How I’m Getting the Lead (and Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, etc.) Out

27Oct11

Maria Rickert Hong received her training as a Certified Health Counselor from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where she was trained in more than 100 dietary theories.  She is also a mom who has recovered her sons from sensory processing disorder, allergies, asthma and acid reflux as well as recovered herself from heavy-metal poisoning, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism, pancreatic insufficiency, insomnia, systemic Candida and immune disregulation.

When I tell most people that I have heavy-metal poisoning, they look at me like I’m crazy, don’t believe me, and say, “No way!”  When I told one of my doctors, she said, “You don’t live in a toxic-waste dump.”  Au contraire; I’m beginning to wonder if we all do.  It was quite a shock to me to learn that I had heavy-metal poisoning, as I wrote about in my last blog.

It really shook up my worldview to discover this about my body, and I began questioning what was really safe or not.  One of the first things I did was to change out all my cosmetics, lotions, sunscreens, deodorants, shampoos, conditioners, nail polishes, lotions, soaps, detergents and household cleaning products to safer ones.  I also quit wearing or using anything with fragrance in it because “fragrance” can be any of over 3,000 different chemicals, and they are usually neurotoxins.

This goes back to what my naturopath had told me about “what goes on your skin goes in you”.  And it’s worse when it goes through your skin because the liver doesn’t get a chance to rid your body of it.  Instead, all those toxic chemicals go directly to your tissues, bones and brain.

The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database is a great place to start.  It not only contains safety ratings for cosmetics but also for just about every kind of personal-care product out there; I’ve read that they’re now working to add household cleaning products.  Products are given a safety rating from 0 to 10, with a rating of 0 being the safest.  The rating is derived by combining all the safety ratings of each individual ingredient.  You can find the website here:  http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/

Some cosmetics such as lipstick and mascara do contain heavy metals, so those were the first things I switched out.  As my understanding of toxicity grew, though, I wanted to give my body the best possible chance for getting rid of the heavy metals, plus God knows what else was in me.  I figured my body would be better able to detoxify if I used the least toxic products, so here I am using plain old coconut oil for a moisturizer (people say my skin glows!) and Dr. Bronner’s vegetable soaps (like my hippie sister did years ago).  I try to use organic products if possible so that I’m not adding in any pesticides, either.

Food as a Source of Heavy Metals
I use the same principle for the food that I eat.  I want the least toxic, highest quality nutrition I can get.  There are actually some foods that contain heavy metals, believe it or not.  In a recent study, about half the tested samples of foods containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury.  Caustic soda is used to produce HFCS, and it is frequently contaminated with mercury.  Not that I would knowingly eat anything with HFCS in it!  In addition, honey that isn’t locally produced typically comes from overseas.  Chinese honey is stored in lead containers, and the lead leaches into the honey.  Even if you eat locally produced honey, you’re probably unknowingly consuming lead-tainted honey if you’re eating processed foods containing honey like honey-flavored cereals.

I am sad to say that I also no longer eat tuna or tuna sushi because fatty fish like tuna store mercury and other toxins in their fat (just as we do).  Actor Jeremy Piven and actresses Hillary Swank and Daphne Zuniga all reportedly suffered from mercury poisoning from eating too much tuna.

Food as a Means of Detoxification
I want food that I don’t have to detoxify from because if I do, that leaves less antioxidants for getting rid of the heavy metals and other pollutants in me.

• First of all, I eat fresh-as-possible organic fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised chickens, eggs, beef and lamb.  These types of food not only typically don’t contain toxins, but they also do have the highest levels of nutrients.  If I do eat fish, it’s either wild-caught, cold-water fish or small fish like sardines that haven’t bioaccumulated toxins the way big fish do.

• Second, I avoid eating processed foods as much as possible.  I’m not saying I completely avoid them because I don’t; I’m not a saint.  Because my sons have diseases/conditions that respond well to avoiding certain foods (especially gluten and dairy), our family has what we call our “once a week” just so we can eat pizza or grilled cheese sandwiches or go to parties and feel somewhat normal and not be so freakishly different about food.

