Deconstructing Conventional
Welcome to Deconstructing Conventional, a show fascinated by one simple question: How did we get here? How did what we call “conventional” come to earn that title? Is there a better way, and if so, what would it look like? This show is about deconstructing two things: Our individual biases, and the systems that run (or attempt to run) our everyday lives.
We do this deconstruction with an eye for where we can reconstruct something better that leads to flourishing societies, and robust physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In short, this show is about questioning our assumptions and practicing systems-level thinking.
I’m your host, Christian Elliot, I’ll do my best to stay curious and humble. You do the same and we’re both bound to learn something. Welcome to the show. Prepare to have your thinking stretched.
Deconstructing Conventional
Dr. Andrew Garner MD – The Sinister Problem of Heavy-Metal Toxicity and What You Can Do to Overcome It
Discover a path to reclaiming your health as Dr. Andrew Garner and I unveil the hidden dangers of heavy metal toxicity and the transformative power of chelation therapy. Delving into our daily encounters with these insidious metals, from the foods we eat to modern medical interventions, we unpack the stark reality of their impact on our well-being. Dr. Garner shares enlightening stories of recovery and rejuvenation, emphasizing the life-altering benefits of a body unburdened by toxic metals.
Our health odyssey doesn't stop with diagnosis; it propels us into the therapeutic embrace of EDTA chelation, where Dr. Garner unveils its proficiency in disarming the metallic invaders plaguing our systems. We explore the successful TACT trial and the remarkable 50% reduction in second heart attacks among diabetic patients, revealing the potential for chelation therapy to rewrite the narrative of cardiovascular care. As you journey through this episode, witness the intertwining dance of holistic health practices and targeted detoxification strategies, all underscored by the necessity of professional guidance.
In closing, I share a heartfelt invitation to join us in this ongoing quest toward optimal health. The stories we've shared are more than just tales of triumph; they're stepping stones toward understanding the broader implications of detoxification and its capacity to elevate every facet of one's life. From restoring vitality to enhancing cognitive function, the ripple effect of a detoxified system is profound. As a token of our commitment to your health journey, stay tuned for our upcoming free detox course, a beacon of hope for those navigating the aftermath of environmental pollutants and seeking a holistic health resurgence.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Dr. Garner's website
- History and studies related to chelation - Chelation.me website
- American College of Advancement in Medicine
Reverse Any Chronic Health Condition in Three Steps - The Simplest Path to Healing You've Ever Seen
NEED TO DETOX AND HEAL?
- Visit our website
- Compare our Detox Programs
- See our recommended products
- Download the Healing United PMA App
- Reverse Any Chronic Illness in Three Steps
Hello everyone, welcome to episode number 30. I've got another important and perhaps you could even say life-saving conversation for you today, and this one is about the topic of heavy metal detoxification. So if you listen to my interview with Zen Honeycutt then you may remember she reported on these shockingly high levels of heavy metals found in fast food and school lunch programs. And this week I talked to a doctor named Andrew Garner who has been helping people detox from heavy metals for many years, and we discussed how corrosive heavy metal poisoning is and how, unfortunately, really none of us can avoid being exposed to them. For many people, the cumulative effect of these poisons, or simply their their body's inability to offload them, is really mucking up their insides and it can cause a whole host of diseases, including cognitive problems, neurological disorders, cancers and cardiac damage, to name a few. Dr Garner and I talked about how some of these metals are finding their ways into people's bodies, how to get tested for them, and he shared some really hopeful stories of dramatic health turnarounds of patients he's helped, so he lays out what the process is like, the science behind it, and he gives you some resources for where you might find other practitioners who offer a similar service. As many of you know, this interview really came out of my ongoing efforts to create a course to help people detox and heal from the COVID vaccine.
Speaker 1:When I started that project about two years ago, I didn't even know we'd need to cover the topic of heavy metal detoxification. But as I dove into the research, what I found was there are many different instances of heavy metals being found in the COVID shots. In Japan, for example, there were millions of doses recalled due to stainless steel contamination, and other people have found lead or nickel or other heavy metals in the shots. And one of the interesting things that came to light about these I guess you could say so-called vaccines is these injections really shouldn't even be called pharmaceuticals, because there really isn't any standardization from batch to batch. They're just wildly different from one lot to another and some have way more side effects than others. And perhaps that is what explains some of the dramatic differences in outcomes people are having. And really, in the kindest light you could give it, and perhaps you could just say they were rushed to market. Or maybe you could insert some other, less gracious theory into what might be happening here. But the bottom line is, either way, these shots have wrecked havoc on a lot of people's lives and we are doing our darndest to be helpful. So, anyway, what I've learned about heavy metal contamination through this process, or heavy metal poisoning, is that it's a much bigger issue than whatever amount may or may not be in the shots and, as you'll hear Dr Garner say, this problem predates COVID and he suggests that everyone should get tested for heavy metals because, one, they're just they cause so much harm and two, they accumulate. And three, they're basically everywhere. So if you eat fast food, if you have dental feelings, if you've had a joint replacement or breathe exhaust from combustion engine engines or you you got any vaccines before the COVID shots, you undoubtedly have some heavy metals in your body.
