Chelation and IV
Chelation in the 21st Century
by Murray Susser MD (H), MD
I started doing chelation therapy in 1972. Chelation (pronounced kee-lay-shun) Therapy (CT) was then beginning to emerge from the restraints of conventional medical thinking which used it only to treat acute and/or severe heavy metal poisoning. I found that chelating patients with EDTA and sometimes other agents would detoxify them from their heavy metal burdens and effect great changes in their health.
In my three plus decades of giving thousands of intravenous CT’s to several thousand patients, I have seen many responses that could be considered miraculous. Many patients who had refused heart surgery, leg amputations, and arterial opening of the Carotid to the brain, progressively rid themselves of their symptoms and signs of these ailments. Their chest pain, limb pain, and loss of mental focus resolved and began a path of continuous improvement. As often as I saw it, it always felt like a validation of my willingness to think and act outside the box.
Chelation means “metal binding.” As a medical treatment applied only to the most severe industrial or laboratory accidents with lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel, etc., it was a relatively obscure part of medicine. When it proved useful in chronic high-grade heavy metal accumulation, such as in children eating chips of lead paint it became more widely used, but still not in the way we use it in our office.I learned to use it from Ray Evers, MD who pioneered the use of CT for calcified arteries. He felt that the calcium that CT could take out of the body was the culprit, but he was only partially right. He claimed CT reversed hardening of the arteries, and indeed, it seemed to do just that. Unfortunately, to this day, no one has proved to the satisfaction of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) that CT actually does reverse ASVD (Arteriosclerotic Vascular Disease) – hardening of the arteries. Although the experience of hundreds of physicians and tens of thousands of their patients suggests that it does work on arteries, it remains illegal to make such claims. There are also many “unofficial” research studies that suggest a cause and effect with CT and reversal of ASVD, and they cannot be used as proof that it works. Presently, the National Institutes of Health is funding a $30,000,000.00 study to shed light on this question. Unfortunately, the study is not adequately designed or funded to resolve the problem with certainty. CT is good enough, however, that it may prevail even in the course of a less than perfect study.
What is clear and undeniable is that CT works for heavy metal detoxification. What is also clear, is that many if not most of us have significant, sneaky accumulations of heavy metals in our bodies. The levels are no where near the levels that cause serious clinical disease or death, but the levels are sufficient to cause low level damage to the immune system, the nervous system and the vascular system. There are studies from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) that support such thinking. The bottom line is that many of us suffer from sneaky accumulation of lead, mercury and other toxins and this may be causing us to have greater risk of many degenerative diseases and decreased longevity.