Avoiding processed foods means a lot more cooking for me, so if I’m cooking from scratch, I tend to cook simply because I just don’t have time to fix complicated meals.  I roast chickens, root vegetables, cauliflower and winter squash.  I steam broccoli and asparagus.  I wilt spinach and swiss chard and blanch and shock kale and collard greens.  I sauté mushrooms.  You get the picture.  Nothing fancy.  However, I don’t microwave food anymore, as this degrades the nutrients in the food.

• Third, I avoid allergenic foods because they cause inflammation.  If my body is fighting inflammation, it doesn’t have as much time or energy to detoxify, just like firemen that are fighting fires don’t have time to clean up their truck and equipment.  Inflammation leads to the production of fat tissue, and fat acts as an endocrine tissue that makes its own inflammatory hormones, which leads to more production of fat.  You can see how this is an endless cycle of inflammation.

• Fourth, I avoid sugar in all forms including white sugar, brown sugar, agave, honey, molasses, barley malt, maple syrup, coconut sugar, too many fruits, too much corn, etc.  Too much sugar leads to an endless cycle of inflammation, as discussed above.  I’m not saying I never eat sugar; I just have it once a week or so when my family has its “once a week” or when I go out with friends or go to a party.  Like I said, I’m no saint.

Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopath with “the world’s #1 natural health website”, recommends limiting fructose from fruit to 15 grams per day, as fructose is way more harmful than other types of sugar, believe it or not.  15 grams is the about the equivalent of 2 bananas or 1 pear and 1 cup of raspberries or 1 apple and 1 orange.

• Fifth, I try to eat raw foods when I can as raw foods contain the highest levels of nutrients and antioxidants; cooking destroys and denatures some of these.  Freshly juiced vegetables and fruits also count as raw food, and I must say I was inspired to juice more after my husband and I watched the documentary, “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”.  It’s very time consuming to juice and to prepare raw food that would serve as a meal, but luckily there is a raw-food restaurant in the town next door to where I live that serves these.  My only caveat in eating raw vegetables is not to eat raw cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cabbage because they contain high levels of goitrogens when raw.  Goitrogens can contribute to hypothyroidism.

• Sixth, I eat a lot of sea vegetables (seawood) because they contain high levels of valuable iodine, whose necessity is explained later.

• Lastly, I drink water that has been filtered at home with my reverse-osmosis (RO) water filtration system.  It gets EVERYTHING out, even the fluoride, which I don’t want in my water, either.  I’ll talk about that in a later blog when I discuss hypothyroidism.

That said, there are quite a few foods that are known for their ability to detoxify from heavy metals.  Many of them boost glutathione, contain other antioxidants or contain large amounts of sulfur, all of which your body uses to get rid of heavy metals and other toxins.

Glutathione
Glutathione is the body’s super antioxidant, and it helps get rid of heavy metals, especially mercury.  The problem with mercury poisoning, though, is that mercury inhibits the production of glutathione, thereby stopping the body’s elimination mechanism, so mercury accumulates in your body.

There is controversy over whether consuming it as a supplement is helpful, but I take Recancostat, which is supposedly in a more bio-available form.  You don’t have to take it as a supplement.  Instead, you could eat the foods containing its amino-acid precursors like glycine, glutamic acid and cysteine.  Vegetable sources don’t have a lot of these amino acids, but the best vegetable sources are artichokes, asparagus, onions, garlic, spinach, cruciferous vegetables, avocados and spinach.