Speaker 1:So another exciting news our long promise to detox course is set to be rolled out next month, as in April of 2024, and we'll be offering it as a totally free two-day live workshop. So if you know anyone who's been injured by the COVID Vax, or if you know anyone who regrets it and just wants to be proactive in their healing, this workshop will be a three-hour block on back-to-back days, and I'll even be joined by another doctor I've been working with and she is going to bring her expertise to the puzzle as well. Just so you know, there will be nothing to buy during the course. We're not going to ask you to whip out your credit card. We're doing this as a gift to humanity and I promise the course is so good it is worth blocking off your calendar for, especially if you've been injured by these shots, do not miss it. And if you're a practitioner or your caretaker, you just want some new options to help a patient or a loved one. Please join us. So anyway, if you want to get access to the free course, just make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter. You can opt in on our website, true wholehumancom. Just go to the footer, enter your information and you will be among the first to know when the workshop is ready. We plan to run it at least once a quarter. We might even run it once a month, but we're blazing a new trail here, so we shall see how it goes.
Speaker 1:All right, without further ado, here is my interview with Dr Andrew Gardner. All right, hello everyone. Welcome to today's episode. My guest is Dr Andrew Gardner, and he and I connected through a mutual friend, and she knew I was busy trying to find practitioners with experience helping people detoxify from heavy metal. So we got introduced and I kind of feel like I struck oil, I got. I got a great one here for you today.
Speaker 1:So, doc, a little bit about Dr Gardner. He has been a family medicine practice doctor for 32 years in Glen Falls, new York. He went to the college, to college in Bowling Green, ohio, and went to medical school at Wright State University School of Medicine in Dayton Ohio and he did his residency at the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton Ohio in family medicine. He moved to Glen Falls, new York, in 1990 and opened a solo family medicine practice where he has been ever since. So, dr Gardner, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having me, it's great to have you. So I gave kind of the official maybe you could say boring background. So you give us the more color commentary, give us the origin story, how do you became a doctor, and then we'll get into this whole topic of metal detoxification certainly so.
Speaker 2:I went to medical school or went to college and I wanted to be a biochemist. I like science, I liked that sort of thing and I did research the summer after my freshman year in a laboratory and I realized how boring it was and how isolated it is. And if you were fortunate you, you might become a sentence in a textbook for the work of your life maybe a chapter if you're really good.
Speaker 2:And I started hanging around with the wrong crowd. At the same time, the pre-meds and they are very enthusiastic and infectious, and everybody needs to be go to med school, and so I started thinking about it. I just I thought about it a lot, spent a lot of time thinking about it and just realized that the ultimate joy in life is helping people, and a physician gets to do that. And so I decided that I want to go for med school. I didn't want to work at a laboratory and in the university or something like that. So during my college years I did the usual volunteer work and and, to you know, get into medical school and I actually got a job as an orderly in the local hospital which back in those days they had orderlies, which were young, young boys, young men who helped the nurses with kind of physical things transporting patients to the OR and X-ray and, you know, caring for them and helping them get out of the bed if they're, you know, need to, and they would just call us whenever they needed an extra set of hands. And so I got experience in the hospital doing that, and I like to joke and say I started out as an orderly and I worked my way up the corporate ladder to become a doctor. But I ended up going to medical school in Dayton, ohio, as you said, and I did my residency in family medicine.
Speaker 2:I, your residency or your what subspecialty you're in, kind of chooses you. I like to say family medicine appealed to me because you have the long-term relationships with people. You get to help them over a lifetime. You get to see the kids grow up, you know, and they become your patients and take care of the grandparents, and it's just the longevity attracted me as opposed to surgery. In the beginning I was actually very attracted to surgery. It was very fun, it was very glamorous. You know, the operating room is just a very intense place and that is a lot of fun. But then I, as I thought about it again, I like the long-term relationship aspect and being able to help people over their lifetime right on, okay?
Speaker 1:well, with that background, then give us some context about when you became interested in detoxification from heavy metals. Was that before you even got into practice, or is that something you were seeing in your patient base, or how did that come about?
Speaker 2:so when I actually I took a year off before I went to medical school, took a deferment and I went to Texas to hang out and then get ready for medical school, and it was at that point that I became a Christian, okay, and so I came back to medical school and found some Christians in our fellowship and one of them was a chiropractor, and so I would go to his office and I just I wanted to learn what he did what, because medicine, especially 30 years ago, didn't put a lot of value on chiropractic care right, and so I wanted to see for myself what it was about. And I learned that there's the other side to the story. There are other modalities, other things that can help people besides pharmaceuticals and surgery and what they were, you know, teaching me and going to be teaching me a medical school. So I learned from him that there are other other things and it. So it kind of kept my, my field of vision a little wider than the standard, and so I actually bought the textbooks for a naturopathic medical school and I said I'm gonna keep a hold of these and when I run into trouble or difficult patients I can refer to them and maybe help them in some other way besides what I've been taught. So I had an open mind to alternative things from from the beginning because of that, that exposure, and so I mean I started my own practice, solo practice, and I got this postcard in the mail.
