By John Morgenthaler
Note from the publisher: If you are currently taking an oral chelation supplement, you're already aware that this surprisingly powerful, but safe and inexpensive treatment can erase everything from chest pain and high blood pressure…to the symptoms that lead to heart attack and stroke. What you may not know is that the latest research indicates that your body requires a minimum dose to achieve and maintain significant changes in your health and well-being—a dose which the majority of oral chelation treatments available today fail to supply. Another often-missed truth is that there is not just one, but a number of very effective natural chelating agents that can work together to greatly enhance the protective and preventive benefits of this health-enhancing treatment. Please take a moment to read this important information below; you may be able to provide even greater support for your heart health, energy, and longevity.
Every year, nearly six
million Americans end up in the hospital, suffering with disease that is largely
preventable, reversible—even curable. I'm referring, of course, to
cardiovascular disease (CVD.) CVD includes congestive heart failure—the single
most frequent cause of hospitalization for people aged 65 years or older; heart
disease (the leading cause of premature, permanent disability among working
adults), and stroke (currently the cause of disability in over one million
Americans.) In fact, CVD is the nation's leading killer for both men and women
over age 50, among all racial and ethnic groups, claiming the lives of over
960,000 Americans every year. Perhaps even more startling: nearly one in four
Americans—about 58 million—lives with some form of CVD.
But it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to be a victim of CVD. Nor do
you have to submit to dangerous, expensive surgery or heart drugs.
If you or a loved one suffers
from any form of CVD, here is the simple— but too often overlooked—truth about
how this prevalent killer operates. What the public at large tends not to
realize—and what your doctor has likely failed to explain to you—is that the
primary precursor to heart disease, atherosclerosis (hardened arteries) is not a
localized injury. It's a systemic condition. In other words, atherosclerosis is
present not only in the coronary arteries, but also in the brain, lungs,
kidneys, and legs.
1
What's more, the blockages that lead to atherosclerosis can occur not only in
the larger vessels—the vessels that can be seen and manipulated by surgeons and
cardiologists—but in the smaller blood vessels as well. It is in these smaller
blood vessels, the capillaries, that the oxygen exchange to the tissues takes
place. You can protect that critical lifeline of oxygen that feeds and sustains
the organs and tissues throughout your body—including your heart. There exists
today a treatment that removes plaque and restores blood flow throughout the
entire arterial system, treating the micro as well as the macro vessels. It's
called EDTA chelation, available via intravenous and oral supplementation. You
should consider chelation therapy—safe, inexpensive, and proven effective—if you
have a family history of CVD or existing CVD. You should also consider chelation
if you simply want to do everything within your power to prevent CVD … and the
potentially disastrous effects of the conventional medical treatments for this
deadly disease.
Traditional medicine approaches
heart disease primarily in one of two ways. The first is to ream out clogged
arteries or flatten deposits in the vessels with angioplasty. This procedure
does have some risk for heart attack or making the blockage even worse.
2 Many of the blockages return to their original severity within a year.
The second way is to cut away the clogged section or sections of the artery and
replace it with a new section or sections of arteries grafted from other places
in the body. This procedure is called a coronary artery bypass graft, or CABG…
known in the medical profession as "cabbage." An appropriate nickname, perhaps,
as it's also a nickname for money… and CABG, the most frequently performed
surgery in the United States, costs up to $50,000 per procedure.
If your doctor has recommended CABG to you or a loved one, you should know that
the average mortality for CABG surgery is 4% to 10%.
3,
4 and a common "side effect" after the procedure is cerebral
dysfunction—memory loss and mental decline.
5
But it saves lives…right? Not according to the New England Journal of
Medicine. According to a pivotal study published in this prestigious
medical journal, CABG, compared with less invasive and risky medical therapy,
"appears neither to prolong life nor to prevent myocardial infarction [heart
attack] in patients who have mild angina [chest pain] or who are asymptomatic
[suffer no pain] after infarction in the five-year period after coronary
angiography."
6
The failure of standard medical treatments to heal heart patients doesn't really
come as a surprise. Fact is, any treatment that fails to support the circulation
throughout your entire body is likely to fail you—and your health—in the long
run. But cardiovascular surgery, and other conventional heart treatments are
enormously—almost unimaginably—profitable. CABG alone generates as much as $18.4
billion per year.
7 Drugs for reducing cholesterol, lowering high blood pressure, and
normalizing heart rhythm bring the pharmaceutical industry hundreds of millions
of dollars each year.