Animal sources are much better sources of glutathione.  You’re probably going to think I’m a whack job (if you haven’t already), but raw, grass-fed milk and raw, organic or pasture-raised eggs are the best sources of cysteine, a glutathione precursor.  Raw milk hasn’t been pasteurized, so heat hasn’t denatured the whey in it.  I know Ann Louise Gittleman sells jars of this kind of whey on her website.  Raw milk is hard to find because different states have different laws on the sale and distribution of it, but you can check out http://www.realmilk.com/ to see where you can buy it locally. It is fairly easy to buy raw milk cheeses; you just have to check out the label.  I know Whole Foods has quite a few of them; they’re usually European.  The Weston A. Price Foundation is a non-profit whose goal is to provide information about traditional foods, including raw milk, and why they are better for your health.  Here, they’ve provided a quick FAQ about raw milk: http://www.westonaprice.org/faq/faq-dairy

Cultured raw milk products like kefir, yogurt, and sour cream (without sugar, please!) are an even better source of glutathione, as they also provide immune-boosting probiotics.  If you can’t find these products, you can always make them yourself.  Donna Gates sells a kefir culture kit on both her Body Ecology Diet website and through Dr. Mercola’s website.

I typically don’t eat dairy products because typical milk can be highly allergenic. A mutation in a milk protein in contemporary herds has occurred in modern milk, potentially causing heart disease, type I diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, and autoimmune disorders.  However, children who drink raw milk are less likely to develop asthma and allergies than those who stick to the safer pasteurized version.  The protective effect was linked to whey proteins in the milk that may be destroyed by pasteurization, so I do make an exception for raw-milk products.

Ann Louise Gittleman says that both gluten (the protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and spelt) and casein (the protein found in dairy products) interfere with cysteine uptake, and therefore interfere with glutathione production.  She also says that’s why the two allergies seem to go together:  if you’re allergic to one, you’re probably allergic, intolerant or sensitive to the other.  However, she does say that raw dairy is outstanding, unless one has a true dairy allergy, which, in her experience is usually due to an underlying parasitical infection.

Sulfur
Sulfur-containing foods are another heavy-hitting source of detoxification. Sulfur is found in eggs, animal meats, seafood, onions, garlic, asparagus, coconut oil, olive oil, wheat germ and legumes; again, pasture-raised meats and eggs will have the highest amounts of nutrients, including sulfur.  Brassica vegetables are famous for their sulfur content: broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, bok choy, cabbage, rutabaga, turnips, kohlrabi, mustards and Brussel sprouts.  As an added bonus, Brassica veggies also contain significant amounts of vitamin C, selenium, indole-3-carbinol (which blocks the growth of cancer cells) and sulforaphane, which not only inhibits cancer cell growth but also is a precursor to glutathione, thereby boosting its production.  Broccoli sprouts contain the highest levels of sulforaphane.

Dr. Mercola says that a high-grain diet and/or a high-processed-food diet are likely to be deficient in sulfur, as processing removes the sulfur.  In addition, he says that hard water contains more sulfur than soft water.  He recommends taking a bath in magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) as another excellent way to get sulfur into your body.

Stephanie Seneff is a senior scientist at MIT who studies the health effects of sulfur, among other things.  She believes that healthy cholesterol and sulfur levels are highly dependent on vitamin D levels, which is made by exposing your skin to sunshine.

Antioxidants
Toxins and heavy metals use up a LOT of antioxidants, therefore I want to eat as many brightly colored vegetables and some fruits because the fresher, less cooked and brighter (natural color, please!) they are, the more antioxidants they have.  That’s where the raw foods and juicing come in.  “Eating the rainbow” of vegetables gives me a little extra protection.  I figure if my diet provides antioxidants such as vitamins A and C, then it saves the more powerful antioxidants like glutathione for doing the heavy work of getting rid of heavy metals.

Herbs as a Means of Detoxification
Many herbs are known for their ability to detoxify or protect the body from heavy metals.

• Cilantro removes mercury, aluminum, lead and tin.

• Curcumin both detoxifies and also provides an antioxidant effect against mercury.
• Holy basil also protects against toxicity from mercury.
• Ginkgo biloba’s antioxidant properties protect against mercury-caused tissue damage.
• Milk thistle is full of antioxidants, and its most powerful one, silymarin, repairs and detoxifies the liver.  I don’t know if milk thistle specifically removes heavy metals from the liver, but given that tests of my liver’s performance show it to be on the sluggish side, I want to do what I can to boost its ability to detoxify.
• Dandelion root is also known for its ability to detoxify the liver, although, again, I’m not sure if this pertains to heavy metals as well.  I drink an organic dandelion-root tea from Traditional Medicinals instead of coffee.