Speaker 2:It was inviting me to this chelation therapy conference. And I said what is that? I never, I have never heard of that, never learned about in medical school. And so I laid it on my desk and, you know, within a short while, a few days, a week or so, a patient of mine came to me. He says listen, doc, I'm doing this chelation therapy and I have to drive three hours to go get a three-hour treatment and then drive back three hours and I'm trying to run my own business. He was a solo business owner like myself and he says and it's killing me. He says can you give me this treatment? And I said you know, it's very interesting. I just got a postcard about going to a conference.
Speaker 1:This is very interesting. Sounds like a divine appointment yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I did research. I spent about six months, you know, learning about circulation therapy, talking to doctors around the country that do it I'm trying to understand a little bit better and I talked to cardiologists around that had pictures on their walls they would tell me of cardiac catheterizations, which is the image of the arteries that feed the heart before and after circulation therapy, showing the clearing of their arteries, and I thought, well, this is interesting. If this really helps people, this is a good thing to do. So I did those treatments for my patient and then I did further study and I ended up becoming certified as a chelation doctor, and that's how I got started in this.
Speaker 1:Hang on, okay. Well, so for people who don't know, what are some of the typical or maybe most common symptoms of heavy metal toxicity so you know, you can oftentimes see these laundry lists of symptoms that are published out there.
Speaker 2:The problem with metals in the body is that, unless you have a cute ingestion like a kid, you know, eats, paint chips or a worker is exposed to the top metals, they get, you know, severe symptoms. That's easy to figure out, but the deal with the metals are that your body will clear them in about 30 days and then they get one to storage. So it's kind of like sweeping the dirt under the rug. They go into storage in your bones, your spleen, your liver, your brain, and then they leach back out over the years and that's where they cause the trouble. But it's subtle, it's stealth, it's not an obvious. Oh, I have headaches and that's because I have lead poisoning. It's not that clear, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:So the best way to approach this is to get your metals tested, which is relatively easy to do, and we'll get into that a little later, so that you know if you're one of these people who are genetically programmed to hold onto metals more than others, which there are. We know that women hold onto metals more than men, and so that I advise, you know, recommend people, just they get their metals tested, then you know, but there are, you know, there's, there was. The story of the beginnings of chelation therapy is interesting. These guys in Detroit were making lead batteries for the automotive industry and they were absorbing the lead through their skin and their lungs and they became lead toxic. They had neurologic symptoms. They were, you know, have you ever heard the term mad as a hatter?
Speaker 1:I have. Yeah, robert Yoho mentioned that.
Speaker 2:That came from these gentlemen who used to make beaver hats and they would soak the beaver pelt in a mercury-containing solution and then they would form these things on their heads so they were absorbing the mercury through their skin and they became crazy. You know neurologic symptoms, and that's where that term comes from. Well, these gentlemen in Detroit were getting neurologic symptoms and they were hospitalized and they had to find a way to treat them. And they actually found this drug that the Germans had developed in World War I for treating lead poisoning. So they gave it to these gentlemen, got their lead levels down.
Speaker 2:The gentlemen who happened to have angina, which is chest pain from blockages in your coronary arteries. Their angina got better when their lead levels came down. Unexpected finding. So that's what started this sort of alternative treatment for hardening of the arteries, atherosclerosis, blockages of arteries, and that started back then and it's been going on since then and the number one disease in America is cardiovascular disease. So this affects a lot of people and so that's how the beginnings of chelation therapy. So you don't see a frank, you know a blemish that says you've got this or that you know type of thing. That's the unfortunate part of these metal. These metal impact on our body. But the easy way to find out is to just do a test which we can talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, it sounds like, if I'm summarizing what I think I heard there it's subtle and it's over time and it's an accumulation. It becomes a tipping point when symptoms are gonna have to manifest. But it's two things we can know, we can point to from what you've said. It'll be neurological or brain type disorders, and heart issues also can be dramatically influenced by metal poisoning. Is that accurate, Correct?
Speaker 2:yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it kind of just gunks up the engine everywhere and seemingly any number of symptoms could be a result of that. Is that fair?
Speaker 2:Yes, and they've done studies. They've shown that these metals increase your risk of cancers.
Speaker 2:There was a doctor in Switzerland who actually he was able to chelate almost all of his patients and he followed them over time and he had a cohort of his patients who lived in a particular adult living place in a metropolitan area where they were exposed to pollution and metals and things, and he was chelating all of his patients and he was able to access the medical records of all the other people that lived in the building and he traced them over the years.
Speaker 2:The incidence of cancer in his population was like 5%. The background was 15 or 20%. So and there's a doctor in Texas who was a bone cancer doctor specialist who went back and looked at her bone cancer specimens and measured the lead level in them and lead goes directly to the bone. That's one of the storage places for lead and she found that the higher the lead level in the cancer specimen, the shorter the patient's life. So these metals affect so many different things that we are really learning more and more every day. The research is exploding into these metals and we're learning so much about the negative effects of this.
