Heavy metals are everywhere in our environment, but how do we keep them out of our bodies?
On today’s episode of the Health Quest Podcast, Dr. Sal is talking about chelation therapy and its role in removing heavy metals from our bodies.
We’re all unintentionally exposed to heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium through air, water, and soil, and these substances can be harmful to our health. Chelation therapy utilizes an amino acid called EDTA to reduce the body’s burden of heavy metal toxins and improve physiological functions. This man-made synthetic amino acid is used for food preservation and has a fascinating “claw-like” action that helps dissolve unwanted substances to be excreted from the body.
Dr. Sal explains the effects of chelation therapy on the cardiovascular system, from its role in preventing and reversing atherosclerosis to improving blood circulation and reducing blood clot formation.
Key takeaways:
1. Chelation Therapy: Dr. Sal explained how EDTA can effectively remove heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and aluminum from our bodies. By clearing these toxins, chelation therapy aids in preventing and reversing atherosclerosis, improving blood circulation, reducing blood clotting mechanisms, increasing energy production in the cells, and exerting antiviral and antioxidant effects.
2. Identifying Heavy Metal Contamination: The episode shed light on the rampant presence of heavy metals in our environment, from air and water to soil. Dr. Sal emphasized the profound impact of lead contamination and its widespread prevalence, underscoring the necessity of addressing heavy metal exposure for overall well-being.
3. Mitigating Health Risks: Understanding the detrimental effects of heavy metals, especially in increasing free oxygen radicals and causing oxidation of low-density lipoproteins, points to the critical need for detoxification processes and chelation therapy to counteract these health risks.
Dr. Sal [00:00:00]:
Aspirin, which everybody takes aspirin as a blood thinner, only works 30% of the time. So we're being fooled by the sense that taking an aspirin helps as far as being a good blood thinner, when in essence, the key is is to keep your arteries clean. Welcome to the Health podcast, your guide to god's will for good health. Hello. My name is doctor Sal, and I've been a practicing doctor and surgeon for well over 30 years. And my goal for each episode is that you'll be able to have your mind transformed to god's design for good health and affect the way that you eat and the way that to live. If you're new here, we release a new episode every week. And if you enjoy the content, would you please leave us a good review? Because it really helps our ratings and allows our show to reach out to more people with in turn to being able to help these individuals so that they can change their lives as well.
Dr. Sal [00:01:09]:
We'd like to thank you for your support. And on today's episode, we'll be talking about chelation therapy and heavy metals. So let's dive right on in to today's health quest. So chelation therapy and heavy metals. Basically, chelation therapy is to alleviate heavy metals. That's what it's been FDA approved for. And the heavy metals that we're talking about are metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, tin, aluminum, and there's a few others. And these are pretty much ubiquitous.
Dr. Sal [00:01:48]:
In other words, they're in our air, they're in our water, and they're in in our soil. And believe it or not, folks, we are breathing this stuff in. Let's take lead for instance. That's very ubiquitous. It's coming from the utilization of coal to generate energy, but gasoline as well. Now today, we have unleaded gas. But many years ago, we used to fill up our gas tanks, and I remember that because I was a kid back in the seventies. We had regular leaded gas.
Dr. Sal [00:02:18]:
So if we really wanna improve the quality of generating more electrical energy, nuclear power is is really the way to go. It is the safest. It is the cleanest. And the only problem is is how do you get rid of the uranium after it's being used. Well, I talked about many years ago putting it on a rocket and launching it into space. Somebody argued with me one time. Says, yeah. But if it goes into the sun? I says, yep.
Dr. Sal [00:02:46]:
It goes into the sun. The sun has about a 100,000,000 nuclear explosions every 60 seconds or every 60 minutes that a spacecraft carrying maybe a 100 pounds of uranium isn't gonna do anything to the sun. But, anyways, what we've noted is that we have at least a 1000 times more lead in tissue than we did in the preindustrial era. Doctor Deborah Schomberg wrote an article in the JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association, Journal stating that most of this lead gets concentrated treated in a lot of the hard tissues such as the bone. And once the bone gets filled with lead, it has a tendency to leak out and get into the soft tissue. The New England Journal of Medicine years ago, there was a quote that if everyone were to get chelated, you might eliminate renal failure. We've noticed lead, and this is very interesting because in the article, they identified lead in both the Arctic and in in the Antarctic where there's nobody living there. And these individuals were literally wearing space suits because They were trying to eliminate any contamination either from a strand of hair or even some dead cells or even your nose dripping that could contain lead so as to make certain that what they were collecting from the Arctic and the Antarctic was pure and noncontaminated.
