Removing Mercury
(2003) I recently heard that the scientific director of Doctor’s Data, Dr David Quig, expressed his view that Ca EDTA does not chelate mercury.
Our protocol, as you know, has been to give oral chelators (like DMSA, Ca EDTA, garlic, ALA, vitamin C, etc) for a couple of days and then on the day of the challenge we have been giving oral DMSA, Ca EDTA, DMPS, etc, plus the I.V. Ca EDTA. We’ve had great yields of heavy metals. One time, however, without the addition of DMSA, we saw only high levels of lead coming out but low on mercury and the others, which was surprising because she had lots of amalgams. For the next two months or so, we put the patient on Ca EDTA and Essential Daily Defense (oral Ca EDTA). Later, with our full challenge, using both DMSA and DMPS, we saw that now the lead was low normal and the mercury levels were at the highest toxic level. I assume this was because of the addition of DMSA and DMPS we used to challenge her. I know also that Dr. Shelton and others have reported that the heavy metals seem to come off in layers.
Does this mean that the Ca EDTA and EDD were not getting at the mercury, at least while she had a lot of lead to be removed? So, is there any chelation effect for mercury with the Ca EDTA that we are using both by rapid IV administration and orally in the Essential Daily Defense product?
I’m very interested in how your answer to these questions because I’ve always believed that you are the trendsetter who is out there ahead of the curve.
David Quig, PhD is the technical director of Doctor’s Data and a good friend of mine and his comments are important but his interest is as a scientist, not as licensed HEALTH PRACTITIONER. Therefore, he does NOT share the same goals and needs that we have. We must meet patients’ expectations for improving their health, both safely and cost effectively, and this is far more complex than showing big numbers of mercury in a provoked urine specimen. There is much more to the story of optimal health.
Dr. Quig was recently speaking to a class at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and his comments against the value of Calcium EDTA, would unfortunately cause some to forget that those comments have little to do with my protocol which uses Essential Daily Defense with the synergy of several proven effective oral chelators including GARLIC, which frankly we believe is able over time to remove the mercury from the brain.
I fully agree that for provocative testing, to establish diagnosis, and in acute toxicity states, the extra expense and potential toxicity of DMPS and/or DMSA, either parenterally or orally, along with even Penicillamine etc. is fully warranted and clearly useful. However, it is my position that managing our massively increased body burden
of toxic metals today is a lifetime task.
There is NO known treatment that will safely remove our entire metal burden. When you stop chelation, all of the toxic metals are now PROVEN to re-accumulate in the "cleaner" tissues, as the more toxic tissues that never can be fully cleaned will download to the relatively cleaner tissues by passive diffusion. That is well understood by those who read all of my references on my website. For example, review the PowerPoint presentation I gave for IOMA, Nov. 6, 2002, and it will become clear that since optimal health requires some form of chelation for life, oral would be ideal and SAFETY becomes very critical. I state here that the combined effect of the safe non-toxic substances in EDD, are what I believe are consistent within the context of "FIRST, DO NO HARM".
So, if we are to practice good medicine, let’s look at risk to benefit ratio of every recommendation we are making. This requires that we determine what are the LONG TERM benefits from my recommended heavy metal detox program. A small part of the overall concept is really the lifelong ingestion of safe and cheap Ca EDTA and the other ingredients seen in EDD.
The article in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 23, 2003 proves that there are long term benefits from using CA EDTA intravenously in early renal failure in patients with increased lead levels. This lead lowering effect is also well documented to be readily achievable with ORAL calcium EDTA (400 references on my website). The article proves both long term SAFETY AND EFFICACY of Ca EDTA.
That fact is well established and there is NOTHING that can touch the almost 40 year documented safe use of EDTA in humans, world wide, with unparalleled SAFETY. Therefore, when we look at using a "stronger" treatment for anything other than diagnosis, if we understand that treatment implies long term use, then the burden is on the proponent of that protocol to show equal SAFETY and some greatly improved OUTCOME over my protocol, as there clearly is no other program that has either the same cost effectiveness and safety profile or offers substantial advantages not seen with my protocol. For example, the autistic child who languishes, on my protocol starts talking after a few of the stronger treatments, or the ALS patient stops the inexorable decline in function when the stronger chelator program is instituted.