Speaker 1:Right, well, I can imagine. Well, as you know, I did an interview not too long ago with Zen Honeycutt from Moms Across America, and when I interviewed her, they had just completed a massive study looking at the toxicity levels. I think it was 21 different restaurants, and then they also studied toxicity in the public school lunches and among the many things that shocked me, like birth control in Chick-fil-A sandwiches and so on there were over 6,000 times more of one particular metal I think it was mercury or lead that was showing up in French fries at one of the I think it was in and out rice in and out restaurant. But so we just had a fascinating conversation about the level of toxicity.
Speaker 1:But the ubiquitous nature was what struck me, and I'm in real time processing this with her. I'm like is this intentional and where could this be coming from? And she gave me some plausible mechanisms of like, just whether it's modern agricultural processes or industry painting the picture that these are more or less ubiquitous metals that we're all exposed to. And I guess what I'm asking is does that sound plausible? Is that something that you think? That is a real situation. We are all exposed to these and it's more than we think, and I guess that would lead to. Does it make sense that all of us would get our levels tested, or is it just if you live with particular conditions?
Speaker 2:So these metals, these toxic metals, are everywhere. They're in the air, they're in the food, they're in the water Plants. Take them up. I look at Flint, Michigan. It's in the water systems, the old lead pipes. So, yes, it is ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and a lot of it also has to do with global pollution. The exhaust from cars we took the lead out of gasoline back in the 70s. Well, where's all that lead that got burned out before that time? It's along the highway. What's along the highways in the Midwest? The farmer's fields. It's in the food chain. So they are everywhere and you don't have to live next to a toxic dump to be exposed to these metals. It's the global pollution deposits these metals all around the world. It gets into your well water, it gets into your city water, obviously. So it is unfortunately everywhere, and we can talk about some mitigation strategies to minimize your metal intake at some point too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, sounds like just there's a compound effect or a growing amount of them that we're also exposed to, so it's cumulative on some level, and that would just in my mind at least. There's a prudence in testing, especially if you have some symptoms or some unknown things. When I'm coaching a client, it's often metals is the thing we get to if, like, geez, we're doing a lot of other things and your symptoms are still here, and then we're like let's go a layer deeper and see if this really is something much more aggressive or pernicious than just we gotta get you eating better food. So yes, let's definitely get into that. So one of the ways you've been helping people with detox for metals is something called EDTA chelation therapy. So let's define those terms real quick. So what is EDTA? And we've used the word chelation, so for someone who does not know what that is, what is chelation therapy?
Speaker 2:Okay. So chelation therapy is basically a molecule that chelate means claw and it will bind these metals, basically magnetically. Edta is one particular chelation agent. There are other things that chelate and a chelate just means to bind it and to block it from doing its job. So EDTA will grab these metals and the way it works it will go to the kidneys. And the interesting way the kidneys work, they basically take the contents of the blood and dump it into a basket and then the kidney will pull back out what it wants to keep. So these EDTA molecules are magnetically bound to these metals. They go into the basket and the body says I don't want that. So it just goes out the door. The kidney literally opens the door and says get out. You don't have to break down these metals or these complexes with the EDTA, you don't have to detoxify them, and so it's so easy on the body in terms of getting it out.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, Okay. So when did you first start introducing chelation therapy into your? Was that right when you did that originally? What was the first therapy you learned about, or was that something that came later?
Speaker 2:So what? I? Because of that I had this option now to offer people. What would happen typically is a someone, would they have a chest pain episode or a symptom, and we do a stress test on them. If it's abnormal, they end up getting a cardiac catheterization, which is where they go in with the needle and through your artery and inject dye into the arteries that feed your heart.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:When they take pictures and they can tell you how much blockage, how little blockage, where it is exactly that sort of thing, and decide if you need you know, and I would tell my patients, I would send them. They're going down for the catheterization. I tell them there's a number of things they're going to say to you after this. One there's no blockages. It was a false positive test. Number two there's a major blockage but the rest of it's pretty good. We can put a stent in there and you'll be fine. Or there's multiple blockages. You need a bypass. And I told them there's another option that they won't tell you about and it's called chelation therapy and I would literally hand them this book called bypassing bypass.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:And I'd say here, read this book. And so in those days my patients all went to a major medical center to have their catheterization and they came back to see me and I would take the stitch out of their arm because they would go, they would, this guy would go through the arm. And so they'd come back in to see me to take the stitch out and say so what is your understanding of what they told you? I'd have the report, obviously, and then we'd talk about it. And those that brought up the chelation therapy, like we explained it to them, we talked about it. So I let them sort of organically, naturally, tell those, you know, some people are just so scared they're like, no, I want to get surgery. They told they scared me so bad that I'm going for surgery. Or he says he can stent it and I'm okay. I said okay. And so we would work with people you know kind of where they are, those that chose that therapy. I would provide it for them.
Speaker 1:Okay, so EDTA was kind of your first out the gate thing that you've used and you really haven't had to look back since then. Is that right, correct? Okay, so you were telling me we talked before this about one of the studies that you looked at is called the TACT trial. I believe it was in 2014. And they had some significant findings of what metals were coming out of the body, or some of the increases in that, over other therapies. So tell us a little bit about the TACT trials and what you learned there.