Detoxification Supplements
I highly recommend you see a naturopath or functional medicine doctor before taking any chelating supplements because if you bind up (chelate) the heavy metals but don’t have the means to excrete them, you’re just going to cause yourself a whole mess of problems.  Translation:  just because you’re bagging up the garbage doesn’t mean there’s a garbage man around to haul it away, so the garbage is just going to pile up and create a big stinking mess.

In addition, heavy-duty chelating agents are extremely hard on the body, as they not only pull out heavy metals, but they also bind to essential minerals.  Chelating can make you very tired.  I am very careful to take extra magnesium, selenium, zinc, etc.  The bone broths that I described in an earlier blog about adrenal health are a great source of minerals, and organic foods have been shown to have more minerals and nutrients than their pesticide-laden counterparts.

This list is by no means an exhaustive list of detoxification supplements.

• EDTA is a heavy-duty chelator that is primarily used to remove lead, mercury, aluminum, and cadmium.
• DMPS is another heavy-duty supplement that chelates zinc, copper, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, silver, lead and tin.
• DMSA is another heavy-duty chelator, mainly used for lead and mercury elimination.
• Vitamin C (and other antioxidants) help gluthathione do its job better by taking care of most free radicals, thereby saving glutathione for the heavy-metal cleanup.  I take 4 grams (4,000mg) of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) per day.
• Iodine keeps your thyroid working properly.  If it’s not, your liver isn’t detoxifying well.  I take 25mg of Iodoral, which contains both iodine and iodide.  It’s recommended that you take an iodine-loading test first to see how much you’re excreting.  Dr. David Brownstein in his book, “Iodine:  Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It”, says that 96% of his patients initially show iodine deficiency, which he then explains is a major cause of breast and ovarian cancers, as well as hypothyroidism and ADHD.
• Selenium protects against liver and kidney damage from heavy metals and is necessary for proper thyroid function.
• Chlorella and spirulina are two different algaes with antioxidants that help remove cadmium and mercury.
• Quercetin, found in apples, cruciferous vegetables, red onions, capers and numerous other foods, has a protective effect against damage from methylmercury.
• DHA may act as a neuroprotective agent against methylmercury’s neurotoxicity.  Eating saturated fat helps with the absorption of DHA.
• Astaxanthin protects against lipid peroxidation from mercury poisoning.
• L-arginine is an amino acid that has been shown to reduce mercury accumulation in the thymus.
• N-acetyl cysteine is both a precursor to glutathione and an effective heavy-metal chelator.
• Alpha-lipoic acid and its cousin R-alpha-lipoic acid (which Dr. Sherry Rogers says is the more active form) have the ability to regenerate glutathione.  It also is a sulfur compound that can chelate heavy metals.
• MSM, short for methylsulfonylmethane, is an organic form of sulfur and a potent antioxidant.

• Probiotics not only protect the liver by preventing intestinal damage, they can also trap and neutralize heavy metals.  Some specific strains can reduce organic mercury into a less toxic form.

• Homeopathic heavy-metal detox solutions, such as HVS Labs’ Detoxosode, are effective and more-gentle chelators.  Homeopathy works by using an infinitesimally small amount of a substance to stimulate an immune response.  Do you remember how I wrote that homeopathic poison ivy (rhus toxiconderon) was the only thing that made my severe poison ivy rash go away?  It’s the same principle with homeopathic mercury, etc.
• MCP is modified citrus pectin, which is taken from the pith of citrus fruits.  Two recent studies showed that MCP is an effective and gentle heavy-metal chelator.

• Clays such as bentonite and zeolite have molecules that are negatively charged, which attracts them to the positive charges of heavy metals.