Meanwhile, chelation therapy is a potent, safe, inexpensive and virtually
risk-free heart and circulation treatment … and recent research suggests it may
in fact, be the single most powerful treatment for CVD.
In the days after World War II, men who worked in battery factories or painted ships with lead-based paint began coming down with lead poisoning from their high exposure in these jobs. A safe, harmless chemical called EDTA was found to be extremely effective for removing the lead from the men's bodies—an effective cure for lead poisoning. But something else happened to many of the men who were treated with EDTA: they enjoyed an apparent reduction in symptoms of heart disease.
A chelate is a chemical compound in which the central atom (usually a metal ion) is attached to neighboring atoms by at least two bonds in such a way as to form a ring structure. Chelating is the process in which the metal ion reacts with another molecule to form the chelate. EDTA (ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid) is an amino acid. It was synthesized in Germany in 1935, and first patented in the U.S. in 1941. Chelation therapy itself can be understood simply as the removal of calcium deposits (from your arteries, where you don't want them) and other harmful minerals that promote blood clotting and atherosclerosis. Since these harmful deposits are also known to cause excessive free radical production, EDTA chelation also functions as a powerful free radical buster … protecting cell membranes, DNA, enzyme systems, and lipoproteins from the destructive effects of these ravenous molecules. Some experts believe that the primary benefits of chelation are due to its free radical-fighting effects. 8 And perhaps one of the most compelling, but often overlooked, explanations for chelation's anti-aging, energizing effects is that EDTA "resuscitates" your cells' mitochondria. Mitochondria are the "power plants" of every cell in the body—the site in which the energy-producing ATP is generated. Without ATP, life can not exist. 9 Loss of mitochondrial function has long been considered to be one of the primary causes of the aging process. 10
The American Heart Association
(AHA) recognizes chelation therapy as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning. The
AHA admits that EDTA, injected into the blood, will bind the metals and allow
them to be removed from the body in the urine. In fact, EDTA is the standard FDA
approved treatment for lead, mercury, aluminum, and cadmium poisoning.
But neither the FDA nor the AMA acknowledges that chelation appears to be one of
the most powerful—yet least expensive … and safest—treatments for heart disease
in existence. The bottom line: chelation therapy, which costs only $2,000 to
$4,000 per course—represents a significant threat to one of the largest income
streams for conventional practitioners. Clearly, if EDTA chelation had a large
pharmaceutical company advocating its use … it would, at the very least, be
integrated into the standard, AMA-approved treatment for heart disease. But the
patent for EDTA ran out nearly 30 years ago. No patent means no profits. And if
the medical industry can't profit from chelation … this safe, inexpensive,
powerful treatment … it may as well not exist.
From its earliest clinical tests, chelation therapy has consistently demonstrated a remarkable ability to cleanse the system of metals and other deposits that lead to so-called age-related disease. In 1955, research conducted at the Providence Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, found that EDTA dissolves "metastatic calcium"—i.e., calcium that has been deposited where it is not wanted. Namely, arteries, joints, kidneys, and even the bones of the inner ear. In other words, chelation therapy appeared to be a powerful antidote to—and preventative against—atherosclerosis, arthritis, kidney stones, and otosclerosis (hearing loss related to the calcification of the bones in the ear). 11
The first systematic study of EDTA in people with atherosclerosis was published in 1956. Twenty patients with confirmed heart disease were given a series of 30 EDTA treatments intravenously. Nineteen of the patients experienced improvement, as measured by an increase in physical activity. 12
In another study conducted four years later, a similar group found that three months of ETDA infusions caused decreases in the severity and frequency of anginal episodes, reduced use of nitroglycerin (a common anti-angina drug), increased work capacity and improved ECG (electrocardiogram) results. 13
Since these early studies,
hundreds of papers have been published on the favorable effects of chelation
therapy in a variety of chronic diseases. There have even been two massive
"meta-analyses" of published and unpublished studies evaluating the results of
over 24,000 chelation patients.
14 The results: 88 percent of the patients demonstrated clinical
improvement.
One of the studies included 92 patients who were referred for surgical
intervention. At the end of the study, only 10 required surgery either during or
after their chelation therapy.
15 In another study of 2,870 patients with various degrees of degenerative
diseases, especially vascular disease, almost 90% of the patients showed
excellent improvement.
16 In one small, controlled crossover study of patients with peripheral
vascular disease, results showed significant improvements in walking distance
and ankle/brachial blood flow.
