 percent. And some patients go on to even a third operation
or more. And approximately 2 to 3 out of every 100 patients undergoing
bypass surgery die as a result of the procedure—even more if they are
severely ill at the time of surgery. A much larger percentage suffer serious
complications, even after they survive the surgery. Those percentages are
even worse for balloon angioplasty—with or without stents.
Chelation patients are frequently able to
return to work and to resume their sports and other activities, without the
need to undergo surgery. If they stay on a proper diet, exercise within
limits of tolerance, continue to take the prescribed program of nutritional
supplements, and receive periodic maintenance chelation treatments (every
one or two months, depending on the severity of the underlying medical
diagnosis) they can usually go many years without suffering further heart
attacks, strokes, senility or gangrenous extremities.
If you have been told, like most people
eager for additional information about chelation therapy, that you have
advanced arterial disease, you may have been advised to have vascular
surgery or balloon angioplasty. If so, it is essential for you to understand
the nature of your disease and all possible treatment choices, before you
can make an intelligent decision concerning the various options. Even if
chelation therapy and other non-surgical therapies should fail, bypass still
remains a choice.
Chelation therapy is gaining recognition
so rapidly that there is growing interest in developing an oral chelator
that will produce benefits similar to intravenous EDTA chelation therapy.
Many nutritional substances administered by mouth are known to have
chelating properties but none have the spectrum of activity of intravenous
EDTA. Many nutrients such as vitamin C and the amino acids cysteine and
aspartic acid have the ability to weakly chelate metals. They also protect
against free radical damage in other ways, as anti-oxidants.
Claims are being increasingly made for the
use of nutritional supplements containing weak chelators in patients with
atherosclerosis. There is nothing new about these products which are mostly
vitamins and minerals being aggressively marketed with glowing testimonials
and deceptive marketing techniques. Benefit from products taken by mouth has
never even come close to the much more dramatic results seen with
intravenous EDTA.
Recently some
nutritional supplements which contain EDTA have been alleged to be effective
as
oral chelation therapy. The problem is that only 5
percent or less of EDTA is absorbed by mouth. The same tiny percentage
applies to rectal suppositories. The remainder passes out in the stool. And,
it must be taken every day by mouth to absorb an effective amount of EDTA.
When taken on a daily basis, oral EDTA binds essential nutrients in the
digestive tract and blocks their absorption, causing deficiencies. When
given intravenously, EDTA is 100 percent absorbed and can be given on only
20 to 30 days in any one year. Nutritional supplementation on a daily basis
more than compensates for any loses caused by the intravenous EDTA chelation
therapy.
IS IT TRUE
THAT CHELATION THERAPY COMBATS ATHEROSCLEROSIS BY ACTING LIKE A LIQUID
PLUMBER—BY LEECHING CALCIUM OUT OF ATHEROSCLEROTIC PLAQUE?
No! Before recent medical breakthroughs in
the area of free radical pathology, it was hypothesized that EDTA chelation
therapy had its major beneficial effect on calcium metabolism—that it
stripped away the excess calcium from the plaque, restoring arteries to
their pliable precalcified state. This frequently offered explanation—the
so-called "roto-rooter" concept—is not the real reason, as previously
postulated, that chelation therapy produces its major health benefits. The
fact that EDTA does remove some circulating calcium is now felt to be one of
the less prominent aspects of its benefits. Calcium deposits are a
late-stage phenomenon and have little to do with the formation of arterial
plaque.
Most importantly, EDTA has an affinity for
the so-called transition metal, iron, and for the related toxic metals,
lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, aluminum and others, which are potent
catalysts of excessive free radical reactions or other toxicity. Free
radical pathology, it is now believed, is an important underlying process
triggering the development of many age-related ailments, including cancer,
senility and arthritis, as well as atherosclerosis. Thus, EDTA’s primary
benefit is that it greatly reduces the ongoing production of free radicals
within the body by removing accumulations of metallic catalysts and toxins
which accumulate at abnormal sites in the body as a person grows older and
which speed the aging process.
This is a greatly oversimplified
explanation of what actually occurs. For those of you with a decided
interest in the scientific technicalities you can refer to the article
entitled Scientific Rational for EDTA Chelation Therapy: Mechanism of
Action by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D. and James P. Frackelton, M.D.
For a fuller
explanation of the many issues involved, you will enjoy reading
BYPASSING BYPASS SURGERY, a full-length book
by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D., which is written in popular form for the general
public. The article on the scientific rationale and mechanism of action,
mentioned in the last paragraph, is contained as a chapter in that book
under the heading, "Take This to Your Doctor."
Because the very aging process itself
correlates with ongoing free radical damage, it is no surprise that a large
variety of symptoms have been reported to improve following chelation
therapy, even symptoms not directly caused by circulatory disease. While
there is no scientific evidence that chelation is a cure for these diseases,
symptoms of arthritis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s , psoriasis, high blood
pressure, and scleroderma have all been reported to improve with chelation
therapy. In fact, there is no better treatment for scleroderma. Vision has
been restored in macular degeneration. Patients generally feel younger and
more energetic following therapy, even when taken for purely preventive
reasons. In fact, chelation therapy is more desirable for prevention that it
is for established disease. Preventive medicine is always preferable to late
stage crisis intervention.
A recently published article from the
University of Zurich in Switzerland reported an 18-year follow-up of a group
of 56 chelation therapy patients. When comparing the death rate from cancer
with that of a control group of patients who did not receive chelation
therapy, the authors found that patients who received EDTA chelation therapy
had a 90% reduction of cancer deaths. Epidemiologists from the University of
Zurich reviewed the data and found no fault with the reported facts or the
conclusions.
There is no evidence that chelation
therapy is of benefit in the treatment of advanced cancer, once the
diagnosis is made, but there is a large body of scientific research
indicating that free radical damage to DNA is an important factor at the
onset of most cancer. Chelation therapy blocks damaging free radicals.
If EDTA chelation therapy is safe and
effective as indicated by many published studies, and by the experience of
hundreds of doctors, why haven’t you heard more about it? That is a good
question!
Until quite recently, relatively few
patients have been informed that this therapy is available. Many heart
specialists may not have even heard of the treatment and would be reluctant
to prescribe it if they had. The American Medical Association has not yet
approved chelation therapy for atherosclerosis, although it does endorse its
use in the treatment of lead and other heavy metal poisoning. Many insurance
companies will not compensate policy holders for chelation therapy unless it
is given for proven lead poisoning of a serious degree. If chelation therapy
is given for atherosclerosis, it is often labeled "experimental" or "not
necessary " or "not customary" by medical insurance companies and payment is
denied. They deny payment to patients for chelation therapy even though they
do pay for bypass surgery, and even though chelation might have saved them
tens of thousands of dollars. Like many other aspects of our lives, a
considerable amount of politics seems to be involved—in this case, medical
politics.
