ORAL CHELATION – THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY

Recently, it has become generally recognized that atherosclerosis involves chronic inflammation and most heart attacks and strokes are believed to be due to blood clots, because of the resulting hypercoagulability. In this new paradigm, I believe that some carefully and rationally developed oral chelation formulas may be just as beneficial as intravenous (I/V) chelation in helping to prevent heart attacks and stroke, but in a different way, although not producing the anti-aging benefits we all routinely observe with I/V EDTA.

There appears to be benefit from both therapies. The I/V administration of EDTA cannot permanently reduce inflammation or excessive clotting tendencies. Safe nutritional ingredients included in the more comprehensive oral chelation formulas are well documented to beat aspirin heparin or Coumadin as "blood thinners," without their documented high mortality and morbidity.

As a co-founder of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), I feel we must immediately correct serious inaccuracies regarding our representations to patients regarding the benefits and risks of all forms of chelation therapy, oral or I/V, for any indication. I fear that most patients believe that their I/V treatments are reversing their arteriosclerosis and all too often, we are learning that this is not the case.

Since all medical procedures entail some risk and often, significant costs, I believe we have an obligation to inform our patients fully and accurately regarding any therapies that may help them avoid heart attacks and strokes, whether or not they can arrange to receive I/V chelation. Recently, the immediate past-president of the American Heart Association and other leading cardiologists have gone on record stating that physicians should be treating the bloodstream and not the blood vessel. I accept this entirely and believe that we must immediately incorporate this life saving information into our chelation protocols and informed consent procedures. Their research has empowered me to help patients routinely select non-operative interventions since this research documents that surgeons are generally operating on the wrong plaque. What can be seen on the arteriogram generally has little to do with the patient living or dying.

Currently, I serve on a board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners in the State of Arizona and I am in charge of chelation peer review for Arizona. I believe that anyone accepting Dr. Cranton’s unsupportable position (1) may be seriously harmed and I would consider it irresponsible for any chelation physicians to rely on his editorial and subsequently inform their patients to stop all "oral chelation" products without further knowledge.

Hopefully this current disagreement over oral chelation will lead to some increased interest and further discussion and/or debate. Every physician should become adequately informed on the benefit/risk ratio of oral versus I/V chelation for any therapeutic indication, from hyperactivity to cirrhosis, to advise his or her patients adequately. There is much more to being a competent chelation specialist than simply providing I/V EDTA. As an advisor to ABCT, I will help to see that adequate oral chelation knowledge becomes a requisite for continued good standing.

Dr. Cranton (1) claims that I/V chelation is "safe and effective treatment" for coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis, while oral chelation is irresponsible and perhaps dangerous. I believe it is inaccurate generalizations such as these that make the future of chelation therapy so tenuous. We must accept the fact that I/V therapy is not reversing atherosclerosis in many of our patients. It is more accurate to state that it relieves symptoms by improving blood flow. We can hope it is also reducing vessel stiffness and most of us believe that.

I believe we can far more readily prove it to be an anti-aging therapy than prove its effectiveness in vascular disease. Unfortunately most patients still believe it is cleaning their arteries. With new research (2) suggesting that vitamin C is clogging arteries, we must appreciate just how difficult it is to prove vascular benefits in a broad spectrum of people without controlling the many variables. I predict more problems for the future of EDTA chelation therapy until it is completely repositioned and we stop claiming that we are "Bypassing Bypass" for all patients. This gives the wrong message.

Many of the major long-term benefits we routinely see in our chelation patients may be simply from lowering the levels of lead. The study by Blumer (3) showed that lowering lead levels provides real long-term benefits including a substantial reduction in heart attacks and cancer. His research strongly suggest that oral forms or rectal suppositories of EDTA, by effectively binding and/or removing lead and other toxic metals, may be far more beneficial than Dr. Cranton believes (1). If deleading is as valuable as I believe, the entirely hypothetical "risks" that he mentions become far more acceptable to any well-informed professional. Liposomal forms of oral EDTA, with up to 60 % percent absorption, are currently being developed. These will further necessitate the need for making any representations regarding the benefits and risks of oral chelation, versus parenteral forms of EDTA, completely truthful and accurate. We have a poisoned environment and we must find the most effective, convenient and affordable ways to help our patients deal with these toxins and improve their health.

There are reportedly several IV EDTA studies planned by researchers, some of whom are not consulting with ACAM and may really want to prove us wrong. If they pick the wrong parameters, and primarily focus on proof of reversal of atherosclerosis, I believe the outcome will be disastrous. New parameters, where we could conceivably document benefits in the majority of patients such as aortic stiffness, are just becoming recognized as a measurably serious risk factor, and interesting new tests for oxidative damage such as those for oxysterols are not yet clinically available. Thus they will not be considered in such studies.