Speaker 2:Yes. So the NIH realized that there was a lot of this chelation therapy going on. This is back in 2001. And they said we got to, we get, let's do a study. You know, if this is good for the public, we need to know. If it's bad for the public, we need to help them understand that.
Speaker 2:So they commissioned the TACT trial TACT trial to assess chelation therapy and they enrolled 1200 patients and the entry criteria to the study was that you have had a prior heart attack. That way there was no debate about how much blockage it was that you got established disease. We know that 1200 patients have got the chelation therapy. Half got placebo and then they followed them for five years. When they looked at the data at the end of that time there, overall there was an 18% reduction in your risk of a second heart attack, which I say is not a home run but it's an on base. We were very happy with that result. People think statin drugs are in the 90% range to do that, but they're not. If you look at the data it's, you know, in the 30% to 40% range that it helps. So when they did a sub analysis in the TACT trial and they looked at diabetics in each group and the diabetics in the treatment group had a 50% reduction in their risk of a second heart attack. That is huge. There's no drug in this country that can do that.
Speaker 2:The NIH got very excited about it and said, okay, do this study again. Different sites, doctors, different patients. So I was invited to participate in that trial and we're I'm in that trial and the data has been collected and it's being analyzed and it's going to be presented next and next month at one of the uh cardiac major cardiology meetings. We I don't have any of the insider data or anything, unfortunately. My prediction is they're going to share the same thing and this will become the standard of care for diabetics. The issue with diabetes is blood vessel disease, atherosclerosis, blindness, heart attacks, kidney failure, strokes, amputations that's all related to the disease of the blood vessel from the impact of the diabetes. So I think they'll learn. Well, let's take it a step further and there's research already going on about this with what they call peripheral vascular disease, parotid artery disease, or disease in the legs that keep people from being able to walk because they had so much pain called claudication.
Speaker 2:Um, they're studying that now and showing improvement in in those symptoms and people are getting better with the chelation therapy. So this will end up at some point, I believe, um becoming the standard of care for vascular disease.
Speaker 1:Okay. Okay, so if I'm, I'm trying to summarize for the listener here we've got a toxicity problem of metals, heavy metals, um, more or less ubiquitous. Some people manifest symptoms, but the body has this ability to kind of, as you say, sweep it under the rug or tuck it away, sequester it in some fashion and tell it there's just too much and that it can't offload anymore. And now symptoms are showing up, parts of the body's being degraded, and EDTA is a way to keel later, to latch on, to grab hold of these molecules and escort them through the kidneys and out through the urine. They'll have that right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I guess take me through the process of how it works to. Obviously you do test people, so you told me about the testing before. So give the listener a sense of how the initial test works with EDTA to test people for heavy metals.
Speaker 2:Okay. So what we do is we give people there's an oral form and an IV form of this EDTA, so we use the IV form we have. You come to the office, we give you the dose based on your weight and then, because all of the metals are coming out in your urine, we give you a collection kit and you collect your urine for the next 12 hours and then that gets sent to a lab and then I get a report back of 18 different metals, toxic metals lead, mercury, cadmium, aluminum, nickel, arsenic, and there's a whole list more of these metals that are not supposed to be there. They're toxic to the human body. No cells need these metals. There's no value to them. There's value to other metals iron, calcium, magnesium. Those are important and those are technically metals. So we do the way. So we get the test report back and then we talk to the patient and, depending on their symptoms and their levels, we design a treatment program. And a typical treatment program is we do the metal tests, we do 30 treatments, 30 of these IV treatments, and those are usually on a twice a week basis in the doctor's office and then at the end of the 30 treatments we do another metal test and we can get a before and after picture of what we're doing with the metals.
Speaker 2:And in the TACT-1 trial they were showing with the before and after numbers. They were showing that they could increase the toxic metals the lead, the mercury, the cadmium, the aluminum out of the body 2000 to 3000% increase of elimination compared to just what we pass out in a normal day of urination. And in that study they looked at all the safety data. They looked at everything. They gave over 300,000 IV infusions and the rate of side effects was less than 1%. It was very interesting. It was nice to document the safety of the EDTA. So we are asking the kidneys to do extra work. So one would worry about, be concerned about are we taxing the kidney too much? And that has been looked at. And there was a group of kidney doctors in Taiwan who published a number of years ago. They took their patients who had kidney disease. They were heading toward dialysis. They were so bad that their kidney function was deteriorating and they were ultimately going to end up getting dialysis.
Speaker 2:They weren't ready for it yet. They measured their lead levels and half of them they did a number of patients. Half of them they chelated, half of them they gave placebo and then they kept following them over time. And the people, they followed them for 23 months they the people that got the chelation therapy. Their kidney function was stable. The people that didn't get the chelation therapy, their kidney function continued at the same slope as before the study of deterioration. So we know that the chelation therapy is actually safe for the kidneys and beneficial to the kidneys.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, as I've looked, I've been researching often on this metals puzzle for quite a while. There's so many theories and so many different approaches to getting these out of the body. That was. One of the concerns I had heard was that this could be too much stress on the kidneys and lead to their deterioration. So it's great to hear that that is not a concern that we need to have. Another one that I've heard and maybe you can speak to, is the idea that there's some different key laters or different EDTAs, and the only dance at the ball here.
