Heartburn or GERD can Kill

Heartburn is a common annoyance. The busy lifestyle, quick meals, fatty or spicy foods all contribute to the occasional need of a chewable pain reliever. The acceptance of heartburn as an inconvenient, but natural, part of the daily grind can blind you to the warning that a severe heartburn symptom can bring.

Heartburn as a Disorder

Heartburn can be a symptom as well as a disorder. Simple heartburn or GERD can be controlled and dealt with. However, heartburn can signal the presence of a much more serious problem. If it’s heartburn, you will have a burning sensation in the chest usually after eating. There may be a spread of the burning to the throat, sometimes accompanied by a bad taste, difficulty in swallowing, belching, coughing, hoarseness and/or wheezing.

It can become worse by lying down or bending over or by eating. Relief can come from an antacid. While the more severe heartburn symptoms may be mistaken for a heart attack, simple heartburn is usually not made worse by exercise. If there is any concern that the pain may signal a heart attack, get help quickly.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Chelation Therapy

By Anju Mathur, M.D.

Chelation (pronounced key-LAY-shun) is a term derived from the Greek chele, meaning, "claw." A chelation agent is a chemical agent that, like a claw, grabs and chemically bonds with metals or other minerals and toxins. Simply put, chelation is the process in which chemicals bind with minerals. While chelation is a naturally occurring biological process (hemoglobin binds with iron to provide oxygen to tissues), synthesized chelation agents were first developed during World War II as a way to clear toxic metals from the body. Chemists discovered they could create a ring of molecules, which surround or "sequester" mineral molecules and carry them from the body through normal elimination.

Chelation is a well-known method of heavy metal and toxin removal in which a special chemical compound called a chelate - such as dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), dimercaptopropane sulfonate (DMPS), or ethylene diaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) - is given, usually intravenously. The chelate finds and forms a single attachment to the toxin with one reversible bond. With that bond intact, the toxin is grabbed onto, pulled off the cell and carried from the body. However, the toxin is not neutralized during this process and is potentially able to attach to other cells on its way out.

A very effective chelate is EDTA (Ethylene Diamine Tetra-Acetic Acid), which is a synthetic amino acid. It is used for chelating heavy metals. It is believed to be non-toxic and has almost no side effects. Fifty years ago EDTA was first discovered and used for chelating lead from the body and now it is FDA-approved to be used in therapy for handling poisoning by lead, mercury, aluminum and cadmium. It also assists in eliminating calcium and arterial plaque which stops up blood vessels. However, it must be administered with supplements of vitamins and minerals, because it may also chelate much needed minerals and other substances from the body.

Chelation is the sole treatment used today for lead poisoning. But since the process removes other metals, too, in addition to mineral deposits, calcium-based plaques and other poisons, it benefits other medical conditions. Atherosclerosis (narrowing of the arteries by plaque deposits) and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and diabetes can be treated with chelation, as it has a very positive effect on the bloodstream.

For obvious reasons, double-blind studies have never been done to prove or disprove clinical benefits from bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty. The effectiveness of EDTA chelation therapy has been clinically proven to the same extent as bypass surgery and angioplasty, or more so, as established in data from the clinical studies published in the textbook of EDTA Chelation Therapy by Cranton.

A person undergoing chelation therapy has to also change the diet. Non-prescription supplements are recommended, as well as deleting refined and synthetic foods. Certainly it lets down the big drug companies, who would prefer to profit from expensive prescription drugs. Additionally, chelation has no need for surgeons, hospitals, cardiologists and the ever-increasing group of health care workers who make a great deal of money ($6 billion per year) from by pass surgery and balloon angioplasty, because chelation can be performed in a doctor's office. More people have received chelation than have ever had the above-mentioned procedures.

The most frequent criticism leveled by critics of non-traditional and alternative medical therapies is that new treatments are "unproven" because randomized, double-blind, controlled studies have not yet been done to prove effectiveness. Those criticisms ignore the fact that most medical procedures routinely performed in the practice of medicine are also unproven using those same criteria.

With 800,000 people per year dying in the United States alone from arteriosclerosis and its complications, despite the best of high-technology hospital and surgical care that is available, it is imperative that the public be given the option to receive EDTA chelation therapy. It would be senseless to continue to deny a therapy, which has the potential to greatly reduce long-term medical expenditures by reducing the need for far more expensive hospitalization, surgery or angioplasty. Savings to medical insurance companies with resulting reduction in insurance premiums could be great.

How about the improvement in quality of life?

Chelation patients have a tremendous increase in their expected life, although the chelation doctors are reluctant to admit it. It turns out that intravenous chelation therapy greatly reduces the risk of cancer as well as further heart disease. The chelation treatment deals with basic sources of all illness -- the tiny particles of metal, which accumulate over time and which greatly, increase the production of free radicals in the body. As the interior source of free radical production is reduced, by more than one million times, the acceleration of aging stops and people generally feel much younger.

Intravenous chelation therapy, first, removes those heavy metals, usually toxic, which cause tremendous multiplication of free radicals. This cuts out billions and billions of free radicals from even being created because the toxic metals have been removed from your body.

So, immediately all that poison being produced in the body STOPS.

The major causes of death in this country at present are heart disease and cancer. These can be reversed and prevented.

What chelation handles is the damage caused by free radicals; the therapeutic benefit of the chelating substance in reducing free radical activity and even reversing damage that had been done by those free radicals is astounding.

The information contained here in is meant to be used to educate the reader and is in no way intended to provide individual medical advice. Medical advice must only be obtained from a qualified health practitioner.

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