Politically powerful traditional medical
groups and manufacturers of cardiovascular drugs have consistently
suppressed knowledge of chelation therapy, perhaps because of a large vested
interest in competing coronary related health care. The cost of all medical
care for victims of heart disease in the United States, including coronary
bypass surgery and prescription drugs, exceeds $40 billion per year.
Obviously, many hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies would
experience a decline in need for their services if chelation therapy were to
become universally popular.
Physicians who remain skeptical about
chelation therapy are those who have never used it. They are either
completely uninformed about the research that has been done to document the
safety and effectiveness of chelation therapy, or they are committed by
training or source of income to other therapeutic procedures, such as
vascular surgery and related procedures. Many physicians have merely
accepted criticisms of an editorial nature stemming from such source,
without digging into the true facts for themselves. Recent reports of
clinical trails alleging to disprove chelation therapy are all so flawed in
design that they offer no evidence at all. Doctors, however, are usually too
busy to read every word, and often accept the misleading summaries and
abstracts, without analyzing the data for themselves. The bypass and
cardiovascular drug industries have been extremely well marketed—to the
medical profession as well as to the public.
Your
lifestyle counts. Chelation therapy is only part of the curative process.
Improved nutrition and improved lifestyle are absolutely imperative for
lasting benefit from chelation treatments. Chelation is not in and of itself
a "cure-all"—it merely reduces abnormal free radical activity and removes
unwanted and toxic metals, allowing normal healing and control mechanisms to
come in to play. Healing is thus facilitated, allowing health to be restored
with the help of applied clinical nutrition, antioxidant supplementation and
improved lifestyle. A full program of chelation therapy involves all of
these factors. Chelation therapy is also compatible with other forms of
therapy, including bypass surgery. If cardiovascular drugs are needed, they
can be taken with chelation with no conflict.
In addition to receiving the recommended
number of chelation treatments,
patients eager for long-term benefits
should follow a healthy lifestyle, take a spectrum of nutritional
supplements, be physically active and eliminate destructive lifestyle habits
such as tobacco and excessive alcohol.
A scientifically
balanced regimen of nutritional supplements reinforces the body’s
antioxidant defenses and should include vitamins E, C, B1, B2
B3, B6, B12, PABA, beta carotene, and
coenzyme Q10, and others. A balanced program of
mineral and trace element supplementation should also include calcium,
magnesium, zinc, copper, selenium, manganese, vanadium, and chromium. The
exact prescription for nutritional supplements is determined individually
for each patient, based on nutritional assessment and laboratory testing.
Dr. Cranton's Prime NutrientsTM, the
best high-potency multiple vitamin, mineral, trace element formula, provides
a balanced foundation supplement, all in one bottle and at reasonable cost.
Dr. Cranton's AntioxPackets provide a much more
complete regimen at additional cost , and are especially indicated for
symptomatic and elderly patients. Chelation patients are placed on the
AntioxPacketsTM, one twice daily with
meals. That is what Dr. Cranton and his family take.
DESTRUCTIVE HABITS
It is important to eliminate the use of
tobacco. This applies to cigarettes, pipe tobacco, cigars, snuff or chewing
tobacco. It has been a consistent observation that patients who continued to
use tobacco following chelation will experience less improvement and for a
shorter time in comparison to non-smokers.
Relatively healthy adults are often able
to tolerate the moderate use of alcoholic beverages without generating more
free radicals than they can detoxify. Anyone who drinks alcoholic beverages
excessively risks harmful free radical damage. Victims of chronic
degenerative diseases should minimize the consumption of alcohol.
EXERCISE
Finally, sustained physical exercise is
very helpful. Even a brisk 45-minute walk several times per week will help
to maintain the health benefits and improved circulation resulting from
chelation therapy. Lactate normally builds up in tissues during sustained
exercise, and lactate is a natural chelator produced within the body. Which
brings us to the final question!
Only you can make that decision!
Chances are, your doctor won’t help you
decide. Patients who choose chelation therapy often do so against the advice
of their personal physicians or cardiologists. Many have already been
advised to undergo vascular surgery. Occasionally, a patient never hears
about chelation therapy until he or she is hospitalized and a friend or
relative begs him or her to look into this non-invasive therapy before
proceeding to surgery. In an impressively large number of instances, a new
patient comes for chelation on the recommendation of someone who has been
successfully chelated. Many patients have benefited even after one or more
failed bypasses.
You are encouraged to communicate with
someone who’s shared your dilemma, someone who can tell you about his or her
own experience with chelation therapy. Feel free to contact others with
problems similar to yours who have chosen chelation therapy. Names are
available from the Clinics. Most patients who have been helped will be happy
to give you their side of the story.
Copyright © 2002 by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.
Last Modified:
December 17, 2007
A Summary of EDTA Chelation Clinical Research: All Good!
This is a chapter from
Bypassing Bypass Surgery, updated and
Copyright © 2005 by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.
Copyright ©
2001 Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.
The medical
community eagerly accepts scientific research buttressing a therapy it
already approves. Somewhat more reluctantly, it examines and debates
entirely novel approaches. But what it hates worse than poison is
reappraising a treatment once rejected. Medicine, after all, is made up of
people―people trailing MDs after their names―who, like the rest of us, do
not enjoy admitting error.
Someday
when chelation therapy is an established part of standard medical care,
historians of twentieth century medicine will wonder how so much supportive
research on its benefits could have been scrupulously conducted by skillful
medical researchers and even more scrupulously ignored by the guardians of
our health. By that time, most of the individuals who successfully shifted
chelation toward the fringes will not be alive to blush, sparing them
extensive embarrassment.
The amount
of positive research is certainly formidable. And those studies that purport
to demonstrate that chelation doesn't work actually show the opposite. We
will now examine much of this research in detail.
In a
sense, we're attempting to set the record straight and to tell people who
read
Bypassing Bypass Surgery―especially
physicians―where they should look for the scientific evidence. After all,
mainstream medical journals engage in unconscionable editorial censorship.
