Danger of quicky infusions of EDTA chelations

CHELATION WITH FASTER 90-MINUTE
SHORT-BOTTLE LESS EFFECTIVE THAN
RECOMMENDED 3-HOUR TREATMENT

By Elmer M. Cranton, M.D.

This is written in response to many questions we get from chelation patients and prospective patients about faster treatments administered at some other clinics. Infusions are sometimes given in 90 minutes or less. When administered in less than 3 hours, the dose of EDTA must be reduced in half for patient safety, resulting in less benefit per treatment.

If a full 3-gram dose of disodium EDTA is infused in less than than three hours, there is danger of kidney overload. Patient safety requires reduction in the EDTA dose when treatment is given more rapidly or if kidney function is reduced. Some clinics are giving half the usual dose in half the time (so-called "short bottle"), which may safely be infused in only 90 minutes. But that lower dose is not as effective as a full dose given over 3 hours.

Patients who receive short-bottle therapy may nevertheless be billed the full price and deceptively be told that this is a "new improved method" that provides the same benefit in less time. There is no clinical evidence to support such a claim.

Patients would like to spend less time during treatment and chelation clinics do not want to tie up expensive and limited office space for longer than necessary. But patients should not be cheated in the process.

Full doses of EDTA, administered over three hours or so, have been proven both safe and effective for more than forty years, treating a million or more patients. Lower doses of EDTA, given more rapidly, may also be safe, but will bring less therapeutic benefit. Additional treatments will then be necessary to achieve full results. Short-bottle treatments are probably more than half as effective—perhaps even three-fourths as effective as full-dose therapy.

Another recent practice allowing clinics to rush patients through their treatments is the use of rapid injections of calcium EDTA, instead of disodium EDTA―sometimes given very rapidly. Calcium EDTA does not lower blood calcium and side effects are therefore not immediately apparent. In addition, calcium EDTA does not benefit calcified arterial plaque and the risk of kidney damage with overly rapid injection is the same as with disodium EDTA―but only detectable with laboratory blood tests. Calcium-EDTA does not cause blood calcium levels to drop, like disodium-EDTA, and therefore does not cause nervous twitches or pain at the site of infusion. For safety reasons, even calcium EDTA must be given slowly over 3 hours, or the dose reduced. The FDA approved physician instructions for calcium EDTA states that the dose should be infused slowly over a period several hours.

There is no immediate warning of potential harm from excessive calcium EDTA. Blood calcium remains constant. A day or two later, however, kidney impairment may occur, which will only be detectable with laboratory testing. It is thus dangerous to push in a rapid dose of calcium EDTA and puts patients at unnecessary risk. In addition, calcium EDTA is not as effective as disodium EDTA for treatment of age related disease. Research from Switzerland and Czechoslovakia is sometimes deceptively quoted as a reason for using calcium EDTA, but those studies refer only to lead toxicity. Exaggerated laboratory tests are sometimes used to frighten patients into falsely believing they suffer with lead or other heavy metal toxicity. Heavy metals have very little to do with atherosclerosis or cardiovascular disease. Calcium EDTA is used to treat lead poisoning and should be administered very slowly.

In the past, some clinics have experimented with the "short bottle" chelation method and subsequently reverted back to full three-hour, full-dose infusions because patients experienced less benefit. Until well-designed clinical research support a change, we recommend only the proven and approved Protocol..

Patients have occasionally reported receiving the full 3-gram dose of magnesium disodium EDTA in as little as half the prescribed time. Most patients may seem to tolerate such excessively rapid infusions, but an occasional patient will unpredictably experience kidney toxicity―without any warning and only detectable with a blood test. For maximum safety, we recommend frequent blood tests of kidney function even using the approved protocol. When chelation is given a break for a few weeks, kidney function invariably returns to baseline and often even better than baseline levels.

Properly administered over three hours, with periodic monitoring of kidney function, EDTA chelation therapy is very safe and can even improve kidney function. There has never been a reported case of significant kidney impairment caused by EDTA chelation therapy when the approved dose-rate protocol for administration was followed.

Slower infusions of EDTA are more beneficial for another reason: EDTA remains only in plasma and extracellular fluids, exposing the exterior of the body's cells for only a short time before being excreted in urine. The major benefit, however is inside of those cells. The average half-life of EDTA in the body is only 42 minutes. By infusing EDTA slowly, over three hours, the EDTA solution bathes cells for the entire time, providing more benefit. This is might be compared to setting a clothes washing machine to a 15 minute wash cycle instead of a 5 minute cycle. The clothes are washed cleaner.

Another comparison can be made to pouring water into a bucket with a large hole in the bottom. To keep a constant level of water and bathing the walls of the bucket for a prolonged time, the rate at which water must be poured into the top will depend on both the size of the bucket (body size) and the size of the hole in the bottom (speed of kidney excretion).

Predictable and consistent benefit is achieved by individualizing the dose of EDTA to compensate for varying kidney function and body size. That is done with a computerized mathematical formula that is posted on this website and published in the approved Protocol. Using this formula, blood levels of EDTA will be the same for all patients, and for the same length of time.

Considering the total time it takes for a patient to travel to the clinic, check in, get connected to the chelation treatment, and then return home or to work, the extra 90 minutes required to receive a full 3-hour treatment is not much additional time.

CHELATION WITH FASTER 90-MINUTE SHORT-BOTTLE LESS EFFECTIVE THAN RECOMMENDED 3-HOUR TREATMENT

CHELATION WITH FASTER 90-MINUTE
SHORT-BOTTLE LESS EFFECTIVE THAN
RECOMMENDED 3-HOUR TREATMENT