17
And when, in one study, 65 patients on the waiting list for CABG surgery (for a
mean of 6 months) were treated with EDTA chelation therapy … the symptoms in 89%
improved so much they were able to cancel their surgery. In the same study, of
27 patients recommended for limb amputation due to poor peripheral circulation,
EDTA chelation resulted in saving 24 limbs.
18
Another tremendous source of
information about chelation is a gentleman known as the "father" of the modern
chelation movement, as well a world-renowned expert on nutrition, mineral
metabolism, and alternative and preventative therapies, Garry Gordon, MD, DO.
Dr. Gordon wrote the original protocol for the safe and effective use of EDTA.
In an interview conducted by John Morgenthaler, Dr. Gordon explained some of the
extraordinary results he has accumulated in his use and study of EDTA Chelation,
including the following:
Common anti-clotting therapies like aspirin and coumadin are effective against
only about one-third of excessive platelet aggregation and coagulation ("sticky"
blood and plaque formation. What's worse, aspirin) has a well-known corrosive
effect on the membrane of the stomach, causing a micro-hemorrhage right where
the pill hits the stomach. EDTA, on the other hand, appears to reduce all
harmful clotting mechanisms. According to Dr. Gordon, "In a proper combination
with other natural anti-clotting substances, oral EDTA is a safe and effective
alternative. I've known people who had such poor peripheral circulation that
their feet were black bordering on gangrene. After oral EDTA, their black feet
became pink again."
EDTA actually stimulates bone growth through a complex action of the parathyroid
gland. Even though it is removing calcium from plaque in blood vessels, it has
the ability to make bones stronger. Dr. Gordon believes that chelation can
significantly reduce the incidence of osteoporosis. "The more chelation we give
people, the less osteoporosis they have and the less age-related calcium
accumulation there is in their blood vessels. The average 80-year-old man …
shows 140 times more calcium than he had at age 10. This means you're gradually
turning to stone in all your arteries. We can document that calcium accumulation
in the artery is totally reversible by enough chelation."
"I use IV treatment to get people's arteries younger," says Dr. Gordon, "and to
increase blood flow in their arteries." Remarkably, while conventionally trained
cardiologists consider the diagnosis of congestive heart failure to be virtually
a death sentence—over 60 percent of their patients are dead within the first
year—Dr. Gordon hasn't lost one patient with congestive failure in 10 years.
But chelation therapy is far more than just a powerful heart and circulation
treatment. As a result of its complex of health-enhancing, detoxifying
benefits…chelation therapy helps to correct, reverse, or eliminate a vast array
of serious and prevalent health conditions, ranging from senility to cancer.
[See "Other
Benefits of EDTA Chelation" below.]
Are there any significant risks with chelation? When administered by a properly
trained physician, according to Dr. Gordon, IV EDTA has an extremely low risk of
side effects—less than 1 in 10,000 patients. And mortality rates for chelation,
when carried out according to accepted protocols, approaches 0 percent.
19
Somewhat less well known, among
consumers and health care professionals, are the benefits of the oral form EDTA
Chelation therapy—in which the same EDTA compound used intravenously is taken
orally, in doses high enough to be effective, yet safe enough to be taken
without a doctor's intervention.
"It is my firm belief," says Dr. Gordon, "that anyone considering using aspirin
for the prevention of heart attack should learn everything they can about oral
EDTA. It is my belief that EDTA is as much as 300 times safer than aspirin."
As with the early IV chelation studies, the early clinical studies with oral EDTA were also promising, including loss of fat in rats, reduction of cholesterol in rabbits, and reduced blood pressure in humans. Consequently, a study of the effects of oral EDTA on patients with atherosclerosis and/or hypertension was conducted on 10 patients. Four of these patients had hypertension, four had angina pectoris, one had peripheral vascular disease (intermittent claudication), and one was recovering from a heart attack. All were treated with 1 gram of oral EDTA daily for 3 months.
Seven of the ten patients
experienced significant reductions in their cholesterol levels, and blood
pressure was reduced in all ten. The most marked change occurred in the patient
with intermittent claudication, whose cholesterol dropped from 278 mg per 100 ml
to 128! This patient also reported improved exercise tolerance, and the
researchers found improved pulsations in the extremities. The four patients with
angina pectoris also all reported improvement.
20
In another series of 20 patients who suffered from high cholesterol,
hypertension, angina or peripheral vascular disease, one gram of EDTA was
administered orally every day for 3 months. During that short time, elevated
cholesterol levels in nine of the patients dropped to within the normal range.
No adverse results were experienced by any of the patients. Angina attacks were
reduced in frequency and severity in five individuals. One person, who
previously had suffered a heart attack and experienced several angina attacks
daily thereafter, obtained complete relief.
