The complex, of the organic molecule, when it surrounds a metal nullifies the reactive charge on the metal which is what causes certain metals to have undesirable reactions.  Again, this chelation complex was not invented in a laboratory; it was discovered as existing in nature.  It is a part of nature and it is a part of us.  Examples of chelation chemistry existing in nature include chlorophyll which is a chelate of magnesium, hemoglobin which is a chelate of iron, vitamin B12 which is a chelate of cobalt.  The coenzyme, cytochrome C, and the enzymes, catalase and peroxidase, are chelates of iron.

Chelation therapy as a medical treatment, in part, is the use of a chelating agent (organic molecule) introduced into the body, ideally as an infusion (intravenously).  As it circulates around the body, suspended in the bloodstream, it will attract and surround a metal ion.  The resulting complex, chelating agent (organic molecule) and the surrounded metal ion will eventually pass through the kidneys.  The kidneys recognize this complex as not being food and not needed or wanted and it is filtered from the bloodstream through the kidneys into the urine and then eliminated from the body.  More in a moment about why the activity of deburdening the body of minerals and metals can be so therapeutic.

The consideration of using this chelation chemistry therapeutically in man began to be formulated in the era around World War II as an antidote for arsenic-containing poison gasses.  Arsenic is a metal, that if immobilized, would decrease the effectiveness of the poison gasses.  Around the same time, the chelating agent EDTA (ethylenediamine tetra-acetate acid) appeared on the scene in 1947.  Studies were done in Georgetown University and at Walter Reed Army Hospital on patients utilizing the chelating agent EDTA.  An entirely different application of chelation therapy in vascular disease and related disorders began to be reported in the medical literature around 1950.  Back to minerals and why they are so important in health and in disease.

Energy production is the most basic and essential activity in the body.  Impaired energy production will result in impaired health and is a major factor in the development of chronic degenerative diseases and the aging process as well.  The body’s energy is a composite of cellular energy production.  An average body has approximately 7,000 billion cells.  In order for cellular energy to proceed effectively and efficiently, enzymes must be present.  Enzymes are proteins which accelerate the cellular chemical reactions that result in the cellular energy production.  There are hundreds of enzymes.  This enzymatic reaction must have a coenzyme or cofactor to have an effective reaction.  Many coenzymes must have a mineral and/or a vitamin as an essential ingredient.  Magnesium and zinc, for instance, are coenzymes necessary for hundreds of cellular chemical reactions, so….if there is a deficiency of an essential coenzyme mineral it blocks the enzyme needed to insure that the cellular chemical reaction happens and that determines the cellular function, and consequently the health and function of the organ and other systems where the malfunctioning cells are located.

There is yet another way in which minerals affect health.  We have just learned of the essential nature of certain minerals in cellular health and therefore, body health.  Energy production of all kinds depends on this activity.  Toxic minerals can compete for positions with the enzymes.  Toxic metals such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, uranium and others are particularly adroit at replacing the essential mineral (magnesium, zinc and others) on the cellular receptors.  This toxic mineral (wrong coenzyme/cofactor) prevents the enzyme from being active; therefore, the cell energy and function suffers and the body’s health and function suffer,  disease ensues and symptoms eventually follow and resulting symptoms are the central concern of standard medical treatment.

A chelation therapy program, as one of its modes of action, provides a solution for mineral imbalances, both essential and toxic, increasing the essential minerals and decreasing the toxic minerals and metals.  A chelation therapy program is a common sense comprehensive program that when properly designed and followed can restore health, cellular health resulting in increased energy and bodily health.

What is the take away here?  There is the obvious take away but then there is the “how do we use this to sell more drugs?” take away.  If you are a pharmaceutical company selling cholesterol lowering drugs you are thinking one way and if you are honest and a doctor or patient you should take another view.  It is a serious threat to your health because the die-hards businessmen and drug companies think we are not lowering cholesterol enough!!  That is completely lame.  Drug companies and insurance companies want the cheapest way to treat you!  But are years and years of taking drugs that cost a great deal over time coupled with the prospect of a hospitalization due to heart problems really the least expensive? 

This study is important in its implications for the individual patient.  The other important data to keep in mind is the steep rise in elderly people (and the not so elderly) who have developed Alzheimer’s disease.  Have they taken cholesterol lowering drugs?   Couple these data together and you have some answers as to what might be happening with our health profiles in this country.

In clinical practice the doctors, in a rush to see as many people as possible, take the easy way out.  The guidelines and “standards of care” determine the prescription of a cholesterol lowering drug in the case of someone with “high” cholesterol or heart disease.   You do not have to have much face time when you do a blood test for cholesterol and prescribe a drug and send the person on his way with advice to stop eating foods that drive cholesterol up.  It is fast, cheap and easy. 