• CheleX is a supplement from Xymogen that my naturopath gives me to get rid of the heavy metals; my functional medicine doctors carry it as well.  CheleX is a blend of DMSA, EDTA, cilantro, chorella, allicin (from garlic), N-acetyl-L-cysteine and alpha-lipoic acid.

• Happy Bodies Daily Detox Cocktail was created after the formula given in Dr. Sherry Rogers’ book, “Detoxify or Die”.  It is a mix consisting of R-lipoic acid, vitamin C and glutathione.  It also comes in a raspberry-flavored (real raspberries!) powder that makes it easy to drink.

Other Means of Heavy-Metal Detoxification

• Colonics are a means of keeping one of your elimination channels open.  I don’t want all those heavy metals I’m trying to get rid of getting stuck in my intestine, making me sicker and re-poisoning me.  This is another reason why I avoid gluten and dairy:  gluten is like glue in your intestine, and so is dairy.  Remember that Elmer’s glue is made from milk.
• Far Infrared Saunas (FIRS) are gentle saunas that penetrate deep into body tissues to stimulate the body to release and remove toxins, including heavy metals.  Dr. Sherry Rogers recommends the ones made by High Tech Health.  I would love to get one, but they start at around $5,000!  Check around, though, to see if a spa or doctor’s office in your area has one.

Things to Avoid

• Ibuprofen blocks glutathione production.
• Antiperspirants contain aluminum, which is a heavy metal.  Recent studies have shown accumulations of aluminum in the breast tissue of breast-cancer patients closest to the armpit, where the antiperspirant goes.   In addition, antiperspirants prevent you from sweating, which is one of the very methods your body uses to detoxify!  I use a plain deodorant instead.
• Aluminum and non-stick cookware give off toxins.
• Stainless-steel cookware can expose you to nickel.  Restaurants are required to use stainless-steel cookware so think about going out to eat less.
• Costume jewelry often contains cadmium and sometimes contains lead.
• Cigarette smoke contains cadmium and other toxins, even if it’s second-hand smoke.
• Alcohol impairs the liver’s ability to detoxify.  I can’t say I completely avoid it all times, but I sure do drink a lot less than I used to!

Things to Remember
Before you do any major detoxification, you need to make sure your channels of elimination (pee, poop, sweat and lungs) are open.  I highly recommend working with a naturopath for this because they are far more knowledgeable about this than any other type of doctor I’ve seen.  You don’t want all those heavy metals recirculating in your body after you’ve tried to remove them.  You’ll just get sicker quicker.

The two best books that I’ve read (so far) about how to detoxify from heavy metals and other toxins (including plasticizers, BPA and pesticides) are Dr. Sherry Rogers’ “Detoxify or Die” and Dr. Mark Hyman’s/Dr. Mark Liponis’ “Ultraprevention: The 6-Week Plan That Will Make You Healthy for Life”.  Dr. Rogers has a great newsletter called “Total Wellness” in which she explains why current medical dogma will harm you, and Dr. Hyman’s website http://drhyman.com/ is a great online resource for understanding the role of toxins and how diet can help you detoxify.

Where are my levels now?
I’ve been chelating for 1-1/2 years now.  I had myself retested back in January, and my levels of heavy metals have declined significantly.  I’ll get myself retested in a few months, but here are my levels as of January.  “H” means higher than the reference range, and “VH” means it’s a way-high number.  My initial mercury levels were literally off the charts! Mercury is toxic at one part per billion, which is about the same concentration as one grain of salt in one swimming pool.

