Years ago, when I lived in Alaska, I gave up a lucrative career as an emergency physician to practice a revolutionary new alternative treatment. At the time, a prominent cardiologist asked me why I did it. Of course, he referred to this new cure as quackery. He said, You were so well respected. Now no one (i.e., doctors) wants to talk with you.
It did not matter that dozens of his heart patients were recovering from vascular disease using this new breakthrough (and he knew it). Their improvement was immaterial. All he and the other doctors in the area cared about was their medical dogma and political correctness, as prescribed by their literature.
But even their literature has finally come around. The prestigious journal Diabetes published a report that found that this therapy can reverse diabetic destruction to your heart. Even the title of the report left little doubt about the results: Regeneration of the Heart in Diabetes by Selective Copper Chelation.
That is right. Chelation. The fantastic therapy that can clear your arteries and reverse heart disease.
Even mainstream medicine can no longer ignore the power of this amazing healer. This study shows exactly how chelation reverses heart disease. More than that, chelation therapy actually regenerates heart tissue. Any therapy that can do that is a miracle in my book.
You see, diabetes is very rough on your heart. It literally destroys your heart tissue, causes the muscle to swell, and makes pumping very difficult. Heart disease is so common among diabetics that its the leading cause of death in this group.
Anything that can heal heart problems in diabetics could help anyone!
Garth Cooper at the University of Auckland, New Zealand led the research team that published this stunning work. His team noted that previous reports showed that diabetes led to a disorder of transition mineral regulation. Transition minerals include copper, zinc, molybdenum, and vanadium. These researchers set out to study copper in particular. Why copper?
Copper is essential. You cant live without it. However, copper is one of the most reactive metals. If it goes where it does not belong, it can easily lead to oxidative (free radicals) damage in that area. This damage is akin to rust on your car caused by salt.
Your body needs copper, but it needs it inside your cells. When copper is outside your cells in free form, its dangerous. That is where it causes all sorts of damage.
We have known for years that chelating copper slows and even reverses nerve and vascular damage in diabetic rats. The researchers wanted to know if diabetics had more free copper than non-diabetics. If so, they would know the free copper is a major factor in diabetic heart disease.
To find out, the researchers gave Trientine to rats. Trientine is a copper chelator. But it binds copper loosely, so it does not remove copper from the cells (where your body needs it). It grabs the free copper, the kind that can generate damage.
After 7 weeks, they studied some of the rats for metal excretion. The diabetic rats eliminated more copper than the non-diabetic rats. That confirms that diabetes causes copper accumulation outside the cells. But, more importantly, they found a way to reduce that accumulation!
So what kind of effect did the treatment have on the rats heart function?
The team compared heart function in four groups: untreated controls, untreated diabetes, chelation-treated diabetes, and chelation-treated controls. Both control groups maintained normal-sized hearts. The hearts of the untreated diabetic rats increased in both size and weight.
But those diabetic rats treated with the chelation drug had smaller hearts than controls! Furthermore, Trientine increased their hearts ability to pump without any change in their diabetic condition. Even with continued high glucose levels, their heart function improved!
These findings are fantastic news. The researchers concluded that copper plays a role in the deterioration of heart function in diabetics.
But this news gets even better.
When your heart function fails, your body responds by driving more blood into it prior to contraction (preload). That is a way to get it to pump more blood. But this increases the workload of your heart. The added pressure enlarges your heart. Eventually, it will utterly fail.
These researchers measured the pumping ability of the rats hearts. Then they loaded the hearts with increasing pressure to cause failure. Soon, half the untreated diabetic hearts had failed. But 90% of the treated diabetic hearts were still pumping! Copper chelation restores the diabetic hearts ability to tolerate increased pressure both coming in (heart failure) and also going out (hypertension).
But heres where the study gets almost magical. The team examined the untreated diabetic hearts under the microscope. They found extensive damage to heart muscle cells. Diabetes disorganized muscle fibers. It increased collagen. That is like replacing your muscle with useless scar tissue.
But the treated rat hearts improved their muscle fiber appearance. Their muscle fiber appearance was even better than the controls! And amazingly, the Trientine reversed the collagen (scar) build up. Untreated hearts did not.
So heres the big question: Does copper chelation work as well in humans? The research team set out to answer that very question. Heres what they found:
Trientine increased copper excretion in human diabetics more than human controls. A good first sign.
Then the researchers studied abnormal enlargement of the heart in diabetic humans. Remember, the rats had heart enlargement as a consequence of their diabetes. The human subjects were controlled for age, body mass index, diabetes duration, and sex. They were also controlled for use of diabetes and vascular disease drugs.
They evaluated the heart size using MRI scans when they started the study and after six months of treatment. The average heart mass decreased by 5% in the treated subjects. The heart mass of the non-treated group increased by 3%. That is a net improvement of 8% for the treated subjects!
Like the rats, this improvement occurred without change in blood pressure. There were no drug-related adverse effects. The team wisely measured needed biological activity of copper and its availability. They found no significant difference between the treated and untreated diabetics. This means that functional copper was not removed, only toxic free copper.
This is absolutely fantastic news for millions of people with heart disease. Being overweight or obese virtually guarantees diabetes-like damage to your heart.
Admittedly, this study looked specifically at diabetes. But we have had decades of experience with chelation. We know that its benefits extend far beyond diabetes. We all have toxic metal accumulations. If you have vascular disease, I am sure you will find copper where you do not want it. And that is just as bad as heavy metals.
Whether you have diabetes or any type of heart disease, this report should give you great hope. Even without any lifestyle changes, chelation therapy can greatly help you. It might even be able to reverse heart disease and regenerate your heart!
For the best-qualified chelation doctor, first check the American Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology. These highly skilled physicians will know the most about the various types of chelation products available.
If you want to use an oral chelator, there are several good products on the market. Dr. Garry Gordon offers a product that includes EDTA called Essential Daily Defense from Longevity Plus. Metal Magnet from Enzymatic Therapies features humifulvate from Hungarian peat. And Advanced Bionutritionals carries a product called Pectasol Chelation Complex which includes a patented form of modified citrus pectin that is been shown in human clinical trials to chelate heavy metals.