We clearly help our patients, but not in the way they think we do. With our current technology and our incomplete understanding of the mechanisms of action of metal binding agents, I believe we are measuring the wrong parameters to position chelation therapy properly for widespread acceptance and for many more indications where we should be offering it. The over 60 boxes of research material recently released by Dr Rubin to Dr. Rozema I believe will convince physicians that we are grossly underutilizing chelation due to lack of information. We cannot restrict our patients to parenteral chelation for much longer, once these other clinical uses become widely known.

I fear that I/V EDTA chelation therapy will not soon become widely accepted as Dr. Cranton prematurely claims (1) as "a safe, effective … treatment for coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis and other age-related diseases." His misleading statement suggests to most observers that we believe that reversal of plaque is routinely occurring. This incenses the authorities that simply redouble their efforts to stop this therapy, perhaps at least partially due to the incorrect characterization of the benefits we routinely can deliver.

I believe the new information regarding inflammation and blood clotting requires an immediate extensive revision of the protocol for use of EDTA and a repositioning of IV chelation if this useful therapy is to survive. Once we accept the need for long-term anti-platelet, anti-coagulant and anti-inflammatory therapy to deal with the newly recognized molecular risk factors such as fibrinogen, ultra sensitive C-reactive protein, Intracellular Adhesion Molecule (ICAM) etc, then I believe we will all start better serving the needs of our patients. I believe that proper nutritional management of these risk factors can be achieved better with the nutritional strategies Dr. Cranton has attacked than with most of the standard drugs.

The limitations of current drug therapy from aspirin to heparin for managing these risk factors are widely known. For example, page 407 of the American Heart Associations report entitled "Vulnerable Atherosclerosis Plaque", states that these drugs "cannot completely prevent" heart attacks because they interfere only partially with the coagulation system. Yet over 3000 die each year from ingesting aspirin and over 20,000 are hospitalized with the complications associated with the largely ineffective and dangerous drugs now used to continuously "treat the blood stream" as we now recognize is essential if we are to reduce heart attacks and strokes significantly.

Therefore I recommend natural products in order to provide safe and effective alternatives to the standard impotent blood thinning drugs. I recommend a broad spectrum of safe products that include garlic and eicosapentaenoic acid. Published research suggests that oral EDTA favorably influences hypercoagulability, particularly if given with sulfated polysaccharides, which in at least one report (4) produced a heparin-like effect. Such "oral chelation" products have been used by some chelating physicians for over 15 years without any evidence of the adverse effects Dr. Cranton hypothesizes (1) and many attribute their low incidence of heart attacks to these products.

The fact that rotifers treated with EDTA live 50% longer and sperm cells live generations longer while receiving EDTA by other than an intravenous route convinces me that Dr. Cranton is entirely wrong in claiming it is only safe when given intravenously. We know that thousands of people have been receiving oral EDTA in quantities of 800 mg or more daily for well over 15 years without developing any signs or symptoms of the trace element deficiencies he suggests, based on the one patient he describes. We know that chickens fed a zinc-deficient diet eliminate all signs and symptoms of deficiency with the simple addition of EDTA to their diet (5). We know that the average daily intake of EDTA from our food supply is 15-50 mg daily. This is added to foods to help prevent the oxidative degradation of essential nutrients by simply binding to the free transition and heavy metal ions.

I am so convinced by the long-term safety studies of EDTA that I choose to provide my patients with this same long-term protection against oxidative damage. I believe that the approximately 95% of EDTA we do not absorb similarly helps to prevent the oxidative degradation of bile salts and other contents of the intestine, and therefore logically may help to reduce colon cancer. We know that the most abundant chelator in the body is albumen and the higher the level the longer we generally live. I believe that in our toxic environment with reportedly an average of 1000 times more lead in bones today, that we all have a relative deficiency of metal binding substances. I choose to employ oral chelators, such as garlic and EDTA to diminish the harm done by excessive levels of unbound, toxic and transition metals. I believe this is the reason that we routinely see life prolongation in the experimental models studied with long-term. I have a website (gordonresearch.com) that provides references that I believe clearly refute Dr. Cranton’s position and explains how I believe oral chelation should be viewed along with a few of the references.

GF Gordon, MD, DO, MD(H)

708 E Hwy 260, Payson, AZ 85541-3819

References:

(1) Cranton EM. Guest Editorial: What About Oral Chelation? J of Adv in Medicine Winter 1999;Vol 12; No 4:237-39

(2) Dywer JH. Vitamin C Supplements May Promote Athersclerosis (as reported in Reuters Medical News. American Heart Association 40^th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention; March 2, 2000, San Diego, CA.

(3) Blumer W, Reich T: Leaded gasoline – a cause of cancer. Environmental International. 3:465-71, 1980

(4) Windsor, E, Cronheim, GE. Gastro-Intestinal Absorption of Heparin and Synthetic Heparinoids. Nature 1961;Vol 190; No 4772:263-64

(5) Vohra F and Kratzer, FH. Influence of various chelating agents on the availability of zinc. J. Nutrition; 82:249-56, 1964