Here is what should be happening; a physician with a thorough education knows the liver produces cholesterol and the body needs it for health.  He knows that cholesterol is a major constituent of every cell membrane in the entire body.  He knows cholesterol is protective of the nervous system and the basic building block of hormones and vitamin D.  A very important substance for health!  He also knows the likely causes of heart problems and looks for them.  He knows heavy metals are implicated in the development of high blood pressure and found in the muscle wall of the heart at autopsy in people with some forms of heart disease.  He will offer diagnostic tests that look at toxic metals and mineral nutrient status of his patients.   He knows ionic calcium (not the kind in bones) gets stuck in the muscle wall of the artery and in plaque causing “hardening of the arteries”. If he is really good he will recommend or provide IV chelation therapy to lower the levels of lead, ionic calcium, antimony, cadmium and other metals throughout the vascular system improving over all circulation.  One other benefit for the doctor is the happiness of people who feel great and are active and healthy.  Be a hero, do what is right with the scientific evidence provided by this study.  

Chelation therapy can be used as a treatment for heart disease, or a preventive measure by lowering heavy metals in the body including ionic calcium, and as a supplemental treatment when surgery or drugs have been or are being utilized.

This retrospective study was of 220 patients from 8 outpatient centers; five from the US and one center each from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Brazil.  The average patient age was 64, 72% were males and 18% were smokers.  The average number of chelation treatments 58. 

In a three-year follow-up period the expected outcomes in patients with coronary heart disease treated only with conventional treatments would be 15 heart attacks and six deaths.  This chelation study showed this group of patients who had undergone chelation therapy programs, as a comparison, to have zero heart attacks and zero deaths, although 4 patients had strokes, they recovered well.  Compared with similar patient populations treated with conventional therapies, patients who also were chelated had a 93.6% lesser need for angioplasty and 62.5% reduced need for CABG( bypass surgery).  Of the patients that initiated treatment with symptoms, 68.7% had complete resolution of symptoms. 

You would think a medical treatment with these kinds of results; that has been utilized in clinics across the world for over 45 years, would receive wide acceptance and be available to anyone who would choose the discipline of the standard protocol.  Not the case.  Who would oppose patients using few drugs and doing little surgery?  The field of medicine is many things and one thing it is for sure, is big business.  Like the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry it serves a basic, constant need in life and therefore is a huge industry.  It is a jealous industry putting special interests ahead of patient outcomes and care.  We need more choice to direct our own medical care and we need to take our bodies back.   

We say let the patient, with full knowledge of the real choices in health care, choose their doctors and their own treatments.  

 Contact us for a copy of the study discussed, “Subsequent Cardiac and Stroke Events in Patients with Known Vascular Disease Treated with EDTA Chelation Therapy.”  info@drmaulfair.com

 They gave us the best of childhoods, protected from problems and left to run barefoot collecting toads and frogs, creating the surefoot club, and watching Disney and Lassie together on Sunday evenings was life for us, the boomers.   Most of us had Moms at home, family dinners and numerous neighborhood friends growing up in the suburbs running wild and free with dinner at home every evening.  We celebrated every holiday and birthday with our extended family, my Mom’s sisters and brothers who lived close by.  That was 24-25 people for dinner with linens and china around the big tables and of course – at the kids’ table- red jello with bananas and fresh whipped cream. Yikes!

I am so thankful for this now and love the photos and linens and the Swedish Coffee pot Mom always used for those family dinners, but it was not always so.  As a young woman I could not wait to leave and experience life apart from the protection of this life, I yearned for other cultures and for other places, bored with the security and sameness.  The university and travel were a very bid deal to me.  So here we are, finding ways to help these leaders who gave us so much and who are not doing so well these days and confronting the fact that our society has somehow misplaced these wonderful days,  no longer offering our children carefree childhoods.

The one thing we could do for ourselves is prevent the horrible outcomes memory problems, Alzheimer’s, cause.  People afflicted are very hard to care for and this is a problem many more families are facing as the disease is prevalent.  Professionals working in the field do not have the answers as to why this disease develops; and of course drugs used to “treat” the problems are not effective.  Seems funny to me that anyone who has a loved one who is loosing their mind would think that more toxins are the answer.  The ones needing the drugs are the caregivers!  Just kidding.  My Mom is drug free and she has been since the onset.  She does not have outbursts and she does not object to direction and control.  Although she does not originate communication very often she can read out loud with her big print books.  When you think about it, reading is just copying what you see and requires no original thought.  She does tell you with her eyes what is happening and she can respond to pain, her fingers curling on one hand hurt when you try to uncurl them.  When I was feeding her lunch last week she was gazing over my shoulder at someone at the next table who was acting up.  She looked back at me with this impish expression in her eyes and we started to laugh, really laugh, and we actually had no idea why.  Love that.  We just laughed.  It was good to be together.

