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BYPASSING BYPASS SURGERY
By ELMER M. CRANTON Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57174-297-1
CHAPTER 1
Chelation? It Must Be Something New!
"Chelation? It must be something new."
Why do you say that?
"I never heard of it."
So?
"It couldn't be any good."
Why?
"Good news spreads fast!"
"Chelation? That doesn't work."
Why do you say that?
"It's been around for years."
So?
"It couldn't be any good."
Why?
"It would be popular by now!"
Objections to chelation on either basis are unfounded. The truth is that chelation therapy is both old and new.
The history of chelation therapy can be traced back to 1893 and the pioneering research of Swiss Nobel laureate Alfred Werner, who developed the theories that later became the foundation of modern chelation chemistry. Werner's concept on how metals bind to organic molecules opened the new field of chelation chemistry.
It was not until the early 1920s that "chelation" was introduced as an industrial tool, finding wide application in the manufacture of paint, rubber, and petroleum. Chelation was also found to be useful in the separation of specific metals, and it gained importance in electroplating and industrial dye manufacture.
In the mid-1930s, German industrialists, concerned with their reliance on imports from potentially unfriendly countries, embarked on a major effort to develop their own chelating agents. Citric acid, a chelating compound used for stain prevention in the printing of textiles, was high on their substitution list.
Their mission: to develop a unique and patentable calcium-binding additive to keeps stains from forming when calcium in hard water reacted with certain dyes. The substance developed—ethylenediaminetetraacetate, or EDTA, as it is commonly known—was patented in 1935. EDTA proved to be more successful than anticipated. It was both effective and inexpensive, superior in many ways to the citric acid it replaced.
In the years that followed, EDTA synthesis was further refined and modified both in Germany and in the United States. Marketed under many trade names, EDTA's commercial uses expanded as researchers perfected its ability to leech toxic heavy metals, such as lead, from biological and chemical systems.
Today EDTA and other chelators are widely used in homes as well as factories—in hundreds of everyday products. Few consumers realize that were it not for the chelating effects of household detergents, dirtied wash water would not drain free of scum. There would be an unsightly residue left around washbasins and tubs.
For all its industrial success, it was not until World War II that the potential therapeutic benefits of chelation were realized. Government concern with the possibility of poison gas warfare triggered a mammoth search for suitable antidotes.
The search ended when a team of English researchers, headed by Professor R. A. Peters at Oxford, implemented the chelation principle using BAL (British Anti-Lewisite, a chelating compound), which rendered arsenic from poison gases less harmful.
At the end of the war, chelation therapy was introduced into the medical arena. During the 1940s it became the routine treatment for arsenic and other metal poisonings. Poison gas fears proved to be unfounded, but a far graver public threat was developing: the real possibility of radioactive fallout that might contaminate mass populations should the atom bomb, then a hush-hush project, become a reality. Most radioactive contamination occurs in the form of isotopes of metallic ions, which can be chelated.
Americans, fortunately, were spared both eventualities, and the medical use of chelation was not intensively researched until the early 1950s. A group of workers suffering lead poisoning in a battery factory in Michigan were successfully detoxified. The chelating agent used was EDTA, found by American scientists to be more effective, with much less potential for adverse side effects than the British compound.
Next, the U.S. Navy adopted EDTA chelation therapy for sailors who were poisoned by absorbing lead while painting ships and other naval facilities. By the mid-1950s, it was becoming the accepted "treatment of choice" for lead poisoning in children and adults and, as of today, it still is.
Somehow a myth came about in years past to the effect that benefits of chelation therapy in heart disease were first observed in patients treated for lead toxicity. That is not true. EDTA chelation therapy was first used to treat heart disease by an eminent cardiologist and chief of research at the Providence Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.
Norman E. Clarke Sr., M.D., F.A.C.C., M.Sc., L.L.D., deserves credit as the originator of EDTA chelation therapy for treatment of atherosclerosis. He pioneered this treatment and, by acting as its principal spokesman, he kept the concept active and under study during the first two decades of its use. In the early 1950s, Dr. Clarke hypothesized that because EDTA binds calcium (and calcium is a substance deposited in arterial plaque) EDTA might reverse arterial blockage from atherosclerosis. Dr. Clarke and his associates were the first to perform clinical studies to test that hypothesis in patients with heart disease. It worked! But we now believe that chelation's removal of calcium may be relatively unimportant and that the binding of other metals that poison tissues and amplify oxygen free radicals may be more important. Almost half a century ago, Dr. Clarke came to a similar conclusion.
