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Originally Posted by Undertoad
The "range" given is for people not taking chelation drugs.
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The range Doctor's Data references is for people not taking chelation drugs. Your article referenced a "well-designed" study that gave a mercury range for people who
had taken chelation drugs: 7.8 ug/g, or 2.8 ug/g higher than the acceptable range according to Doctor's Data. And that's fine, I find it very plausible that the drug merely moves out the mercury faster and harder, when the normally-processing body would have gotten to it shortly after, and for people within that 7.8 range, there is no need to treat, even though the Doctor's Data lab results would call that range "elevated."
But at some point, there is inarguably a level at which the patient does pee out more mercury than is acceptable, and should continue to be treated. What do you believe that level to be? Certainly 7.8 ug/g is too low, and your article seems to indicate that maybe even 2-3 times that, or 15.6-23.4, would be acceptable, since they seem to think a 6-hour urine test will be more concentrated than a 24-hour. (My understanding is this is not the case, that the 6-hour vs. 24-hour tests are accounted for to put the results on comparable footing. I have a link later in the post stating that this is the case for lead, but I don't know about mercury.) But what about a mercury level in the 30s? That's definitively higher than your article indicates is even possibly normal for a patient who has taken chelation drugs. There are quacks out there who believe that everyone is suffering from some sort of overall toxic stress from our big bad industrial society, and I don't agree with them. But I do believe that there are certain individuals who do have severely abnormal levels, and those individuals should be treated, especially if they show severely abnormal neurological symptoms that one might expect to see with heavy metal poisoning.
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Originally Posted by skysidhe
When you say elevated levels of lead you do not mean lead poisoning correct?
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By technical definition, yes, too much lead in the blood is lead poisoning. I do not know in my son's case whether it came from a specific large source (i.e., chewing on a lead-painted toy,) which is what one usually would consider to be a "poisoning" incident, or perhaps is just buildup from years of drinking unfiltered tap water and being unable to remove it like a normal person's body would.
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Originally Posted by skysidhe
and as far as this article I found, lead levels are naturally higher at the age of two.
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My son is almost 4.
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Originally Posted by skysidhe
and a well balanced diet helps eliminate lead
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This assumes one is absorbing the nutrients from their well-balanced diet. People with chronic digestive diseases suffer from malabsorption, and can become undersized and underweight for their age (among other symptoms of malnutrition,) because they are not actually getting any of the nutrients that their body needs for all its processes, no matter how well they eat.
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Originally Posted by skysidhe
the effects of lead poisoning do not appear until the age of 6 according to this article.
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No, the proof of lead poisoning cannot be fully
tested for until the age of six. According to your article (bold mine,)
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What a parent might know before that might well be some common complaints such as speech delay, hyperactivity, not being able to sit/listen/learn in school, and not being able to focus. Those observations may be the result of earlier childhood lead poisoning.
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Originally Posted by skysidhe
Have your children had blood tests for lead poisoning?
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No, because the theory is that this is not some coincidentally recent source, this is long-term lead that my son's body has been unable to remove over time. As your article notes,
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Most ingested lead is stored in the bones and leaches back into the bloodstream -- and brain -- over time.
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So we would expect his current blood level to be low. But your article seems to indicate that chelation drugs only pull lead out of the blood, not other stores, and that is not correct.
This study from the NIH indicates that DMSA pulls lead from soft tissue and some types of bone as well. That same study also notes, UT, that
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DMSA-chelatable lead excreted in the 24-h portion correlated well with the excretion in the 6-h portion.
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That study suggests that a "cortical Bone-Pb" would be a more valid test to determine the level of long-term stores in the body, but I don't think that the trauma and risk of a bone biopsy is in my son's best interest, compared to cautiously examining ongoing lead levels and whether they plummet dramatically in another treatment or two, thus indicating that the store has been depleted. If one were to accept the idea that this kind of elevated number is completely normal following a chelation dose, then one would have to expect that the high numbers would never go down, because the chelation drug would produce the same result every time.