Dr. Sal [00:04:16]:
It goes to show you how much just let alone is found everywhere around the world. So chelation therapy, and what is it? Well, chelation therapy is basically using an amino acid called Ilelindiaminetetracetic acid. And it provides benefits reducing the body's burden of toxins resulting in improved physiologic functions. It's a manmade synthetic amino acid. It's used as a food preservative, believe it or not. And you might see that on some of your labels when you take a look at foods either in jars or in cans. In chelation in Greek means to claw. So let's talk about not how its its benefits and its effects on the cardiovascular system.
Dr. Sal [00:05:02]:
EDTA or chelation therapy basically prevents and reverses atherosclerosis, cirrhosis, which then improves blood circulation, reduces the blood clotting mechanisms or any formation of blood clots, and it stimulates the chondria to increase energy, and it's also used as an antiviral as well as an antioxidant. So there's a lot of benefits to this, but let's talk about atherosclerosis. Well, atheromas are build basically, the buildup of fatty tissue underneath the lining of the blood vessels. But atherosclerosis is where you get a calcium buildup in the lining of the vessels. Well, chelation therapy, when you're administering the EDTA, claws the calcium. Has it dissolved within the EDTA, in the soft tissue where the calcium doesn't belong and basically excretes it through the kidneys. Now there was an Italian study that was done in 1957, which showed that it reduced cholesterol, especially the, low density lipoproteins. It was used at Providence Hospital here in Detroit back in the late fifties, and that was around the time when the scientific and medical community was studying a great deal on cardiovascular disease, and that's when open heart surgery started coming out.
Dr. Sal [00:06:26]:
Well, Providence Hospital, there was a physician there that started using chelation therapy to reduce these atherosclerotic plaques in the heart and elsewhere in the body. Unfortunately, by 1961, he died in a car accident, and he was a very strong advocate. But, unfortunately, health, when he passed away, nobody carried the torch to continue with is in the philosophy and his work. A study at Wayne State University in 1960 Evan, where doctor Wortman used it and actually proved how calcium was removed from the vessels using EDTA. So we have enough evidence, and this is there's a lot more evidence. I'm just bringing up some things, particularly here in the Detroit area where a lot of the stuff was actually used significantly back in the fifties sixties. Blood circulation is improved. Now how does it do that? Well, the blood vessels produce a molecule called nitric oxide.
Dr. Sal [00:07:30]:
And in the old days, they called it the endothelial relaxing factor. It's a molecule or chemical nitric oxide which helps to relax the muscles of the vessels. And that's how you end up lowering your blood pressure. Now If lead levels are high, then the enzyme that converts our gene actually into nitric oxide, which is known as nitric oxide synthase. It doesn't work when these lead levels are high. So it impedes the effects of the enzyme nitric oxide from converting arginine to nitric oxide. Now nitroglycerin, I'm sure you've heard, given sublingual, eventually gets into the system, immediately converts into nitric oxide, and opens up the blood flow. So it, improves the decreased blood flow in people's hearts when they're actually having an anginal attack, or chest pain.
Dr. Sal [00:08:28]:
This way it gets blood circulating, through the coronary arteries, improving improving the circulation, and hopefully giving you some time to get the patient into the hospital. So again, once the blood flow is improved, It also decreases the blood pressure, and it's good overall to keep blood pressure low. As you know, long term elevation of blood pressure causes other issues, not only more cardiovascular disease, but also strokes. So what does it do with blood clotting? Well, by restoring the endothelial function. The calcium is reduced, and it also so helps to improve the nitric oxide buildup. But what's more is that The improvement of the endothelial lining also reduces the amount of thromboxane. And thromboxane is a chemical that's produced, It's basically a humoral response in which it's reduced, but thromboxane causes vasoconstriction and the adhesion of platelets. Now thromboxane is usually released, if you, for instance, cut yourself.
