Chelation Therapy

What are the possible side effects of Chelation Therapy?

Do you call death a "side effect" ? Orac gives an exampleAt least some chelation therapy removes calcium from the body, which can cause heart failure.

Yes, I would call death a side effect.I was just wondering if our resident chelation proponents knew about such side effects.

OMFG!They put EDTA into a person? Like, injected it? Into their blood?Is that ever a good idea? When we used it in chem 109 they were pretty specific that it was toxic.I mean, I read "chelation therapy", and I clicked the link because I was curious what they chelate with, because surely they wouldn't use EDTA, which is sort of the "famous" chelating agent, and I didn't know about any others... but that's exactly what they used. Is that common with this "therapy"?

Chelation is used in cases of severe heavy metal poisoning, including radionuclide ingestion. My impression is that it is an emergency measure.I gather that EDTA was abandoned in favour of other compounds because of adverse side effects. There is no telling what "alternative medicine" types might try, though.You are right, EDTA is a powerful complexer of metals, and would certainly bind many essential elements.

For mercury poisioning and such, yes. The sweet little lady that used to be my coworker here, though, had it applied as compresses to her skin to "remove toxins." The "practicioner" would examine the color of the compress after it had sucked those evil toxins through her (intact) skin to see which ones had been removed in that particular session. The vic.... er, patient asked me to observe one of these chelations once, but I declined. I was afraid of assault charges from the qua..... er, practicioner after the first couple of answers she would have had to my questions.And we always keep several hundred gallons of tetrasodium EDTA on the yard here, for oilfield applications. But I bet we charge less and show more results that that "healer" does.

DMSA if I remember correctly can cross the blood brain barrier but EDTA can deposit mercury into the brain but not excrete it from the brain.Hypothetically lets say Coragyps was exposed to mercury his tisssues has mercury bound but has not concentrated in his brain. If he would take EDTA before DMSA he might become one of those mad hatters.This is why if one choses to go to have EDTA they will not do it unless they first have their amalgams removed.In my opinion even if your mercury levels don't flag high personally think DMSA should be done first because EDTA has a problem of redistributing mercury into but not out of the brain.Maybe Coragyps lady friend had a perfect solution for exessive mercury that is to pull it out through the skin. It sounds like quakery but its better to pull it out of the body than redistribute it into the brain.In Coyagyps case if hes 60 years old likely he already has naturally removed some of his aquired mercury. Its believed by some that after 35 years the body removes approximately 50 percent. Even so I'd be very careful in respect to EDTA if say one suspects higher than normal mercury within ones tissues.P.S. However in respect to cleaning the arteries there might be nothing that compares EDTA. My mother was a skeptic too until a elderly neighbor on deaths row had chelation. The elderly lady was told she was going to die everyone expected her to die but instead she beat the odds by having chelation.

It's hard for me to imagine how that would work. EDTA chelates by forming chemical bonds with metal ions in solution, which means that it has to physically contact the metals. Like the way flypaper only works on the flies that land on it; it has no effect on the flies outside the room.EDTA on some kind of poultice would only complex with the ions right there on the skin; to imagine that it was pulling mercury or something out of the blood implies that there's a regular circulation of mercury ions from the bloodstream through the epidermis to the surface of the skin, and I'm not sure that's physiologically supported.Chelating the blood by means of a patch or poultice sounds equivalent to trying to catch flies in your kitchen with flypaper in your garage.This really does sound like an especially pernicious pseudoscience - pernicious because chelation is real, can pull metals out of the blood, but the use of chelation in these ways simply isn't supported by any evidence or physiology.Am I wrong?

Am I wrong?It sounds like quakery but its better to pull it out of the body than redistribute it into the brain.

Sure, but it's better to pull it out of the body than to do nothing, which is the result of the treatment Coragyps describes.

Almost certainly.

Coragyps,I actually agree with you that Crash is almost certainly wrong but before using a poultice to abosorb EDTA into the blood through the skin.There is a possibly a better way absorbing EDTA by using Dextoxamin one can bypass digestion and have it absorbed more directly through the colon.In your case if your tissues have mercury even poultices might put you at risk of concentrating mercury into but not out of the brain. I'm leaning EDTA poultices or oral EDTA is not something one should do without an integrated alternative medical doctor.Edited by reversespin, : No reason given.

Wrong how?

Absorbtion of EDTA into the blood and the body detox sweating mercury into the poultice. EDTA being absorbed into the blood is not nothing but something. I couldn't find anything on poultices but did find they are absorbing EDTA now through the colon.Page Not FoundI personally don't know if my kidneys are strong enough for oral chelation perhaps instead a naturalpathic approach.40——‘’

No, I'm not wrong. Once the EDTA was in the blood why would it go back to the poultice?Coragyps was pretty clearly saying that you were wrong, Reverse. Not sure how you missed that.