They refuse to publish positive research studies on EDTA chelation but are
quick to print editorial criticism and anecdotal letters to the editor that
are biased against this marvelous therapy. They are also quick to
uncritically print highly flawed studies that erroneously allege to disprove
chelation, as demonstrated by the Danish and New Zealand studies analyzed
below. Journals that do publish supportive studies, although medically
excellent, tend to be smaller, less widely read and ignored by the
mainstream. Studies supportive of EDTA chelation therapy have consistently
been refused inclusion in the
MEDLINE computer database by the National
Library of Medicine.
Also,
academically positioned researchers and professional clinical trialists have
been chastised repeatedly by their colleagues, should they be intellectually
honest enough to express an interest in research of EDTA chelation therapy
for atherosclerosis. They are told behind closed doors that this is not a
"politically correct" topic, and that such a research interest would be
"career suicide."
Most
practicing physicians are entirely unaware that less than 20 percent of the
world's total biomedical literature (in all languages) is referenced by the
National Library of Medicine in the Index Medicus, and its electronic
counterpart, the
MEDLINE computer database. Thus, a computer
search for positive studies of chelation therapy in the treatment of
atherosclerosis will be deceptively negative.
In this
chapter, we will discuss several of the most important positive studies,
referenced for those who wish to obtain the original articles. Then we will
analyze the allegedly "negative" studies. (A very complete listing of all
studies thus far published on this topic can be found at the end of chapter
17 of
Bypassing Bypass Surgery and many are
published in complete form as chapters in
A Textbook on EDTA chelation Therapy,
Second Edition.
Let me make
a few points before we begin.
-
First, there are no
genuinely negative studies. That statement remains true through April,
2002, and applies equally to the
Calgary PATCH trial. All the medical
research to dare on chelation has produced positive results. That is, the
data have invariably been positive. This has not prevented medical
spinmeisters from misleadingly imposing negative interpretations on
positive results―unfortunately this applies to a number of recent studies
in widely-read mainstream medical journals.
-
Second, financial
considerations have limited the size of chelation studies. The drug is no
longer patentable and no one has been willing to spend the $30 million or
more that pharmaceutical companies must spend to satisfy the FDA
requirements before marketing claims can be made. That's the price tag for
a large double-blind, placebo-controlled study to meet FDA requirements.
Many of the studies we quote are relatively small. Though they often have
less than a hundred patients, they are nonetheless scientifically
significant. Their endpoints are determined by objective numerical
measurement of increases in blood flow and are statistically
analyzed―conclusions were not determined by merely asking patients how
they subjectively felt.
-
Third, critics of
chelation have frequently suggested that reported improvements are a
placebo effect. It is a well-known phenomenon of medicine that when given
a completely inactive substance and told that it may help them, many
people will show a certain―often impressive―level of improvement for some
time after they begin using their new "medicine." Thus, the placebo (as
inactive substances used in medical research are called) turns out to have
an "effect." But chelation hardly fits the profile of a placebo. A placebo
effect begins shortly after its first administration and rarely, if ever,
persists for more than three months. Chelation, by contrast, shows its
full range of benefits quite slowly. Usually, it requires not only several
months of therapy but also an additional several months after a course of
therapy for the full benefit of treatment to occur. And the benefits
generally persist for years thereafter. Therefore, chelation shows a
pattern different from, and indeed opposite to, the pattern of a placebo.
Moreover, when studied properly, the benefits are far stronger than a
placebo could show. It's nonsense to allege that such dramatic
improvements are placebo effects.
-
Fourth, statistical
analyses of measured improvements in the more carefully performed
chelation studies demonstrate that the probability of these changes being
due only to random chance is somewhere near the vanishing point of
statistical insignificance. That numerical probability ranges from less
than one in 1,000 to less than one in 10,000. The reason for such high
significance is the magnitude of the improvements measured, despite the
relatively small number of patients.
With those
general points to guide us, it's time to look at some of the actual studies
done on atherosclerosis and chelation.
If you
will recall the clinical trials I discussed briefly in chapter of 1 of
Bypassing Bypass Surgery, they all clearly
demonstrated improved circulation after chelation. These are the sort of
results that any chelation therapist expects―we not only notice improved
exercise tolerance, memory, and mental alertness in our patients but even
healthy color returning to their cheeks.
Many other
objectively measured indicators of circulatory health tell similar stories.
Drs. McDonagh, Rudolph, and Cheraskin took 77 elderly patients with
documented narrowing of the peripheral arteries in their legs and measured
changes in blood flow after approximately 26 EDTA infusions administered
over 60 days. They used the preferred method for such testing: the
ankle/brachial Doppler blood pressure ratio. This method
compares the blood pressure and flow in the arms with
that in the ankles using Doppler ultrasound. In a person with a
youthful circulatory system, the normal pressure in the ankles is equal to
or greater than that in the arms.
Patients
with impaired circulation to the lower extremities have, of course, weaker
arterial blood flow and lower blood pressure in their ankles than in their
arms. On average, after chelation therapy, the patients' ankle pressure
increased from 55 percent of the arm pressure to 71 percent of the arm
pressure, a change so significant that the statistical likelihood of its
being due to random chance would be somewhere in the neighborhood of one in
10,000.(1) Improvement in Doppler blood pressure reflects only blood flow in
larger arteries. EDTA also improves capillary circulation, which is
especially reduced in diabetes.
Drs.
Casdorph and Farr reported on four patients who had all been recommended to
undergo surgical amputation of their gangrenous lower extremities before
treatment with EDTA chelation (click here for abstract). Clearly, these were
people who had reached end-stage complications of atherosclerosis and poor
blood flow. Most of them had deep ulcerations and large areas of dead,
necrotic tissue on their feet. In some cases, circulation to the extremities
had become so poor and so much tissue had died that the condition was no
longer causing significant physical pain. The patients' pain was now
mental―in the clear knowledge that they were about to lose a leg.
All four
patients chose to postpone amputation (against surgical advice) and receive
infusions of EDTA combined with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Treatment was
completely successful in three out of the four cases.(2) In the fourth case,
the patient did eventually lose only the tips of his second, third, and
fourth toes, but the foot and leg were saved.
After chelation, all four patients recovered
circulation in their lower extremities sufficient to not only
protect them from amputation but to also allow them pain-free walking
without limitation or handicap. Several years after chelation therapy, those
four patients continued to be alive and well, walking on their own legs and
feet. Their recovery―if witnessed by a physician who was unaware of or
unwilling to credit chelation's effectiveness―could only be seen as a sort
of medical miracle, something comparable to spontaneous remission of an
advanced and deadly cancer.