Dr. Sal [00:09:43]:
And the blood vessels identify that it's been cut, so there's trauma to the blood vessels. And the endothelial lining, the lining of the blood vessels then releases thromboxane to cause the blood vessels to constrict and platelets to form so it causes a blood clot so it keeps you from bleeding to death. Now by improving the cell lining of the arteries, it starts to secrete another chemical called prostacyclin. And prostacyclin is a vasodilator, and it also prevents or inhibits platelets from aggregating and forming blood clots. The other thing that it does too is is that also prevents white blood cells from binding to the lining of the arteries. And as you know, white blood cells or leukocytes are involved in inflammatory reactions, which then irritate the lining and cause more of this atherosclerosis. So what are some of the prostacyclin inhibitors? There's inhibitors like the trans fast that we had talked about in earlier podcast, which come from hydrogenated oils. So eating foods that have High levels of hydrogenated oils or trans fats will reduce the production of prostacyclin, which then allows thromboxane to get secreted and causes blood constriction, elevating blood pressure, and the the accumulation of platelets, which then forms blood clots.
Dr. Sal [00:11:17]:
One of the other causes of, prostacyclin inhibitors or prevention of prostacyclin in generation is cigarette smoking, folks. So cigarette smoking actually causes blood vessels to constrict and reduce, the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood to the soft tissue. And that's why if you'll notice, People who smoke a lot of cigarettes have a lot of wrinkles, particularly to the face because it constricts blood circulation to the face, therefore, depriving the skin, and the muscles of oxygen and nutrients. What about plasmin? Well, plasmin increases is is an enzyme that basically decreases or breaks up blood clots. So it's a blood clot dissolving enzyme, and it's made from plasminogen. So plasminogen gets converted into plasmin, and, of course, there's another enzyme that causes that. And that enzyme is called tissue plasminogen activator or TPA. Yay.
Dr. Sal [00:12:22]:
This is the body's natural way of destroying blood clots. Now folks, plasmin, which dissolves blood clots, works a 100% of the time. So let's make a reference here. That works a 100% of the time. And aspirin, which everybody takes aspirin as a blood thinner, only works 30% of the time. So we're being fooled by the sense that taking an aspirin helps as far as being a good blood thinner when, in essence, the key is is to keep your arteries clean by staying away from insults like the cigarette smoking, the trans fats, eating healthier fatty, fatty acids, which we talked about in our previous podcast even for other disorders like neurologic disorders. But that good healthy fats, your coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, fish oil, flaxseed oil, sunflower oil, and so forth. So these are better able to keep the lining of the arteries much in a better state of health where it puts out the better chemicals which causes vasodilation and prevention of blood clots.
Dr. Sal [00:13:35]:
Because If you go into the emergency room and, let's say, somebody's having a stroke or they're having a heart attack and they, identified that there's a blood clot in the artery. They'll give them, chemicals called urokinase or streptokinase. And, of course, They're able to do that in the emergency room, which will eventually dissolve those blood clots immediately. And the objective is to relieve them of any anginal or chest pain and reverse any of the symptoms that they're getting as a result of the stroke. Now EDTA chelation therapy with a compound called Keratinin. Carrageenan is a mucopolysaccharide from red algae, offers dramatic protection from blood clots. So We'll talk about this in a in a moment here because just taking those 2 naturally will prevent blood clots. But then again, as I said, if you're eating health, and you shouldn't really have too much of an issue particularly with the fish oil.
Dr. Sal [00:14:40]:
Now heavy metals that are trapped in our bodies increase free oxygen radicals or, reactive oxygen species. Now remember, these free oxygen radicals caused damage. It's like radiation. It just goes into different parts of the body and destroys cell membranes. That can disrupt the integrity of the DNA. But more so than that, they also cause the oxidation of low density lipoproteins. Oxidizing LDLs, okay, from oxysterols, which are your trans fats, It's it's the oxidized LDL that causes atherosclerosis. So you go to the doctor's office, your cholesterol level is high, You should be asking, what's the ratio of my HDL, my high density lipoproteins, to my LDLs? And then once you get that, you wanna know about the breakdown of the LDLs.
Dr. Sal [00:15:41]:
Well, is it the LDL, lipoprotein or apple protein a or b? The b is the worst one. And then you should ask them to do the oxidized LDLs because that's gonna tell you more, distinctly as to whether you're at high risk for developing atherosclerosis. High levels of cholesterol have really there's no correlation. They could say that it is, but they're not breaking it down into the actual bad cholesterol. So you got good cholesterol and you got bad cholesterols. The other thing that oxidizes your low density lipoproteins are excessive sugars and carbs and especially high fructose as corn syrup, which we've talked about in previous podcast. Remember, that causes ages, advanced glycosylated end products, which then basically cross links the LDL proteins, and then it oxidizes it, and then it causes damage to the endo health. Oxidized LDL initiates the immune response and macrophages, which are part of the immune response, which we've talked about in in a multitude out of other podcasts and macrophages that are all over the whole body, including the fat health, attack these oxidized its cholesterol health, or oxidized cholesterol that's in the, blood vessels, and they form these so called foam cells, and that contributes to the atheroma or the fatty buildup in the blood vessels and causes the blockage.