Speaker 1:There are other key laters that can come into the body, grab ahold of a metal and bind it in a way that the body can then excrete it, but some of them have a short-lived binding capability, like it's a matter of hours before. Like alpha-lipoic acid is one I found, at least, that they seem to say you get four to six hours, depending on a few factors. How long that molecule will hold on to the heavy metal? Before, yeah, it grabbed ahold of it and pulled it out of the tissue, but now it's free-floating in the blood and if you don't get another hit of something like alpha-lipoic acid, you're likely to be dislodging metals and then just recirculating them rather than excreting them. So I guess, one, have you heard anything like that? And two, does EDTA have any ability to lose its binding capability Once it's latched onto a metal? Does it continue to hold it or does it eventually lose its charge over time and let go of it?
Speaker 2:So it is a magnetic bond with the metal the EDTA and the metal so it's hard to break it apart and then it gets eliminated out of the body in six to 12 hours. So it will hold onto it at that level until it leaves the body. Now you always have a chance of these metals getting released. So what I do is glutathione is your body's own natural antioxidant that we make every day. So I put a small dose of glutathione in with the chelation therapy, because the example I like to use you're transporting prisoners from one prison to another. You handcuff them, you put shackles on them, you got guards with guns, you put them on the bus.
Speaker 2:I want to protect these molecules and get them out of the body and not let them cause any trouble on the way out. So I use the glutathione. We also use we provide some oral supplements to take while people are getting chelated, to use oral systemic enzymes, again keeping inflammation down. If there's any chance of these you know prisoners escaping or getting loose, we want to be able to jump on it and get it out. So we use that as well as some other supplements we use during the oral or the during the treatment program to minimize this risk of causing inflammation transferring the metals somewhere else. That's how we do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's just it's a good reminder for the listener that heavy metal detoxification is one thing I've. The more I look into it, the more I think, just as much as possible, try, if you can afford it or if you can find them have a practitioner supervise this process for you, because you don't want to botch it and overdo it or just fumble with it. So find somebody who's got experience, like Dr Garner, and have them help you. And I guess the other comment I'd have is just I'm sure you knew this as well but don't lose sight of the rest of the lifestyle factors related to detoxification. Like if you're a constipated, under slept, depressed couch potato, there's just not much as moving. You got to get your body up and moving and get these purging systems flushing and cleansing, so that, coupled with a therapy like this, I think could go a long way for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:So anything to add to that that you yeah, what I like to tell people when I, when I talk to people about calculations, every this is not the miracle cure. This is not. You can, you can't keep doing what you're doing and expect this to work. You got to stop smoking. You have to take care of yourself. You got to keep your sugar blood sugar under control. We've got to keep your blood pressure under control. You've got to exercise. You know, I tell them it's a piece of the pie and you have to do your parts that you can do and we'll do our parts medically to manage your other diseases. But it's it all works together and we're learning that. I mean, there's so many things out there that are poisoning us. You know glyphosate you know plastics.
Speaker 2:Now we're learning about that. You know, taking the metals out is part of of a bigger picture now of detoxification of the human body. You know, number one you got to take care of yourself and keep your medical conditions under control. Exercise, all the basics are critical. And then there's now this added picture of taking toxins out of the out of the body from multiple different angles. The metals is one of them, the plastics are another one, the glyphosate is another one. So it is a whole big universe of concern that we need to be addressing to help people and the, the, the, the metal, the toxic metals.
Speaker 2:We know, we've they've learned mechanisms of these toxic metals. For instance, if you go on YouTube, there's a video of a snail neuron growing and then they put a very dilute solution of mercury into into that growth chamber. And it doesn't just arrest the growth of these neuron cells and they don't just shrivel up and die, they literally start breaking down backwards like Legos coming apart. And it's all on this video. It's amazing. And so they found the binding site where the mercury will bind to the neuron and start this sort of a domino effect of degradation and things they know on the blood cell wall, the lining of the blood cells have a layer called the endothelial cell and they've learned that when a molecule of lead hits that cell it's literally like the sparklers sparklers we used to use on the 4th of July as kids and write our name in the sky. It's like a sparkler hitting that cell and inciting an injury.
Speaker 2:And they know atherosclerosis begins as an injury. There's something you know smoking lead toxins get the attack. They hit that cell, it happens and the body is trying to repair that. And that's when it lays down cholesterol, it lays down platelets, it lays down things to try to block that injury from further expanding. But it ends up becoming a counterintuitive process. The healing process then becomes a blockage, a narrowing to the blood flow. So we're learning more and more about these mechanisms, of these toxic metals, where they actually interact on the cellular level, and so we are learning more and more about it.
Speaker 1:I bet you Pan. It's comforting to know there are people like you who are continually looking at this and to your point, not just looking at, okay, what can we use to attach to mercury and get it out and how long. But you're thinking holistically. You're thinking about the rest of the factors and just to be able to I get the privilege of watching you describe this in the way that you visually use your hands to talk about that Just to be able to picture what's going on in the body and go, oh, I could give it some more support and I can think like disease, there's a tipping point for it. But it also works both ways. Healing has a tipping point as well, and you get enough things going in your favor, you get enough awareness, you get enough health habits stacked together and, sure enough, healing starts to find its way back to the body too. So thank you for that explanation. I love it.