21
In another study, two patients with extremely elevated cholesterol were treated
with oral EDTA. One patient took EDTA in progressively increasing doses ranging
from 500 mg to 4 gm daily for one year, and the other took 1,000 mg daily for
three years. Although the first patient suffered a heart attack after three
years of therapy, she recovered uneventfully, and had reduced angina pains and
improved sense of well being with continued use of EDTA. The second patient—in
addition to high cholesterol—had a condition known as xanthomatosis (yellowish
papules in the skin, related to elevated blood lipids). She not only experienced
dramatic reductions in her cholesterol levels with oral EDTA treatment, but her
skin lesions completely resolved.
23
In short, you can use oral chelation supplements to …
Oral EDTA is not meant to
replace IV therapy for those people who have serious vascular disease. It is
very useful, though, for people who have completed an IV course and want to stay
on a maintenance program … for people who "for whatever reason" wish to avoid IV
chelation … and for those whose IV treatments may have been interrupted.
Oral chelation is a safe, powerful disease fighter. It works. And considering
that vascular diseases and blockages occur throughout the entire body, chelation
is an ideal preventative and treatment.
The dose of oral EDTA used in the studies cited above ranges from a low of 500
milligrams per day to a high of 4,000 milligrams per day, with the most common
dose being around 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams. Unfortunately, the majority of oral
chelation supplements available today make it nearly impossible for you to
consume the recommended amount, without inordinate hassle…and stomachache. With
some chelation supplements, you need to take up to 40 capsules per day to get
the high-level dose of 4,000 milligrams of EDTA per day!
In addition, recent research has shown that, aside from EDTA, there are two
natural compounds that also function as excellent chelation agents: garlic and
malic acid.
Some oral chelation supplements do include garlic…but again, you have to take so
much of the supplement that, needless to say, your daily dose of the garlic can
become a bit on the high side, and a bit unpleasant. Of all the chelation
formulations available today, only one provides enough EDTA per capsule—250
milligrams, or 0.25 grams—to maintain the recommended daily dose conveniently,
and at minimum cost and hassle. This high-quality product, called CardioClear™,
is quite simply the most effective and convenient oral chelation supplement you
can find. In addition to providing the optimum dose of EDTA, malic acid, and
garlic, CardioClear also includes parsley extract to absorb the garlic odor.
If you have a known CVD condition…you should see a qualified doctor and ask
about IV chelation and oral chelation. If you have a condition but it is not
serious enough to require medical attention now, then oral chelation alone is a
good choice for maintenance and prevention. Finally, if you do not have a known
condition, then CardioClear—the most powerful and reliable way to heal your
arteries and support your entire circulatory system—can help keep you protected
for life. SP
Other Benefits of EDTA Chelation*
*Adapted from Walker M., Gordon G., Douglass W.C.: The Chelation Answer
EDTA Chelation therapy appears
to be extremely safe, but as with almost any drug or supplement, there are
potential adverse effects of EDTA chelation. One danger is nephrotoxicity
(kidney damage). This is dependent on the dose, the rate of infusion, the
patient's kidney function, and the patient's body burden of toxic heavy metals.
Kidney damage was not uncommon in the early days of chelation therapy, when
doses of EDTA in the range of 5-10 grams per day were used, and treatments were
administered as often as 5 days per week.
Kidney damage can be easily prevented, however, by carefully adjusting the
frequency, dose and rate in which the EDTA is administered. In addition,
judicious administration of EDTA over prolonged periods (three to six months and
longer) actually improves kidney function.
Other potential adverse effects include hypocalcemia (excessively low blood
levels of calcium) due to EDTA's binding excessively with calcium in the blood,
hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), believed to be due to accompanying hypocalcemia,
and phlebitis (inflammation of the vein), usually due to improperly prepared
solutions. Rarely reported side effects include chills and fever following
infusion, acerbation of congestive heart failure due to fluid overload, fatigue
(usually due to hypoglycemia or hypocalcemia), seizures, arrhythmias, or rash.
The risk of incurring any of the above adverse effects has further been greatly
reduced by the recent finding of Drs. Grant Born and Tammy Geurkink
23 that even greater benefit can be obtained by most patients who are
treated with only 1.5 grams of EDTA per treatment, rather than with the standard
dose of three grams. (But this refers to the IV infusion of EDTA, not to be
confused with dosages for oral use, which are in the range of 500 mg to 4,000 mg
per day.)