GDD sufferers: Not all your symptoms may be due to Gd. Also how do you know you have GDD and not something else?

The first thing someone may think reading this title: " Hey Dr Semelka, haven't you said that GDD can cause all kinds of symptoms - now you are saying they don't". Well, like everything else in life, yes and no. GDD can cause all kinds of symptoms and when someone contacts me or comes to see me I say: let us consider that all your symptoms are GDD.

Not everything is GDD, but I assume everything is GDD, till proven otherwise. So after 5 chelations if you don't see some mild improvement in the symptoms in question; and if consideration is being given to more radical procedures, then waiting till 10 chelations. If after 10 chelation there is zero improvement in a set of symptoms, then it it represents something other than Gd (or Lead), so at that time a search for other causes is warranted. Examples of these symptoms include cognitive impairment, cardiac arrythmias, slow or stopped digestive system (eg: gastroparesis, colonic ileus), small fiber neuropathy, etc. Or as many patients are confronted by their doctors with: ALS, CSF leak, some other self-destructive condition. Maybe it is not GDD, but one of these altogether. Again the 10 chelations play that role to decide GDD or not GDD. Also with GDD and proper chelation there should be the Flare reactions (Gd removal Flare and Gd re-equilibration Flare).

The other things to remember with GDD:

1. you may have had pre-existing conditions that brought you to have the MRI with GBCA, treating GDD may not have an impact of that (interestingly often it does).

2. people with GDD are like everyone else, meaning they can get the diseases that everyone gets: heart attack, stroke, cancer. So GDD and dying from heart attack.... well heart attack is the commonest cause of death in the developed world. That said GDD can contribute to the likelihood of getting these other diseases. Proof of GDD role would be to find Gd in plaques in coronary arteries at autopsy (for example).

So in GDD sufferers, not all symptoms and disease may be GDD, but getting 5 to 10 chelations should sort that out- GDD vs nonGDD. Wait till 10 chelations for something major, like contemplating surgery (eg:small bowel resection for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth).

Richard Semelka, MD