Posted on 11/14/2012 10:42:15 PM PST by neverdem
Critics not persuaded that metal-snaring treatment works.
With millions of Americans regularly using complementary medicines, researchers usually applaud efforts to test and debunk folk treatments such as echinacea, a herbal supplement often deployed against the common cold. But what if a trial shows that an alternative therapy might work?
That is the case for a study funded by the US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. The trial hints that a fringe therapy intended to sop up metal ions in the blood might reduce participants’ risk of heart attack. Critics are attacking both the rigour of the study and the records of some of its investigators, complicating the NCCAM’s efforts to answer charges from some researchers that it funds quackery, and raising questions about whether the centre’s US$128-million annual budget is being spent wisely.
The Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) was a 10-year, $31.6-million study involving 1,708 participants at 134 centres. It aimed to test whether weekly infusions of a salt of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) can lower the risk of repeat heart attacks. EDTA is a chelating agent: the molecule is peppered with electron-rich nitrogen and oxygen atoms, which can grab and hold onto positive metal ions (see picture). The US Food and Drug Administration has approved one salt, calcium disodium EDTA, to treat lead poisoning.
Proponents of chelation therapy for heart disease initially speculated that EDTA could also cleanse the blood of calcium ions, a component of the atherosclerotic plaques that block blood vessels. But evidence against that hypothesis led them to suggest alternative mechanisms, for example that the molecule captures other metals, preventing heart-damaging inflammation. In spite of the uncertainty, the treatment is already big business: a 2007 US government survey estimated that, every...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Alllopaths are terrified of alternative treatments. As usual they play the quackery card and do everything possible to torpedo any research that threatens their rice bowl.
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FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Sorry, but this helps to illustrate why I get so frustrated with MDs conducting medical research. Any biochemist could tell you that the main use of EDTA in the lab is to stop the activity of enzymes that rely on cations. *If* EDTA chelation therapy is really having an effect on heart health, it could be from inhibiting overactive enzymes that are damaging the cardiovascular system.
The Nature article shows how difficult human studies can be and trying to do one by folks that do crystal therapy puts the whole thing in the nut case category.
Regardless of the mechanism, the therapy can really help people avoid bypass surgery.
It helped my father for 20 years.
Follow the money. Lot more money to be made in stints and by pass operations than routine chelation treatments. And they no way cost upwards of a $1000 a treatment. I stopped reading right there. I do one a month for about $80.
Probably no way to prove the efficacy as regards to heart disease because every human is different. My personal observation is that I’ve seen it keep some people alive. Most people I see do it do so as a last resort. They’ve been told by their cardiologists, there’s nothing else to do. Most all have already had a bypass or two.
I’ve been chelating for 10 years and am now almost 70. Never has any heart disease although all my family has and i have the usual so called symptoms, Type II, high cholesterol, and elevated BP. All treatable by drugs pushed by traditional medicine. I take none of these drugs. I don’t know if EDTA works for sure but at least I get rid of the lead, calcium, mercury and a few others. Its my $80 to spend the way I want. Besides I know I’m on the Obumacare chopping block.
It can be dangerous as far as the metal-chelating effects are concerned.
There was a case a few years back when a young girl died from cardiac arrest after a doctor had prescribed EDTA, I think he did it because she had been exposed to high levels of insecticide, something like that.
I knew even after hearing a short blurb on the news what had happened, she had ended up getting the Sodium form of EDTA, not the Calcium form.
The Sodium form is very effective at removing free calcium from the bloodstream. As her calcium levels dropped, her heart stopped, you need balanced amounts of calcium and magnesium to have a good heart rhythm.
For an adult, it probably would not have been much of a problem. But for a growing child, with very high calcium demands, it was a disaster.
Fillings...
So true. I went to my doctor this week and she said that perhaps some of my past problems stemmed from taking digestive enzymes, which I had only begun in the past 2 weeks and which she confused with Probiotics. Actually, the enzymes have helped me a great deal.
But whatever poison Big Pharma wants to dish out, that’s fine. Until the drug goes off the market for killing people. Then they say, Oh, that’s unfortunate.
Good info and links. I’d like to join that list. Thanks!
Here is my anecdotal evidence. 1n 1995, my neighbor was being tested for a blockage. During the test, the wire hit the blockage, bent, and pierced the vein. So, it was very painful and he said, “Get me the H out of here.” He came home, and began chelation because of a friend doing it. He never had surgery, is now 77 years old, and works as hard as he ever did. Once a month he travels about 100 miles away for his treatment. Takes an hour or 2 and he is done.
Having had 3 heart attacks myself I can tell you with absolute certainty that this stuff, EDTA works and works well. It’s essentially liquid plumber for your arteries.
Cardiovascular medicine is BIG business and if they used this miracle cure they’d be out of business.
Your comment reminds me of this story:
The Scientific Method
I heard a humorous story this morn from a Doctor buddy of mine while discussing “Global Warming”, it goes like this:
The Scientific Method
A scientist was showing a colleague how he could make a Grasshopper jump on command. He pulled the grasshopper from his cage put him on the lab table and demanded it JUMP! Sure enough the grasshopper jumped.
He then pulled off one of the grasshoppers legs and again commanded it to JUMP! which it did. Each time he pulled off another leg and although not as well the Grasshopper jumped when ordered.
The Grasshopper was down to one leg but miraculously when commanded to jump still managed to accomplish the feat.
The scientist then pulled off the last leg and ordered the Grasshopper to JUMP!....nothing, again, JUMP!..... nothing.
The scientist then took out his log and wrote
Conclusion: “I have definitively proven that a Grasshoppers hearing appararatus is located in it’s legs.”
Have any of you tried iodine supplementation?
Have any of you tried iodine supplementation?
Ping
THe similar version of the story:
Scientist and frog. Yells at the frog to jump and slaps the ground, frog jumps.
Amputates front leg, yells “Jump!” and slaps the ground, frog jumps.
Scientists amputates second front leg, yells “Jump!” and slaps the ground, and the frog jumps.
Then the scientist amputates one of the remaining back legs, yells “Jump!” and slaps the ground, frog jumps.
The last leg is amputated, the scientist yells “Jump!” but this time, the frog doesn’t jump.
Scientist concludes: “If you cut off all the legs of a frog, they will go deaf.”
My ex father in-law 25 years ago was a big man and got sick and was down to skin and bones and had been to dozens of doctors and close to death, was asked to see a doctor who did Chelation Therapy.
At the time I thought he would live a few more days. He started Chelation Therapy and it was like a miracle. He totally recovered.
Though the years I have read alot about Chelation Therapy.
Fact is if everyone would use Chelation Therapy the average life would be prolonged 10 to 20 years.
Why is it not use more widely? POLITICS!!! Socail Security would really have a problem if we all live longer.
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