If you are looking for a proven, beneficial, long term heavy metal detoxification management program, I have found the magic of organic garlic combined with malic acid, DL methionine, calcium EDTA in the unique clinically tested and proven formula for nearly 20 years as the BASIS of my heavy metal detoxification program. Essential Daily Defense, with over $10 million spent in just developing the anti-coagulant aspect of this life extending product, and over 400 references about the effectiveness of the oral Ca EDTA in dealing with several toxic metals, and good references as well as my clinical experience, now over 17+ years, regarding the mercury chelation effects of garlic make this MY first choice for long term protection and slow detoxification. Somehow patients all rapidly feel much better long before we have started to substantially lower their total body burden of mercury, yet we must remember in dealing with patients that they want and deserve results now.
Yes, even after years of taking this formula in some patients there will be a readily chelatable level of mercury that STRONG and potentially toxic chelators will dramatically reveal in their provoked urine test, but that fact, I fear, may prove nothing in terms of long term patient outcome, or in early response to the total health program that I employ where all this discussion about heavy metals is only a small part of my health promoting program. There is NO program that takes out all the toxic metals, so let’s have a frank discussion with the patients and let them decide when given all the options. I have some doctors that have used DMPS intravenously weekly or bi-weekly for YEARS, with which I personally would NEVER agree.
Quig is both right and wrong in what he says about EDTA. Wrong because it is a powerful chelator of mercury, look at any textbook on stability constants, where mercury is just under Chromium for its high stability constant with EDTA. Right because it is NOT as powerful at dealing with the easily chelatable stores of mercury found in many patients. However, that may have little to do with human health, as it may be the more tightly bound and difficult to remove that is important. The overall outcomes measure importance as it relates to PATIENT outcomes!
It all depends on what you want to do but never dismiss the fact that you need daily protection from the INCREASING mercury coming in from our diet and NOT taking Ca EDTA orally daily is ignoring the cheapest and safest way to hold mercury in the gut so that it is less absorbed into the body when we eat fish, drink water, etc.
I have great respect for Dr. Quig as a PhD scientist; he has his knowledge about how much mercury comes out and I have my knowledge of safely and cost effectively improving the health of my patients for over 45 years now.
I agree that from a pure numbers standpoint other chelators can attain much higher numbers that we see with my kinder, gentler approach; the issue will be what is BEST for the patients’ LONG TERM outcome? Since I am already 68 years of age I focus on preventing the big events like death, heart attacks, cancer, and providing the patients a higher level of health with higher energy to do our work while here, and trying to improve the symptoms for which the patient is consulting.
Let’s go into that issue. In my experience there are very few patients that only want a lowered total body burden of MERCURY! I believe actually that although mercury is certainly ONE of over 200 toxins that are significantly impacting our health, we cannot measure it in EVERYBODY. It may be more like the history of medicine that we have lived through. We have all lived in the era of Candida or Adrenal Insufficiency, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lyme disease, undiagnosed Hypothyroidism, Hypoglycemia or dental cavitations, etc. While all of those are VALID health problems, few people really SIGNIFICANTLY improved their quality of life merely by addressing that one issue with all of their energy and resources.
I fear that the Mercury issue is one more diagnosis that could become another fad to be replaced next year by understanding perhaps the real significance of SV40 infections that we all may carry as a result of Polio vaccines given in some cases to our parents. Thus, I doubt that anyone is coming to see the doctors that I train around the world saying, "get all my mercury out and I will be totally healthy".
Most of us are realistic enough to tell our patients that Mercury is only one issue. We still must deal with the total pathogen burden that they carry, which depresses their immune system partly as a result of all of the chemicals we PROVABLY carry today. These chronic infections that we all have lead to provable hypercoagulability and while we must deal with all of these simultaneously, in my experience to do the MOST we can for our patients, it is warranted to put the total pathogen burden AHEAD of total body heavy metal burden in terms of relative importance, since the microbes clearly are leading to hyperviscosity of blood, leading to relative ischemia and or anoxia of tissues.
I focus then on trying to develop an affordable approach that is user
friendly and I am trying to bring balance back to our approach so that all of our patients have their personal goals met. We are not here to prove that we can get more mercury out per visit than the next doctor’s protocol. We do not like the idea of finding that the poor guy died, but he did so with NO detectable remaining significant stores of lead or mercury!
