CHELATION THERAPY

WHAT ABOUT BYPASS SURGERY?

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 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. Arteriogram 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 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 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 compared to bypass.

Having surgery didn’t improve the chances for most patients to live longer, live healthier 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 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 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; sometime 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 surgical 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 work and 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.

WHY CAN’T CHELATION BE TAKEN BY MOUTH IN PILL FORM INSTEAD OF BY INTRAVENOUS INJECTION?
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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 chelated 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 LEACHING CALCIUM OUT OF ATHEROSCLEROTIC PLAQUE?
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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 when taken on a Chelation therapy produces its major health benefits. The fact that EDTA does reduce some circulating 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 relate toxic metals, lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, aluminum and 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 greatly over simplified explanation of what actually occurs. For those of you which a decided interest in the scientific technicalities you can refer to the article entitled Scientific rational for EDTA Chelation Therapy : mechanism olfaction by Elmer Mcranton : 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."

WHAT OTHER DISEASES MIGHT BE BENEFITED BY CHELATION?
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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 improved 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 not 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.

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