Dr. Sal [00:17:12]:
When it comes to infections, antiviral activity is of a low level property of EDTA, but it does lower the body's burden on herpes viruses, Epstein Barr viruses, and especially the retroviruses. Now remember, having these, you know, bacteria, we're always exposed to, but carrying these viruses around eventually causes inflammation. Inflammation then results in cardiovascular disease. So what are the different types of chelation, that's out there? Well, Sodium, EDTA was used for a number of years. That was the first one that was used, back even in the fifties. But it was irritating to the vein, and it was so it was dripped over 4 hours through the IV, and it removed about half of the metals. After that was taken out, it also removed, some of the minerals. So calcium, magnesium, zinc, and glutathione precursors had to be replaced at the time when they were doing this.
Dr. Sal [00:18:09]:
They later came up with calcium EDTA, which now could be given rapidly, usually within seconds. It increases the concentration in the rapid rate, into the bloodstream, which can now remove at least 90% of the heavy metals just on one therapy. And calcium is not so much of a concern, but still, we replenish the magnesium and some of the other nutrients as well as glutathione, lipoic acid, at least that's what I used to do, as well as the b complex and the selenium. Now if you don't wanna go in and get, an IV therapy. You could take it orally, but only about 15 to 20% gets absorbed daily. The beauty of that is, though, is it does travel down GI tract and eliminates any kind of heavy metals that are in the gastrointestinal system that could be affecting the, the gut bacteria or the microbiome. And then by the end of the month, if you're taking it every day, the dosage would amount to about 1500 milligrams, which is similar to one dose of IV chelation, EDTA. Now the mitochondria, we talked about the chondria.
Dr. Sal [00:19:21]:
That's the power plant of the cell. That's what generates the energy. Heavy metals bind to the outer membrane of the mitochondria, and it impedes the production of ATP. ATP is our gasoline. That's what generates the fuel that that our body needs in order to, for the cell and cell organs or the cell organelles, all the organs in the cell itself to function optimally. So what's my plan as far as chelation therapy and overall health restoration is to, number 1, chelate the patient and also put them through a detoxification, process, which is usually 2 days. And we talked out quest getting detoxi tech and in drinking about a gallon of that a day without any other foods and just cleaning out all these toxins since in your body as well as a heavy metal. During that process, we also want to, restore the gut's optimal function by, improving the ratio of good bacteria to bad bacteria, increasing the good bacteria period because the gut bacteria starts to control a lot of other aspects of our health in regards to, the neurotransmitters, the immune system, some and so forth.
Dr. Sal [00:20:38]:
So get rid of these toxins, improve the gut, and then get on a good healthy diet. I like the paleo diet, which is proteins and a lot of vegetables, your nuts, your fruits, consuming good health fats that we've talked about for as far as the oils are concerned. And do it in a form of an intermittent fasting where, let's say, your last meal is at 6 o'clock at night and not to have breakfast until 9 to 10 o'clock the following morning, giving yourself a good, fourteen, maybe even 15 hours. The objective with that is that during that fasting time, if there are any cells that are requiring or needing of some nutrients. What they'll do is they'll basically consume the dead cells that are in our body and can it it it's a way of cleaning our body and our system up. And so that approach on top of that, adding supplements to your diet is very important because as much as I advocate the consumption of vegetables and fruits, our soils in America are not of that good quality. So even organic stuff may be coming in from Mexico on or being picked too early before all the nutrients can actually get into these, these food products. So supplementing it with your antioxidants, As we talked about before, a, b complex, vitamin c, d, your vitamin e.
Dr. Sal [00:22:06]:
Vitamin k is very important. And then other supplements that I also mentioned or usually, prescribe to my patients when they have certain disorders because they may need a higher level of that. All of this combined will help to improve the overall physiologic functions of the body giving us optimum health. I wanna thank you so much for watching our show today. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a review and visit our website and social media accounts to connect with us more. If you have any questions about our health or your health regarding this episode, my email will be in the description below, and I'd be happy to answer in your questions. And if you'd like to see any of the sources of this research in this particular episode, it'll be available in the show notes in the description. Until next time, I'm doctor Sal.
Dr. Sal [00:22:59]:
Have a great day, and god bless.