I am convinced that the broad spectrum gentle effects of the products I have formulated for fighting this problem on a wide front will do MORE, if, for example, we use any form of symptom scoring (like the short form 36) rather than pushing the envelope to see large increases in mercury excretion, which in my estimation may in the long run mean very little. This is because I have seen studies and Gary Osborn, among others, has confirmed that after you think you have all the mercury out with DMSA or DMPS, you have really only begun the task.
This is because the actual stability constants for Mercury binding with Ca EDTA is nearly a magnitude greater than DMPS which only gets at the easily chelatable mercury. But there is mercury tied much more tightly, we believe even at the level of DNA, where homeopathy and my protocol still seem to show beneficial mercury releases after DMPS and DMSA have STOPPED working!
Thus, I am NOT sure that those big numbers on provoked testing are as accurate as we would hope. Some show little, yet at autopsy we find everyone has these toxic metals in HUGE quantities, so what are we really trying to do, avoid Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s? RNA based therapies will do far more along with a lifetime ingestion of safe effective natural anti-inflammatory therapy and gentle tying up of the free metals that catalyze the free radicals. This dose technically may NOT require actually seeing any mercury or lead coming out in urine or feces, but both routes of excretion are vital to drawing real conclusions to offer substantial biochemical protection against the increased levels of free radicals and depressed production of Nitric Oxide
Calcium EDTA when given repeated as rapidly administered IV is clearly getting a high enough concentration into the blood stream to help remove more tightly bound toxins, including mercury, which may be in smaller quantities, but we have reason to believe may be far more important in the overall healthy functioning of the patient. The entire story of chelation is not simply one of a numbers game, which again may have medical and legal usefulness in a diagnostic sense, and may make some patients eligible for third party reimbursement. For those purposes use Search on my website or look under Frequently Asked Questions. When there is justification, for example, in acute poisoning instances, it may be useful to use several chelators in aggressive levels for short term.
Thus, recording big numbers HAS value in establishing the "validity" of a diagnosis but they do NOT mean that you have done your job. I believe we have data to show that we can use excellent labs like Doctor’s Data and still show that after those big numbers are all back to LITTLE or no excretion that you have not even STARTED to really take out all of the mercury or whatever the hot topic happens to be at that time. I can make very strong cases for other metals such as lead exceeding mercury in OVERALL outcome importance, or iron, or cadmium or arsenic, so I am more of a consumer advocate here. I want the patients to have improved OUTCOMES as a result of their interventions with doctors. The doctors must give the patient as big a bang for their buck as possible, with REMARKABLE decreases in overall death rates being one of those goals.
Of course, Essential Daily Defense with the cysteine content of garlic and the dl methionine is protecting the body everyday we live on this dangerously polluted planet from many toxins, which may be MORE important than the size of the 6-hour dumps. I am into OUTCOMES and I am not convinced that patients on regular, parenterally administered, aggressive mercury programs are getting their money’s worth because that is an over fixation. However, I applaud the person that can find the SAFEST and most cost effective way to get some of the BIGGEST numbers. Those patients may be impressed enough to help us change things on this planet when they see that in spite of living as cleanly as they can, they, like everyone, are TOXIC, and this is impairing the health and vitality of everyone on earth.
Since I can prove that this is a LIFETIME problem, and since it is published that when you stop parenteral chelation treatments for lead for example, the benefits soon disappear. The bone store of lead NEVER really was significantly depleted. Passive diffusion simply downloads the lead burden back into the brain, heart, and other vital organs. I am certain that this will be shown to be true for all toxic metals.
Therefore, safe, lifetime treatment that makes you ALWAYS unloading MORE toxic metals than you are taking on really WINS if you use MY long-term outcome parameters. With my program you are also unloading many organic toxins as well, not just mercury or lead; that is why I have offered my protocol for the few that will take the time to understand all of this. For others, the use of strong chelators over a long time may not be justified. It may be useful to alert the patient to the fact that for mercury, we have proven substantial protection by tying up mercury in the body with aggressive short-term use of Selenium. This gives me confidence in my concept that I can prevent most of the adverse effects of mercury by continually having more chelation power in the bloodstream. This is, however, a topic for the future, perhaps at one of my conferences such as the one I am doing in Phoenix, April 2-6 at the Marriott Hotel.
Sincerely,
Garry F. Gordon, MD,DO,MD(H)
Related posts:
- Mercury Detox
- DMSA for Mercury Detox?
- DMPS Use for Mercury
- IV CaEDTA and DMSA vs. DMPS
- Chelating for Mercury in Amalgams
