Detoxing. How important is it for treating GDD and other heavy metal deposition diseases.

There are three fundamental methods to improve health following toxic exposures: 1. stop getting the toxin, 2. remove the toxin, and 3. detoxify (detox), that is decrease the body's adverse reaction and/or improve positive health reaction to the presence of the toxin..

Of these 3 strategies the first one ofcourse is the most obvious and fundamentally easy. Removal and detoxing are however more variable. Removal depends on how possible it is to remove the toxin, and for most entities removal is extremely difficult. Many drugs without clear removal techniques, tincture of time is used, and in my experience for most drugs (and this includes Gd, if chelation is avoided) recovery from 1 exposure takes approximately 2 years. It turns out for Gd (and Lead) removal is straightforward (but still a lengthy painful process) with chelation. The funny thing with the chelation concept and Gd, is many physicians are dubious if chelation works- but they seem not to understand that this is the exact principle that scientists and companies have used to create the GBCA to begin with, and for exactly the same reason: to make the metal more readily removable and hence much less toxic. So if you don't believe in chelation it is actually saying the same thing that you don't believe in the concepts involved with making the GBCA to begin with. So in a word: foolish.

But this blog is about detoxing. To be frank, I am not sure how well the use of targeted detoxing to the liver, kidney, pancreas, actually works. There are no significant randomly controlled studies (RCT) in humans that have shown they have significant impact. However, wisdom sense does dictate that some level of detoxing is generally and maybe always important. The detox that I espouse for essentially everyone with GDD, and by extension everyone in general, is a healthy diet of natural food ingredients, with minimal pesticides, antibiotics etc, foods that do not have chemicals added to them, and minimal sugar. In particular one has to avoid heavily chemicalized and processed meats, and heavily chemicalized breakfast cereals that we inflict upon the future healths of our children. Decreased gluten and decreased dairy is important for some people, but for everyone to decrease intake is not a bad idea, and the same true with red meat. Many different names are used to describe this type of diet approach. This to me is the optimal starting point for detoxing. Many other forms of detoxing that are critical, really are pt 1: not taking in the toxin again: so this is the approach for excess alcohol and a variety of drugs: opiates and barbiturates highest on the list. I have described the few supplements that I do recommend, essentially because: 1. they make scientific sense, 2. they are not especially expensive or difficult to acquire, and 3. a sufficient number of GDD subjects have reported to me benefit from them. I write about these in other blogs, and continue to update.

I was asked recently by a person extremely concerned about her liver detox pathways and this was my response:

to fully address this I would have to spend hours researching into all these issues of detoxification. Yes there are genetics involved. The exact genetics is even much more complicated than written about. I am not a huge believer in the current state of knowledge on detoxification. There are tremendous variability in results that individuals report on detoxification. Ofcourse this is also the case regarding the benefit of iv DTPA chelation. That is why I tell people four things: 1. don't follow what individuals write about regarding themselves, I have no idea about what they actually have done;  2. understand there are always a large variety of vested interests ;3. placebo effects are always present; and 4. very few if any of these studies have undergone randomized controlled studies (RCT) on humans. The RCT studies have generally shown that no supplements or vitamins, etc help.... Which I also don't believe. And regarding the last point, people who claim DTPA chelation has been a disaster have not been chelated by me, or if chelated by me have not followed through with essential steps: chelation with DTPA with graduated increase and concurrent steroid use with graduated decrease, and at least 5 chelations 1-4 weeks apart, and a number need more chelations, but I try not to exceed 20.

So I follow  wisdom sense approaches. Few supplements and the ones that seem to make the most scientific sense and don't cost a lot. I favor quercition, turmeric, chlorella, spirulina

I don't let supposed detox problems in any individual influence whether I will or will not do chelation. Since with Gadolinium we are able to remove the toxin quite well, detoxification per se is not so important, beyond the critical aspect of improved diet. Nutrients are most efficiently acquired if in the otherwise normal human, their own cellular processes decide what they need and don't need, by providing a healthy balanced supply of natural chemicals and their precursors, and let the body choose..

I do the best approaches with metal removal  and see how well they work out. I also don't want anyone to detox first before chelation, because I am not convinced this makes a huge difference. However concurrent simple detox I agree with. Starting with conventional low allergen diets - essentially focused on natural foods, and to avoid as much as possible chemical additive foods. A diet like this is generically: autoimmmune diet, but works for essentially everything where the immune system is involved and dysregulated. I also do not discourage people from detox'ing, but I just do not know how effective it is. At the same time I would never say: wait to start chelating until you have detox'ed enough or chelation won't work because of your defect in detox pathways. Chelation, as the method to remove the offending substance, in many respects decreases the importance of detox'ing, because if the toxin is present in very small amounts, generally detoxing is not necessary. Detoxing would be most necessary if there was no ability to remove the toxin - but we have that ability to remove Gd, lead and some other metals.

Richard Semelka, MD