Another
study by Dr. Casdorph, as mentioned in chapter one of
Bypassing Bypass Surgery, contains data
showing large, numerically tabulated and objective improvements in blood
flow to the brain (click here for abstract and data). Computerized
graphs showing improved blood flow are astounding,
even to those untrained in medical science. A scintillation counter and
computer were used to generate those sophisticated images, which are perhaps
the most convincing objective evidence we have for increased blood flow
after chelation. I challenge any open-minded physician to review the data in
that article and not come away impressed.(3)
Serious
students of chelation therapy and health care professionals are referred to
a
Textbook on EDTA Chelation Therapy, Second Edition,
edited by Elmer M. Cranton, M.D., Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.,
1125 Stoney Ridge Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22902, (804) 296-2772, FAX
(804) 296-5096. Complete copies of the chelation research studies cited in
this chapter, including all of the actual data, are contained in that
Textbook. You may also
purchase the TEXTBOOK online.
In addition
to those smaller studies, there have been other large retrospective studies
using a variety of methods to measure changes following chelation therapy.
Drs. Hancke
and Flytlie, two Danish doctors with impeccable credentials, published such
a study in 1993―a counterblast, as it were, to the Danish bypass surgeons'
ineffectual attempt to discredit chelation in the previous year, as
described elsewhere on this website. Hancke and Flytlie measured
improvements using a several different criteria in a series of 470 patients
who were followed for six years following chelation therapy (click here for
abstract). Of 265 patients with coronary artery disease and narrowing of the
blood vessels to the heart, they reported improvement in 90 percent.
Sixty-five of those patients had been referred for bypass surgery before
chelation.
After treatment, 58 of the bypass candidates improved
so dramatically that they avoided the surgeon's knife. Among the
207 angina patients using nitroglycerin to control their pain, 189 were able
to reduce their consumption. Most discontinued its use altogether. Of 27
patients awaiting foot or leg amputation, 24 avoided surgery.(4)
These
results, remarkable as they may seem, fully correspond with what physicians
who administer chelation therapy routinely observe in practice.
Another
even larger retrospective study done in Brazil, analyzed the effects of
chelation on 2,870 patients with atherosclerosis and related degenerative
conditions. Treatment was carried out between 1983 and 1986 (click here for
abstract). Nearly all patients were being treated for atherosclerotic
vascular diseases. The most serious category, the patients with heart
disease, numbered almost one-third of the total; and, in that group
following chelation,
77 percent showed marked improvement, 17
percent showed good improvement, 4 percent had partial improvement, and 3
percent were unchanged or worse. Patients with arterial blockage in other
parts of the body showed similar improvements.(5)
The
researchers, Dr. James Carter, a professor at Tulane University Medical
School in New Orleans, together with Dr. Efrain Olszewer, a cardiologist in
Sao Paulo, Brazil, decided to follow up these treatment results by
conducting
a small double blind pilot study on ten
patients. Midway through the study they were forced to open up the blind for
ethical reasons; five of the patients―these turned out to be the ones
receiving EDTA chelation―were doing dramatically better than the placebo
group. It was felt to have been unethical to continue giving placebo
therapy. The placebo patients were then put on EDTA and they too rapidly
began to improve.(6)
One final
question is worth asking: Are these diverse studies (impressive though they
may be) really typical medical research results on chelation? Drs. Terry
Chappell and John Stahl set out to answer that question in 1993. They
conducted a meta-analysis of all currently available scientific literature
(click here for abstract). This is an eagle-eyed observation and comparison
of diverse studies that summarizes, as best it may, the total results
achieved by many researchers following chelation therapy. Over the course of
the last decade, such analytic overviews have grown more reliable and are
more relied upon. Chappell and Stahl identified 19 articles in the medical
literature that met their criteria for determining chelation's effectiveness
in cardiovascular illness. In combination, the articles provided data on
22,765 patients. The meta-analysis determined that
87 percent of these patients experienced favorable
outcomes. Only those improvements measured by objective testing
were accepted as evidence in their analysis.
Chappell
and Stahl were compelled to conclude that there was very strong published
evidence for chelation's effectiveness in the treatment of cardiovascular
disease. (7)
There is
nothing surprising about such a conclusion. It's very difficult to test real
people using chelation therapy and not come away impressed. Nevertheless,
some physicians have achieved that feat. Let's look at their research.
Every now
and then puzzled patients tell me that a friend, relative, or skeptical
physician has told them that chelation was fairly tested and fell flat. I
can usually guess what they're referring to. In the last ten years, a small
cluster of studies sprouted up in the mainstream medical literature
purporting to demonstrate that EDTA chelation was a fizzle when it came to
treating cardiovascular ailments.
The curious
thing is that those studies―flawed and imperfect though they are―only
succeed in offering us
still more positive data to support this therapy
(click here for analysis).
The most
controversial and oft cited study was done in Denmark. It was the handiwork
of a group of Danish cardiovascular bypass surgeons. Results of that study
were published in two medical journals, the Journal of Internal Medicine and
the American Journal of Surgery. The results were also widely publicized in
the news media.
The
surgeons had taken 153 patients suffering with intermittent claudication.
These were people with such severely compromised circulation in their lower
extremities that walking across a parking lot could challenge their
fortitude. One measurement of their condition was their maximal walking
distance (MWD)―the very longest distance that they could walk before
intolerable leg pain brought them abruptly to a halt. The patients were
divided into an EDTA group and a placebo group. In the pre-treatment phase,
the EDTA group could on average walk 119 meters before colliding with their
MWD; the placebo group averaged 157 meters.
Treatment
began with the patients receiving either 20 intravenous infusions of EDTA or
20 infusions of a simple salt solution, depending on their group. The study
was purportedly double-blinded, that is, neither the patients nor the
researchers knew which person was receiving which infusion until after the
study was complete. Progress was measured periodically. In particular, we
will analyze their results at three months following treatment, when full
benefit from chelation would be expected to occur.
Both
placebo and treatment groups showed improvement. However, the investigators
concluded that the improvement was not statistically significant and―equally
important―that the difference in response rate between the EDTA group and
the placebo group was roughly similar. Obviously, a drug that fails to
achieve more than the placebo effect is presumed to be a dud.
The Danish
study impressed many people; but, in rather short order, the integrity of
the study was called into question. It was learned that the researchers had
violated their own double blind protocol. Not only did they themselves know
before the end of the study who was receiving EDTA and who placebo, they had
also revealed this information to many of the test patients. Before the
study was over the researchers and more than 64 percent of the patients were
aware of which treatment they had received.