If all our sophisticated medical science cannot come up with the reason why the brain becomes “tangled” physically and people with Alzheimer’s just continue to worsen until they forget how to swallow and then forget how to breathe, perhaps toxins and their effects should be considered as a factor.  Medical science seldom looks at the effect of all the toxins we are exposed to contributing to disease.  They study one or two and never consider the total exposures and what these chemicals could cause when combined.  Remember Crisco and boxed cake mixes?  Do you read the labels on “manufactured food”?  We should all start because this disease takes the cake for creating trouble for everyone who loves you.  Real trouble.  I shudder to think of those who do not have strong family ties, it is gruesome.  Why not take control of our lives and start to pay attention to the things that keep us healthy instead of looking for treatments after the fact.  Nutrient dense organic foods could go a long way in helping supply your body with essential nutrients.  Avoiding  sources of contamination and utilizing chelation therapy to remove heavy metals makes sense to me.  I am my mother’s daughter.

Let us straighten out the confusion for you in a very brief form you can continue to research should you be so inclined.  I will provide a list of websites for you and you can find them through our links.  But first, please realize we are involved in the traditional use of chelation therapy in our medical clinic for the prevention and the treatment of circulatory problems related to overloads of heavy metals and ionic calcium (a form of calcium that is not the type in your bones but rather an altered form of calcium that is deposited in arteries and other tissues making them “stiff” and damaging them).  We are very biased toward the proper use of chelation therapy as supervised by physicians who are extensively trained in its use and we come by this bias because of Dr. Maulfair’s forty-year track record in achievement of clinic results for his patients who had serious health problems or wanted to prevent them.  He has the respect of many other physicians  because they see the benefits of chelation therapy programs in their mutual patients.  We are experienced and biased.  Our program is comprehensive and follows the protocol accepted by many physicians’ organizations and associations and accrediting bodies.  Further, Dr. Maulfair does not agree with the use of oral chelation supplements and has written an article delineating the reasons why. 

The main chelating ”drug”, not the usual definition of a drug as it is a synthetic amino-acid and not a toxin, is ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid, EDTA.  You would be most familiar with this if you read labels on manufactured foods as it is often in the ingredients as a preservative, it inhibits oxidation, but also it is the “goo” you will see at the bottom of  the tube used in a blood draw at your doctor’s office.  Gee.  Wonder why it is in the blood tube?  Because EDTA acts as an anti-coagulant preventing the blood from clotting and being unusable in a test.  Wow, anti-coagulant properties, think about it.  You see, EDTA is one the few substances that can be introduced into the body but not changed by the chemistry of the body.  It has a negative charge and therefore attracts metals with a positive charge and combines with them (chelates) and leaves the body through the kidneys.  Simple.  It is very effective as one part of a comprehensive treatment program  in improving vascular health therefore restoring delivery of nutrients and oxygen to damaged tissues and removing the toxins that contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease.

Wish it were simple to creat an understanding for you because based on some news lately you would not choose chelation if all you did in research were to read those articles.  Here is one for you.  There is an entire chapter on chelation therapy in a recent medical text, a huge thing of wonder published by Saunders called Cardiovascular Drug Therapy.  Were the FDA scientists or you to read this chapter you would learn a great deal of the mechanisms of EDTA chelation therapy;  its opening paragraph…”The complex pathophysiologic cascade of the development of atherosclerosis, with its major stages of lipid oxidation initiating vascular wall damage, ensuing coagulation, and underlying cell death with calcification, poses a therapeutic challenge.  That these individual processes exist simultaneously at varied sites limits the applicability of therapeutic agents targeted to one or another component of the disease progression.  In this respect, EDTA chelation therapy has an implicit advantage in that it can favorably influence all facets of the disease development.   Thus, it can also provide an alternative to the combination of drugs administered to attain a multiplicity of therapeutic effects.”

Check out the International College of Integrative Medicine website and ours for links and more information.  There is much to learn and we sincerely hope you realize medicine is a huge business, it is heavy controlled and due to those factors hard to find the truth and treatments that may save your life.

The other news this week involved a study that exposed the fact of children being much more likely to be labeled with ADHD and drugged if they were the youngest in the class.  That’s right.  These kids are guilty of being born in the fall and therefore somewhat younger and perhaps more immature than other classmates.  Gee, a penalty for being young is a drug everyday.  With this news of course follows paragraphs of the failure of these drugs to help in the long run and showcases the horrendous side effects.

I hope this news means more people will take the time to consider new approaches, or  in the case of students, old approaches of educating kids instead of drugging them.   We had hard to handle people in every classroom I have ever been in and the teachers were the answer.  Good teachers.  In the case of depression and other mental problems how about a searching physical looking for deficiencies of nutrients or toxic exposures or undiscovered physical illness, all of which can give a person a hopeless and depressed feeling.  Let’s do more.  Five minutes and prescription pad is not helping.  Tons of money in your pocket for talks given to other doctors is being exposed and so are the junkets to exotic places for meetings. 

One day everyone will have the kind of medical I enjoy.  A doctor who listens and cares for me and does not offer me drugs but rather wonders why I have symptom and finds out whats up.  When you solve the problem of malfunctioning of the body and handle that there is no need to give a person a toxin.  All drugs are toxins as far as your body’s response to them.