Speaker 1:Another thing I wanted to ask you about. So I remember, as I've been studying detoxification for metals specifically, I came across what are called affinity charts, which I guess my understanding of is. They're basically a way that shows the EDTA specifically will use that as an example. It has an affinity or a preference to bind to particular metals in kind of a descending order, like if I'm making it up with mercury's first, it will pick that and then, if that's not available or if it's not in the body, it'll go for aluminum and then it would go for another one and down the list. So tell us a little bit about that. Did I describe that accurately? Is that what an affinity chart basically is?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, let me back up a second and say so. There are other key ladders out there. Okay, and I looked into them before I started. This. Edta, I believe, is the safest key lader out there. It's broad spectrum. It will take all kinds of different metals out. There are other key laders that are specific for mercury, specific for lead, but I like the broad spectrum approach and I've seen people's metal test results enough that I know we're pulling out the lead, we're pulling out the mercury, we're pulling out so many different things. It all depends on the concentration in their body. So the way that EDTA works, there's a concentration gradient. So how much metal is in the body? And then this affinity for a particular metal. The analogy I like to use is you're going to the high school dance. You're leaning against the wall, looking across the room, you see a group of pretty girls and you say which one do I want to dance with? I'll pick that one.
Speaker 2:So, just like we have an attraction, variation and hierarchy, edta has a hierarchy, so it will has an attraction for the mercury, as you said, and it's a descending order of different metals. Now there are also some good metals, like I said, in the body and some of those metals are in that attraction profile also. So because of that we do take a little bit of the good when we take the toxic metals out. So in our program and most doctors use a similar program we give a good broad spectrum multivitamin. We want to make sure we have those nutrients that we need, because the key direction is going to take a little bit of the bad with it. But it's better to get the bad guy out than to leave them in there. And so we supplement with a good multivitamin and then we use the oral systemic enzymes to help keep the inflammation down. And then I use the oral EDTA I mentioned. There's an oral and an IV form.
Speaker 2:The oral form is only about 10% absorbed into the body the oral EDTA, so most people don't feel like it does a good job of getting metals out. Well, I thought of a way that we can use that to our advantage.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:A lot of these metals are in the food. There was an interesting study recently I saw One of the problems in modern agriculture is the, especially the broad leaf plants, the good ones we like, you know, the spinach, the kale, the broccoli. They take up metals. So this guy sprayed EDTA on the fields where he was growing these crops.
Speaker 1:Before he grew them.
Speaker 2:As he was growing them Okay, not before, but while the plants were there and then measured the metals in that group and then a field next door that didn't get sprayed, and he showed that there was less. The plants took up less of the metals and there was also a slight increase in yields. So I envisioned someday, instead of crop dusters they're gonna have EDTA dusters going out and helping to protect us Right. So back to the affinity and the taking the good with the bad. So we give oral EDTA and my understanding is it will bind the metals in our food and because it's only 10% absorbed, you're kind of handcuffing it. It can't get the metals can't get in.
Speaker 2:So, they're gonna pass through and you're gonna eliminate them. So and this is part of our mitigation strategy, which I can touch on quickly- yeah.
Speaker 2:It's the oral EDTA to bind the metals in your food and then you pass it out. I recommend distilled water for drinking water. These metals are in the water. Let me look at Flint, michigan. Obviously everyone knows about that by now, but the metals are everywhere. They're in the well water, they're in everything. So distilled water is pure H2O and I know that it's clean. Bottled water has been studied and shown to have metals in it and to have glyphosate and to have plastics and everything in it. So the caveat with distilled water is you don't wanna do a fast with it.
Speaker 2:If you're doing a whole day, a day or two or three fast, you wanna get some electrolytes in there. That's one of the concerns people have with distilled water. Well, it doesn't have the minerals in there that we need. Well, most people don't drink enough water to make a difference in their minerals. They're getting their minerals from their food more most likely, more prevalently, and so you're not gonna miss out on a lot of minerals by drinking distilled water. I've been drinking distilled water for 30 years. If I go on a fast, I buy the little electrolytes, the metal free electrolyte tablets, and put those in the water. So that's part of our mitigation strategy, trying to keep us block the intake of the toxic metals. So it's in the air, it's in the food, it's in the water. We can't stop breathing.
Speaker 2:So the two things we can't attack are the water and the food. So that's the way that I do that. I think I believe I answered your question.
Speaker 1:You did. I'd like to have more. Here we go. So I guess, while I'm on the thought that with the water, do you put any salt in your water? Anything else that helps with that? I guess osmosis of the water across the cell membrane Is that. Are you just relying the food to be the source of the minerals that way? Yes, I do. Okay, the food. Okay, got it. So when it comes to the affinity of EDTA, what is its number one or two? I mean, we talk three most preferred metals it likes to pull out of the body.
Speaker 2:The lead, the mercury, the cadmium and the aluminum.