This was
unorthodox and since it had not been reported in the published study,
extremely questionable from an ethical standpoint.
Many people
had also been struck by the study's relatively small size. Intermittent
claudication is a very unpredictable disease, and, unless enough patients
are included in a trial, the results tend to be statistically unreliable.
The most
interesting aspect of the Danish study, however, was hidden away in the
numbers. This is the startling fact that the patients who were given EDTA
were certainly a good deal sicker than the patients tested with a placebo.
Therefore, the improvements they made were harder earned and more
significant. The researchers, who candidly admitted that they undertook the
study to convince the Danish government not to pay for chelation, either
never noticed that aspect or felt reluctant to reveal it. The evidence is in
the pre-treatment MWDs. The EDTA patients' longest average distance before
claudication pain stopped them in their tracks was 119 meters, while for the
placebo patients it was 157 meters.
Still more
significant was the standard deviation. Standard deviation is a statistical
abstraction, which reflects the amount of variability among a collection of
raw scores. In essence, standard deviation reflects how widely diverse the
numbers are in each group. A high standard deviation indicates that
measurements were spread out toward the extremes of a wide range, rather
than closely clustered near the average. Without going further into the
arcane science of statistics, it is enough to say that the plus or minus 38
meters for EDTA patients versus plus or minus 266 meters for placebo group
represents an enormous difference in walking capacity that is heavily biased
in favor of the placebo group. The standard deviation numbers show that some
placebo patients must have walked half a mile before stopping. The EDTA
group's claudication was therefore much more severe. The EDTA group was much
sicker. The design of the study was therefore catastrophically biased
against EDTA chelation from the outset.
Yet, when
the six-month study was completed, the MWD
in the EDTA group rose by 51 percent, from 119 to 180 meters, while the mean
MWD in the placebo group rose only 24 percent, from 157 to 194 meters.
In plain English, looking at all the published data, the chelation group's
improvement was more than twice as great as the placebo group's, even though
they were significantly sicker at the outset.(8,9)
I believe
the Danish study must be interpreted as another solid demonstration of the
effectiveness of chelation. If it were not for its relative smallness, I
would be happy to quote from its results at any time. I hope the Danish
surgeons can be persuaded to undertake another study with five times as many
subjects. If they take the trouble to hire an academic statistician to
oversee design and interpretation of the study, and refrain from violating
the double blind, they may yet do good work, and we shall all be much in
their debt.
Another
study―also conducted by vascular surgeons―was done at the Otago Medical
School in Dunedin, New Zealand, two years later. The subjects of this study
were also suffering from intermittent claudication manifested by leg pain
and walking difficulties beyond a very limited distance. Chelation subjects
were compared to controls. The study extended to three months after 20
infusions of either EDTA or a placebo had been administered. Upon examining
the results, the authors of the study concluded that chelation had been
ineffective. Once again, that conclusion seems ill founded.
The
absolute walking distance of the EDTA group increased by 26 percent; in the
placebo group, it increased by 15 percent. This was not considered
statistically significant. The study, however, was so small that there were
only 17 subjects in the placebo group. One of these was what the
statisticians call an "outlier." That is a person whose results differ
strikingly from everyone else in the group. That placebo patient's walking
distance increased by almost 500 meters. All of the statistical gain in the
placebo group was due to this one individual's progress. Without him, their
placebo distance decreased slightly.
This
illustrates the perils of a small study. A 25-percent gain in the EDTA group
compared to no gain in the placebo group would have been very significant
statistically.
Meanwhile,
even the New Zealand researchers conceded that the improvement
in artery pulsatility (measurement of pulse intensity) in the EDTA group's
worse leg reached statistical significance. In statistical terms,
there was less than a one in a thousand chance that that improvement was not
a benefit of EDTA. (10)
I would
note only two other things. First, a 26 percent improvement in walking is by
no means minor and would attract notice if the agent had been a patentable
drug. Second, even that level of improvement is in no sense representative
of the much greater improvements claudication patients normally experience
after chelation.
There is a
simple reason for the difference: smoking.
Smoking so
dramatically undermines cardiovascular function, especially in people who
are already seriously sick with claudication, that it negates much of the
gain that chelation provides. In the New Zealand study, 86 percent of the
chelated subjects were smokers. They were advised to quit smoking when the
study began, but how many of them actually stopped is, I fear, a subject for
skeptical speculation. A demonstration of chelation's full potential
requires a much higher percentage of non-smoking subjects at the outset.
Just as
this book goes to the printer, another small study alleging to disprove EDTA
chelation therapy is being widely reported by the news media. This recent
study was conducted by cardiologists in Calgary, Canada, who freely admit
their bias against chelation. They seem to have set out to discredit a
therapy that they oppose by studying a few patients with heart disease.
Because the study has not yet been published in a scientific journal, it is
not possible to provide a meaningful critique. I feel certain, however, that
when we finally do have an opportunity to conduct a detailed review of that
study's design and data, the final assessment will be very similar to that
of the Danish and New Zealand studies, as described in detail in this
chapter―another hatchet job.
It's
relatively easy to design a study specifically to discredit an unpopular
therapy, and to make that study superficially appear to be scientific. The
United States Congress once commissioned its Office of Technological
Assessment to analyze all published medical research for scientific merit.
After a careful review of research studies from leading medical journals,
they concluded that, "more than 75 percent of all published medical research
has invalid or insupportable conclusions as a result of statistical problems
alone." The final report to Congress stated, "few published clinical trials
are well enough designed to yield valuable results."
And it's
not merely intellectual dishonesty. Many doctors who oppose chelation
therapy firmly believe that it is ineffective. That is what they have been
told. So they attack, with no personal knowledge about what they are
attacking. Perhaps they feel threatened because very few doctors have the
time to thoroughly read and analyze published studies in medical journals.
They usually skim the abstract and jump to the authors' conclusions,
accepting them without question.
I have also
found medical doctors to be naive and unaware that the peer review process
is often used as a form of editorial censorship―a way to maintain the status
quo and protect the professional reputations and practices of the reviewers.
Also, because medical journals so often depend heavily on advertising by
major pharmaceutical companies, studies that are unpopular with that
industry are rarely published; while brief letters to the editor and
unsupported editorial opinion attacking opposed therapies quickly find their
way into print. Journals tend to be reluctant to bite the hand that feeds
them.