Dr. Norman E. Clarke Sr., with Robert Mosher, Ph.D., chemistry, conducted the first extensive studies with intravenous EDTA, determining safe dosage and manner of treatment. Dr. Clarke eventually came to believe that EDTA had its primary effect by acting on a variety of metals, allowing cells to resume normal function.
Dr. Clarke was an exalted scientific researcher and innovator. Among his many other contributions, he brought the first privately owned electrocardiograph machine (ECG) to Detroit. He authored many scientific papers, in addition to those on chelation therapy. He continued in active practice until the age of eighty-seven and lived to be ninety-two, clear of mind and with continued interest in chelation therapy.
Every study ever performed using EDTA chelation therapy to treat atherosclerosis has been positive. There are no negative studies, despite erroneous allegations to the contrary from critics of this therapy, as is made clear in chapter 10.
Patients treated with EDTA chelation therapy are able to walk farther, with less chest or leg pain than they had previously experienced. Those with angina are able to exert themselves without discomfort. They tire less easily and have much improved physical endurance.
Such dramatic benefits in patients with atherosclerosis are obviously related to increased blood flow through or around blocked arteries.
Intrigued by these new developments, cardiologists began to investigate and research the possibilities of chelation as a therapy for circulatory ailments throughout the body caused by atherosclerosis and related disorders. Early findings were encouraging and duly reported in the American medical literature beginning in the mid-1950s.
Two early researchers were Dr. Albert J. Boyle, professor of chemistry at Wayne State University in Detroit, and Dr. Gordon B. Myers, professor of medicine at the same university. They conducted research in association with one of the best-known cardiologists of his day, Dr. Norman E. Clarke Sr. Dr. Clarke was one of the earliest clinical researchers to prove benefit in patients with coronary heart disease.
Working at Providence Hospital in Detroit, they took on the "basket cases"—people so incapacitated by atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease that they were considered beyond help. And those patients improved. Following chelation, treated patients enjoyed a remarkable return of cardiac function and a reversal of disabling symptoms.
Clinical studies continued, and published reports consistently described clear signs of improved coronary circulation and heart function in most atherosclerotic patients after chelation. The findings—that patients had improved skin color, a return of normal temperature to cold extremities, improved muscular coordination and brain function, improved exercise tolerance without angina or shortness of breath, and a reduced need for nitroglycerine and pain relievers—were duly published in scientific journals. There have been dozens of such positive published clinical reports to date.
By 1964 the world's medical literature contained many scientific observations confirming those earlier findings. In that year, the distinguished Alfred Soffer, M.D., associate in medicine at Northwestern University Medical School and the former director of the Cardiopulmonary Laboratory of Rochester, New York, writing in his book, Chelation Therapy, stated that atherosclerotic patients suffering with leg pain from occlusive peripheral vascular disease appeared to benefit from repeated administration of EDTA, especially those patients with diabetes.
Clinical trials testing the effectiveness of EDTA chelation therapy in the treatment of arterial occlusion continue, and substantial progress has since been made. Two recent studies were performed by H. Richard Casdorph, M.D., Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California Medical School in Irvine, and by Drs. E. W. McDonagh, C. J. Rudolph, and E. Cheraskin.
Those and many other studies demonstrate clear and statistically significant increases in blood flow following treatment. Objective measurements were made before and after EDTA chelation therapy, using individual patients as their own controls.
Dr. Casdorph, utilizing sophisticated new noninvasive radioactive isotopes, demonstrated a statistically significant improvement of heart function and a highly significant increase in blood flow to the brain in patients with atherosclerosis. Precise measurements of cardiac ejection fraction (the percentage of blood pumped from the large chamber of the heart with each contraction) were determined before and after chelation therapy. Similar isotope techniques were used to confirm increased blood flow in carotid arteries and in the brain itself following chelation. The statistical probability that measured improvement could have been due to pure chance was less than one in ten thousand.
Dr. McDonagh and his colleagues in Kansas duplicated the Casdorph brain blood flow study results using a different technique. By varying pressure on an eyeball, it is possible to determine the pressure of arterial blood flow to the back of the eye. Since the artery supplying the eye is a branch of the internal carotid artery to the brain, blood pressure within the eye directly correlates with brain circulation.