Metal	Reference Range	March 2010 Level	January 2011 Level
Aluminum	<35	0	9.5
Antimony	<0.4	0	0
Arsenic	<117	120H	19
Barium	<7	6.2	6
Beryllium	<0.6	0.4	0
Bismuth	<15	4.6	0.5
Cadmium	<1	0.6	0.4
Cesium	<10	7.8	11H
Gadolinium	<0.4	0	0
Lead	<2	4.9H	4.3H
Mercury	<4	25VH	4.3H
Nickel	<12	7.4	5.1
Palladium	<0.3	0	0
Platinum	<1	0	0
Tellurium	<0.3	0	0
Thallium	<0.5	0.4	0.9H
Thorium	<0.03	0.02	0
Tin	<10	1.5	0.4
Titanium	<15	0	0
Tungsten	<0.4	0.5H	0
Uranium	<0.04	0	0

You’ll notice that my first test showed no aluminum toxicity, while my second one did.  In addition, my cesium and thallium toxicities were higher in the second test.  Why is this?  One of my doctors explained that metals are so tightly bound that they may not have been pulled out enough to be detected initially.  Ongoing detoxification and chelating pulled aluminum out enough to be detected during the second test and caused cesium and thallium to be higher.  My doctor explained that chelation and detoxification will be ongoing things, and that I will have to constantly monitor the levels even after it appears that there are no more heavy metals in me.

Some people are better detoxifiers.  I’m guessing that I’m not.  Knowing what I know now, I know this is because my mother passed her toxicity (yes, it’s been proven that a mother passes her toxic burden on to her child in utero), bad bacteria and stress response (yes, it’s proven that a mother’s stress response during pregnancy gets passed on to her child) on to me.  She was an alcoholic chain-smoker who ate a very poor diet consisting of processed, convenience foods.  She had lupus, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  She died of an aneurism at age 62, which I believe is far too young.  She was an intelligent woman, but she was in so much emotional pain from her relationship with my father that she didn’t have the energy or desire to take better care of herself.  The sad thing is that all of the diseases she had are mostly preventable through proper diet and detoxification.  At least I learned from her what not to do!

The funny thing is that I learned a lot of what to do from my dad before he died.  He had a PhD in organic chemistry and became very involved in the health-food movement in the 70’s.  He wouldn’t allow us to eat sugary foods, drink soft drinks or eat junk food.  It was a rare treat when he would take us to get pizza and onion rings or ice cream. He would make his own yogurt and beer from scratch, and he made my brother, sister and me put in a half-acre garden that we hated to work in but loved to eat from. You can see where I get my tendencies!

I think he knew that something might be wrong with him and maybe that’s why he became such a health nut.  He developed pesticides for Dow Chemical and invented DDE (a close cousin of DDT) and nylon materials for them.  I’m guessing that being around all those toxic chemicals led to his development of a highly unusual cancer combination of stomach cancer and bone-marrow cancer.  Apparently, this combination only occurred in a particular set of Dow research chemists, of which my dad was one.  Cancer took him quickly, and he died at the age of 57 when I was 11.  I remember later when I was in high school, I took an aptitude test which showed I had the highest aptitude for being a chemical engineer.  I specifically chose not to pursue this career, though, because of my knowledge, even then, of what being around toxic chemicals can do to you.  After my dad died, my mom became a full-blown alcoholic, and it was all she could do to go to the store and buy processed food for us to eat.

You can see how the cards were stacked against me, especially during my formative years.  I remember always being tired and needing to take naps, even as a teenager.  A lot of this could be because I kept my own hours in high school, which I’m sure contributed to my fatigue as well as the emotional stress I was going through.  I’m sure that this didn’t help my ability to detoxify, either.  Another sign of toxicity that I had at an early age was cellulite.  I’ve had it ever since I hit puberty at 14, and I was by no means overweight.  Cellulite is where your body stores toxins.  One of my high school boyfriends thought I had it because I needed to lift weights, but it’s really because of my toxicity.  Now I know.  I’ve also had other signs of a toxic liver:  sensitivity to caffeine, irritability and disproportionate anger responses are all classic signs.

Now you know how my mother’s health affected my health, and I’ll tell you how it gets worse in my next blog:  how my health literally affected my children’s health.  In my next blog, I’ll talk about how I treated their health after discovering my heavy-metal toxicity.

Maria Rickert Hong can be contacted at maria[at]epidemicanswers[dot]org

Filed under: Heavy Metals   |  2 Comments
Tags: chelation, detoxification, mercury