Powerful
psychological defense mechanisms also come into play. If doctors are not
taught about EDTA chelation therapy in medical school (and they are not),
and if those doctors therefore do not routinely use or prescribe chelation
therapy for patients, then they believe one of two things: 1) either their
medical educations were deficient and they are not providing the best of
care for patients; or, 2) other doctors routinely using and prescribing
chelation therapy for medical conditions that are not FDA-approved must be
"quacks," exploiting desperate patients. Which do you think their choice
will be? It's apparently difficult for many medical doctors to shed an
attitude of God-like omniscience and admit that they simply do not know
everything there is to know.
One final
study that was carried out with what I am forced to call negative intent is
such a curious oddity that it also deserves discussion, although it remains
unpublished. It is usually referred to as the "Heidelberg Trial" and was
conducted at the behest of the German pharmaceutical company Thiemann, AG,
in the early 1980s. Once again using patients with intermittent claudication,
it compared the effects of 20 infusions of EDTA with 20 infusions of
bencyclan, a vasodilating and antiplatelet agent owned by Thiemann.
Needless to
say, from a practical commercial standpoint, Thiemann's action was bizarre.
If EDTA did well in the trial, Thiemann's own already well established drug
could only suffer. Nonetheless, the trial went forward and was reported
before the audience in 1985 at the 7th International Congress on
Arteriosclerosis in Melbourne, Australia. That study showed that immediately
following 20 infusions of EDTA, pain-free walking distance increased by 70
percent. By contrast, the patients receiving bencyclan had increased their
pain-free walking distance by 76 percent. The difference between these two
results was, of course, not statistically significant, but another result
was. It turned out that 12 weeks after the series of infusions was
completed, the EDTA patients' average pain-free walking distance had
continued to increase, going up by an astounding 182 percent. No further
improvement had occurred in the patients receiving bencyclan, however.(11)
A report
from Thiemann only mentioned the 70 and 76 percent figures, and press
releases stated that chelation was no better than a placebo without
mentioning that the "placebo" was a drug that had been proven effective in
the treatment of intermittent claudication. Thiemann never released the
actual data from the Heidelberg Trial, but some German scientists who had
access to it, and who were disturbed at the deception they were witnessing,
chose to reveal the data to members of the American scientific community.
The
complete data showed that four patients in the EDTA group experienced more
than a
1,000-meter increase in their pain-free walking
distance following treatment.(12) This highly favorable data from
those four patients mysteriously disappeared before the final results were
made public. As sponsor and by funding the study, Thiemann had a legal right
under terms of their contract to edit the final results and to interpret the
data in any way that suited them. An analysis of the complete data showed an
average increase in walking distance in the EDTA-treated group of 400
percent at three months after therapy―five times the 76-percent increase of
the group receiving bencyclan.
These three
ineffectual attempts discredit chelation with flawed research represent
pretty much the sum total of scientific involvement that the establishment
has had with this extraordinary therapy over the past thirty years.
In January,
2002, the American Medical Association published yet another junk-science
study in a seeming further attempt to discredit EDTA chelation therapy. If
anything, that so called PATCH study, conducted in Calgary Canada, was one
more positive study with a
misleading negative conclusion.
However,
the darkest moment for chelation actually came way back in 1963. This was
when Drs. J. R. Kitchell and L. E. Meltzer co-authored an article
reassessing their support for EDTA chelation.
Although it
was hardly in widespread use, chelation had been surprisingly
uncontroversial up until that moment. Beginning in 1953, Dr. Norman Clarke,
Sr., and his associates at Providence Hospital in Detroit began using EDTA
chelation to treat coronary heart disease. In 1956, they reported that they
had treated 20 patients suffering from chest pain (angina pectoris).
Nineteen of the 20 patients had had a "remarkable" improvement in
symptoms.(13)
Soon other
physicians became interested, among them Drs. Kitchell and Meltzer, who
specialized in cardiology at Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia. From
1959 to 1963, Kitchell and Meltzer reported on their consistent good results
treating cardiovascular diseases with EDTA. Their early reports were all
very positive.(14-16)
But in
April of 1963, shortly after their last favorable report, they published a
"reappraisal" in the American Journal of Cardiology that questioned
chelation's value.
That
reappraisal article included ten original patients on whom they had
previously published data, and 28 patients with coronary heart disease who
were treated subsequently. Treated patients in this report were all severely
ill. The authors state that the patients were, " . . .referred to us because
of severe angina. The patients had previously been treated with most of the
accepted methods, and their inclusion in this study resulted from wholly
unsuccessful courses. Each of the patients was considered disabled at the
start of therapy." This was therefore a very high-risk group with any form
of therapy.
Seventy-one
percent of patients treated had subjective improvement of symptoms, 64
percent had objective improvement of measured exercise tolerance three
months after receiving 20 chelation treatments, and 46 percent showed
improved electrocardiographic patterns. Kitchell and Meltzer then went on to
conclude that chelation was not effective because some patients eventually
regressed more than a year after treatment. However, considering the poor
health of the patients, there is no other treatment about which the same
statement could not be made. Eighteen months following therapy, 46 percent
of those patients remained improved. The
results were very favorable even though the authors' conclusions
were not.(17)
I believe
that this "reappraisal" article was largely responsible for termination of
academic research into chelation as a treatment for cardiovascular ills.
Rather than analyzing the data for themselves, most physicians simply
accepted the mistakenly negative conclusion at face value. We will probably
never know what prompted those early researchers to change their position so
abruptly. We can only speculate that it was an unrealistic expectation the
emergence of bypass surgery would be a final solution.
The years
that followed were filled with astonishing demonstrations of surgical
inventiveness; and, for at least the next two decades, cure by the knife
dominated the medical landscape. Then came balloon angioplasty. Those
surgical and high-tech discoveries were splendid in themselves; but what was
tragic was to regard them as the preferred, if not the exclusive, approach
to complex cardiovascular problems.
As for
chelation, its future is now bright because its effectiveness is
incontrovertible. Biased or uninformed physicians may call it untested, but
no scientifically informed person can read the studies on which this chapter
is based without realizing that EDTA chelation therapy is a formidable
antagonist to cardiovascular disease.
A major
upsurge in demand for chelation is now coming from the many people who have
heard first-hand from friends or relatives who benefited from this
remarkable therapy.
Periodic
research updates will be posted on this website:
REFERENCES
1. McDonagh
EW, Rudolph DO, Cheraskin E. Effect of chelation therapy plus
multivitamin/mineral supplementation upon vascular dynamics: Ankle/brachial
Doppler blood pressure ratio. Journal of Advancement in Medicine.
1989;2(1&2):159-166.
2.