Patients were used as their own controls, with measurements taken before and after chelation therapy. Improvements were also found by McDonagh to be highly significant.
These two excellent studies of blood flow to the brain were performed independently by different researchers in different locations, using different measurement techniques. The scientific community traditionally accepts the results of important new findings when results have been independently confirmed by separate researchers in unaffiliated facilities. These two independent studies followed scientific protocol, demonstrated an objective measurable effect of EDTA chelation therapy (increased blood flow to the brain), and served to substantiate what individual chelating physicians have observed independently.
Even without such sophisticated tests, we could presume that there was increased blood flow by sight and by touch. Patients routinely get their color back; their once-pasty complexions develop a healthy glow. Cold limbs regain warmth. Icy toes and icy fingers warm up. All this takes place in addition to a dramatic reduction of symptoms resulting from diminished blood flow.
Clinical results are consistently impressive. In the majority of cases, patients suffering the catastrophic effects of atherosclerosis (coronary artery disease, blockage of arteries to the brain causing stoke and senility, high blood pressure, peripheral vascular blockage of arteries to the legs, early gangrene, various types of arthritic and other related disorders) experience improved health. They regain lost physical and mental functions. They begin to "live" again.
As of this writing, more than a million patients have received in excess of twenty million chelation treatments in the United States alone, and not a single proven fatality caused by chelation has occurred when the treatment was properly administered and supervised.
Chelation therapy does not correct defective heart valves. Patients with valve problems often do, however, improve after chelation because of better heart function and increased coronary artery circulation. The heart works better, the pumping action is stronger, even if the valve remains unchanged. Patients feel better after chelation and, if valve surgery is necessary, the risks of a heart attack or stroke as a complication of surgery are decreased.
If the reader is mystified at this point, no wonder.
If chelation therapy is not old and discredited—and not new and untried—then what is going on?
If a safe, effective, tested, legal, nonsurgical treatment that seems able to reverse the symptoms of atherosclerosis and improve blood flow exists, then why haven't you heard of it?
CHAPTER 2
The Making of a Chelation Doctor
I didn't set out to be a chelation doctor—or any kind of medical specialist, for that matter. After completing training at Harvard Medical School, all I wanted was a traditional family practice. No fancy surgery, no Nobel Prize-winning research, not even a six-figure income and four cars in the garage.
Ambitions? Sure. I hoped to find a nice town where I could be a physician to whole families, treating all kinds of everyday ailments and complaints.
After some years as a naval flight surgeon, I spent six years as a family practitioner in Southern California in group practice. And then, while in Los Angeles attending a medical meeting in mid-1972, I heard a tale that was to change my approach to medical practice. It began with an innocent enough invitation.
"If you're not busy after dinner, drop into Room 1272."
"What's up?"
"George wants to tell a few of us about something new he's stumbled on—it's pretty revolutionary."
I was quick to accept, for the "George" referred to was an eminent and respected physician, a board-certified ear, nose, and throat specialist, and chief of otolaryngology at two hospitals. If George had something revolutionary to report, I wanted to hear it.
"In case you're wondering," our host began later that same evening, "what you've heard was correct. I did suffer with severe angina last year and was warned of the imminent danger of a serious heart attack. As a matter of fact, a few Long Beach doctors are surprised I'm still alive.
"As you can see, I'm back at work full time, and feeling a hell of a lot better than anyone, including myself, would have thought possible six months ago. The way that came about is what I want to tell you about."
Like all too many victims of advanced atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease, George first knew he was seriously ill when he was suddenly seized with severe chest pains.
As he told it: "There I was, enjoying a round of golf, when all at once, I felt as though an elephant had jumped on my chest."
The doctor became a patient. All the appropriate diagnostic procedures were performed at one of the nation's top medical school hospitals: electrocardiograms, treadmill tests, a coronary angiogram, the works. The results were not consoling.
Doctors usually level with one another.
"It doesn't look good, George," the cardiologists said, reporting the angiogram had revealed plaque blockages obstructing the left main coronary artery and other arteries as well. Their recommendation was a triple coronary artery bypass.
"No time to waste," the specialists agreed, pointing out there was impending danger of total occlusion and a real possibility of sudden death.
"Ouch," George said.
Physicians are as apprehensive as laymen when it comes to going "under the knife"—perhaps more so, being all too familiar with what can go wrong with major surgery.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BYPASSING BYPASS SURGERY by ELMER M. CRANTON. Copyright © 2005 Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
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