Casodorph HR, Farr CH. EDTA chelation therapy: Treatment of peripheral
arterial occlusion, an alternative to amputation. Journal of Advancement
in Medicine. 1989;2(1&2):167-182.
3. Casdorph
HR. EDTA chelation therapies II, efficacy in brain disorders. Journal of
Advancement in Medicine. 1989;2(1&2):131-154.
4. Hancke
C, Flytlie K. Benefits of EDTA chelation therapy on atherosclerosis: A
retrospective study of 470 patients. Journal of Advancement in Medicine.
1993;6(3):161-171.
5. Olszewer
E, Carter JP. EDTA chelation therapy: A retrospective study of 2,870
patients. Journal of Advancement in Medicine. 1989;2(1&2):197-213.
6. Olszewer
E, Sabbag FC, Carter JP. A pilot double-blind study of sodium-magnesium EDTA
in peripheral vascular disease. J Natl Med Assn.
1990;82(3):174-177.
7. Chappell
LT, Stahl JP. The correlation between EDTA chelation therapy and improvement
in cardiovascular function: A meta-analysis. Journal of Advancement in
Medicine. 1993;6(3):139-160.
8. Guldager
B, Jelnes R, Jorgensen SJ, et al. EDTA treatment of intermittent
claudication―a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Journal of
Internal Medicine. 1992;231:261-267.
9.
Sloth-Nielsen J, Guldager B. Mouritzen C, et al. Arteriographic findings in
EDTA chelation therapy on peripheral atherosclerosis. The American
Journal of Surgery. 1991;162:122-125.
10. Van Rij
AM, Solomon C, Packer SG, et al. Chelation therapy for intermittent
claudication. A double-blind, randomized, controlled study. Circulation.
1994 Sep;90(3):1194-1199.
11. Diehm
C, Wilhelm C, Poeschl J, et al. Effects of EDTA chelation therapy in
patients with peripheral vascular disease―a double blind study. An
unpublished study performed by the Department of Internal Medicine,
University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany In 1985. Presented as a paper
before the International Symposium of Atherosclerosis, Melbourne, Australia,
October 14, 1985, Podium Presentation.
12. Carter
JP. The first double-blind chelation study in the treatment of vascular
disease. University of Heidelberg Medical School 1985, A transcribed
interview with researchers involved in that study.
13. Clarke
NE, Clarke CN, Mosher RE. Treatment of angina pectoris with disodium
ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid. Am J Med Sci. 1956;232:654-666.
14.
Kitchell JR, Meltzer LE, Seven MJ. Potential uses of chelation methods in
the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Prog Cardiovasc Dis.
1961;3:338-349.
15.
Kitchell JR. Peripheral flow opened up. Medical World News. Mar
15,1963;4:36-39.
16. Meltzer
LE, Ural ME, Kitchell JR. The treatment of coronary artery disease with
disodium EDTA. In: Seven MJ, Johnson LA, eds. Metal Binding in Medicine.
Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Co; 1960:132-136.
17.
Kitchell JR, Palmon F, Aytan N, et al. The treatment of coronary artery
disease with disodium EDTA, a reappraisal. American Journal of
Cardiology. 1963;11:501-506.
The Joy of Chelation Therapy
Can any medical treatment be a joy, a pleasure? Not many, not even a few can
claim such bliss. One treatment, however, may fill such a role. The process
of EDTA chelation therapy is noticeably cheering to the patient. The method
of chelation appears outwardly to be all-so-medical. An individual is
plugged into an I.V. bottle containing EDTA in solution. Sitting for three
to four hours, watching the liquid drip slowly into one’s arm is hardly
entertainment! Or is it? Observing a group of patients receiving EDTA
chelation in the doctor’s office is a remarkable experience. One sees live
and gregarious activity, friendly discussion, sharing medical and personal
experience, laughter, mutual and fraternal association and even new
friendships. Of course, these are hallmarks of any group activity, but how
many groups are centered around medical treatments? EDTA chelation is not a
philosophy, an encounter group, nor a fraternal society. It is an
AMA-approved treatment for lead poisoning. Moreover, it is a process for
reversing atherosclerosis, the disease that clogs the arteries. That such a
treatment is a joy is something observed in hundreds of offices throughout
the U.S., including this one, on a daily basis. It is a celebration of hope.
What makes chelation a joy? The first and foremost concern is that EDTA is a
drug, a chemical, and therefore certain to cause certain side effects and
possibly a serious toxicity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s
look at sheer statistics. Bruce Halstead, M.D., has documented careful
scientific studies of the toxicity of EDTA. On a scale of 1 to 10, where one
is the most safe and ten is the most hazardous, EDTA ranks close to aspirin,
about 2 to 3. A major heart medication derived from digitalis ranks 7 to 8.
Doctors treating a certain disease may think nothing of prescribing a drug
with a high toxicity, when its benefits outweigh the potential for harm, and
when properly administered! We hear a lot of criticism about the toxicology
of EDTA. There is no dispute that if EDTA is given in a dosage 100 times its
normal prescription, it is harmful. But the same statement can be about
digitalis, diuretics, pain medication, tranquilizers and sedatives,
antibiotics, and even aspirin. So, while EDTA is a chemical, drug, it does
not often cause side effects and rarely (very rarely) induces a serious
toxicity. The same cannot be said for many commonly prescribed medications.
For a patient on chelation therapy, experiencing no side effects or
toxicity, this is a joy! Halstead cites that in the U.S. from 1970–1980,
100,000 patients received in excess of 2,000,000 treatments of EDTA
chelation without any report of significant toxicity. For a “drug,” EDTA has
certainly demonstrated a very effective record of safety.
One does not measure joy on the basis of escaping pain, however. How does
EDTA chelation therapy produce joy? Reversing hardening of the arteries is
one sure-fire way. EDTA treatment provides an increase m blood supply and
oxygen delivery to tissues throughout the body. Such circulatory
rejuvenation improves convalescence during heart attack and stroke; relieves
symptoms of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes), angina and
intermittent claudication of the extremities (pain on walking.) Work
published by the International Association of Gerontology and Aging
documents EDTA’s role in reversing the aging process by altering enzymes in
the walls of the artery. Peer review literature in 1981–82 documents
significant improvements in circulation through the carotid arteries and
coronary arteries following chelation therapy (see Casdorph, H.R. in the
Journal of the American Holistic Medical
Association.)
Such studies carried out using the state-of-the-art cardiovascular tools via
nuclear scanning techniques, defines objective evidence for the role EDTA
plays in reversing atherosclerosis. When one can get up and walk several
miles without experiencing any pain, this is joy. When one can play and work
hard and cease to experience the incapacitating chest pain of angina, this
is joy. Regaining memory and concentration thought to be long gone—this is
joy. The joy is the change in relationships one shares with others following
chelation therapy!
The Men and Women Who Prescribe Chelation
In terms of international medicine in 1982, EDTA chelation therapy is being
practiced most openly in the United States. The EDTA treatment is very
prominently at what Marilyn Ferguson (author of
Aquarius Conspiracy, 1980) terms the leading edge of medical
research. Already established as a treatment of atherosclerosis administered
according to a medical protocol, it is under close scrutiny by expert
researchers in several medical universities. Organizations supporting its
use include the American Academy of Medical Preventics in Los Angeles, CA.,
the International Academy of Preventive Medicine in Kansas, the Northwest
Academy of Preventive Medicine in Bellevue, WA, the American Holistic
Medical Association in Virginia, and others. University related research was
formerly carried out actively by Norman Clarke Sr, M.D., and Norman Clarke
Jr, M.D., at the Detroit General Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. More
recently John Olwin, M.D., Professor of Surgery at Rush Medical College in
Chicago, has investigated chelation therapy. Other investigators performing
university research are H. Richard Casdorph, M.D. of Long Beach, CA.; Bruce
Halstead, M.D. of Colton, CA.; Lloyd Grumbles, M.D. of Philadelphia, PA. The
National Institutes of Health and the American College of Cardiology have
been requested by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to carry
out a well-designed evaluation of EDTA over the next two years. It is
appropriate, then, to devote some attention to those individuals prescribing
chelation.
Bruce Halstead, M.D. is a premier researcher of marine toxicology. He is the
sole author of a three-volume compendium exhaustively detailing the anatomy,
physiology, and toxicology of marine organisms. Research exploration has
brought him into medical consultation with more than 120 nations, including
a rare consulting status with the first Soviet Medical School at Moscow and
Vladivlostock. With an esteemed background in toxicology, Bruce Halstead has
established a chelating medical practice in Loma Linda and, more recently,
in Colton, CA. Halstead states in the preface of his book,
The Scientific Basis of EDTA Chelation Therapy,
“After having taken an extensive series of EDTA chelation/treatments, and
having administered several thousand treatments to others, I have developed
a deep appreciation of the clinical value of the therapy.”
In Chelation Therapy: How to Prevent or Reverse
Hardening of the Arteries by Dr. Morton Walker, numerous chelating
physicians are highlighted. H. Ray Evers, M.D., of Cottonwood, Alabama
administered EDTA to Dr. George W. Frankel, M.D., Chief of E.N.T. of two
Long Beach, CA, hospitals in 1971. The E.N.T. Chief observed his diabetic
ulcers and gangrene clear up under The EDTA Chelation prescribed by Evers.
Yiwen Y. Tang, M.D., F.A.B.F.P., of San Francisco, CA, chelated Roland 0.
Hohnbaum, D.O., a Richmond, CA, chiropractor in 1975. The photographs of
Hohnbaum’s feet before and after chelation are clear statements of medical
reversal. Vascular surgeons advised Hohnbaum prior to chelation therapy to
have his legs amputated. The illustrations reveal the elimination of the
diabetic gangrene? The chiropractor was able to return to full-time work.
Robert Vance, D.O., of Salt Lake City treated Dean Baxter, an executive of
the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company of Houston in 1980. Dean was diagnosed by
coronary angiography to have 10% blockage in one heart vessel, 90% blockage
in two other major heart vessels. Dean turned down flatly orders given by
several heart surgeons of Houston’s prestigious bypass surgery centers.
Instead, he traveled to Utah and received a series of EDTA chelations. Post
chelation radionuclide studies of the heart revealed major improvement of
circulatory flow through the formerly blocked vessels. Baxter was given new
medical orders to return to full activity and follow-up his dietary
modifications. The doctors who ordered bypass surgery could not believe that
chelation influenced this improvement! Harold Harper, M.D., of Los Angeles,
CA., infused EDTA in a Houston physician suffering a heart attack in 1974.
The patient, Lester Tavel, D.O., required electrical shock to restore his
heart’s rhythm to normalcy, and the heart expanded, filling the chest.
Enzymes demarking heart functioning were profoundly abnormal. Following a
course of EDTA chelation given by Harper, Dr. Tavel was reexamined and found
to have normal heart functioning.
Dr. Morton Walker narrates similar medical reports from chelating physicians
Robert Rogers, M.D. of Melbourne. Florida; Sibyl W. Anderson, D.O. of Jenks,
Oklahoma; Warren M. Levin, M.D., F.A.A.A.P., New York City; the late Carlos
R Lamar, M.D., F.I.C.A., of San Juan, Puerto Rico; Charles Farr M.D., Ph.D.,
of Norman, Oklahoma; Garry F. Gordon, M.D., of Sacramento, CA; Gus
Schreiber, M.D., of Dallas, Texas; Leo J. Bolles, M.D., of Bellevue, WA;
William Mauer, M.D., of Zion, Illinois, and more.
One Doctor's Office
Gone the sterile hushed atmosphere of the doctor's office. No more urgent
whispered voices of softly-stepping nurses hurrying on nursely errands. Take
one moment to visit the office of Dr. Jonathan Collin, M.D., a practicing
preventive medicine doctor, in Port Townsend, WA.
You park in front of a restored Victorian home, painted spring-fresh green
with leaded windows, a winding brick walkway, and of course, a picket fence.
As you pass through the gate, you already begin to relax as you admire the
manicured lawn, and feast your eyes on the multi-colored flora. As you near
the office door, you hear the hum of excited and happy voices. When you open
the door, you are at least prepared for a new experience.
At the front desk reigns Jill, office manager, guru in charge of
cheerfulness, decor, and prompt payment of your bill. In a homey room to the
left are a couch, recliners, chairs, tables, and lots of good reading. If
you have a heart problem, you are likely to spend a lot of time in this
room; a not-so-unpleasant idea, considering that here is the source of the
happy voices. And why are these folks so happy? After all, they are
suffering from a serious and debilitating disease. Perhaps, there is a joy
in the experience of receiving EDTA…
Reprinted from Heart Disease In Transition: A
Medical Newsletter Written For The Patient
Intravenous EDTA Chelation
Treatment of a Patient with Atherosclerosis
- James A. Jackson, Ph.D., BCLD; Hugh
D. Riordan, M.D.;Mavis Schultz, R.N., ARNP; Richard Lewis, B.S.
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