Speaker 1:How about that? So if you have any of those, it's going to prefer that set of pretty girls over the minerals that aren't as attractive. I guess is what you're saying Correct, okay, fantastic Okay. So let me think, just give us some stories here. I want people to have kind of a maybe more human face to this. So you've been doing this a long time and you have undoubtedly helped people who were metal toxic become much less so and so doing their health improved. So give us some stories without giving up any patient confidentiality. What can you tell us about what kind of turnarounds you have seen in people's health when it came to detoxing these metals?
Speaker 2:So I've seen I've had patients come to me who they were diabetic. They've lost a toe, they've lost a four foot, they've lost the rest of the foot. They're telling them you got another ulcer, you got another infection, we can't treat this, we're going to have to amputate your whole leg. I've had them come to my office and we chelate them and we've saved them from amputation of their lungs. I have a patient who I have a before and after cardiac catheterization picture. He went in. He had a chest pain episode.
Speaker 2:Treadmill stress test abnormal gets a cardiac catheterization. He had 80%, 90%, 70%. He had about eight different blockages and they said we'd like to invite you to stay overnight at the hospital and do a bypass on you tomorrow. And he's one of these guys I'd given the book to and he says no, thank you, I'm going to go home and do aculation therapy. And they were just aghast. Well, and I about 12 years. It was about 12 years later he had another chest pain episode. So he goes to the hospital. He has a blood clot in his lungs called a pulmonary embolus. That's what is giving him his chest pain.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:They saw the report of his cardiac catheterization from 12 years earlier and said, oh my gosh, we got to recap this guy so we can see what the heck's going on here. The cardiac catheterization afterwards he had 20s and 30s, 20s and 30s. He had 180% in a little tiny vessel Wow. So I had the luxury of having this before and after. Picture of what these cardiologists told me about before in my own patients.
Speaker 2:So that was always quite valuable for me to have that. I had a gentleman who contacted me. He had done some aculation with me. He went to Florida. He called me up and he says, doc, I can't get off the couch, I can't walk to the bathroom without chest pain. I mean he had already had a bypass. It failed. He had had stents. They had failed. He had diabetes. He was trying to take care of himself. He says what can I do? I said you got to get some more aculation, you got to get back on aculation. And he started the aculation back up down there in Florida. Within a few weeks he was able to get up off the couch, go to the bathroom, walk around the house and within a couple of months he was out walking the beach because his angina had calmed down so much. Just like the battery workers in Detroit found that their angina got better when they got chelated.
Speaker 2:I had a gentleman recently who came to me. He's living in a nursing home. His wife actually had had a supplement company that she owned and ran for many years and she contacted me. He had cognitive impairment, very severe. She said he used to get chelation therapy years ago and it helped him. I want to get him back started. He has to be transported two hours from this nursing home to my office by medi. Ambulance Comes in. He walks. He comes in. He's in a wheelchair. He's got an aide to help him get around. I went downstairs to the chelation room about a month and a half after he started and he's like walking out the door saying bye, doc. His wife calls me up and she says I can have conversations with my husband again. It's helped his cognitive impairment. She was almost near tears.
Speaker 1:I can imagine yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to see that come back in a loved one. So those are a few of the stories of patients. I've had patients tell me I can see colors better. I'm driving down the highway to come see you and I notice I can see the colors better. And men tell me they notice a quality improvement in their erections. I have people tell me I got macular degeneration. I go see my eye doctor and he's like I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it because you're not getting worse like everybody else. So there are so many other benefits beyond just the blood vessel disease help that the chelation does and, like I said, there's enough studies showing the risk of metals and cancer is a big thing, and so I believe people should get tested.
Speaker 2:Find out if you're one of these unfortunate ones that hold onto metals, and then you can treat this. And then you do mitigation strategies, and then you talk to people like Kristen to get a whole big, the big universal picture of how to help yourself. It all works together.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. I think the number of surgeons or other doctors who have lost giant paychecks from their insurance companies because of your chelation therapies might be a long list. But bravo, those are some impressive stories and life saved and runway of golden years extended significantly and I'm just thrilled that other people get to hear this and find some hope for that. So thank you for those stories. So I guess what suggests that if somebody's hearing this and they're putting themselves in a jeez, maybe I should get my metals tested and maybe go through a process like this. Are there any other things you'd say about? Because we had talked about testing and really you'd say the urine test is kind of the gold standard. Any other tests people should do? What's wrong with what? Why wouldn't you suggest a hair test or things like that if somebody's looking at getting into this world?
Speaker 2:So yeah, there's just a group of people that use hair test analysis because it's quicker, easier for them and most of my colleagues do not believe the hair testing shows the accurate level of metals in your body. We're measuring what's stored in your tissue. That's a difficult thing to do. I can't buy up. So your bone, your spring and your liver, your brain? With our urine testing we're trying to get a picture of what is in the body, the hair, it just doesn't cut it.
Speaker 2:There are other treatments out there for removing metals, like foot baths and things like that. I have not seen the data substantiate that these foot baths are pulling metals out of your body. If you think about the sole of your foot is so thick to try to be getting stuff across that membrane. I haven't seen evidence that it works well. There are oral things you can do besides the mitigation strategies with the oral EDTA and the still water. There are natural things that are natural key laders. But what I see? The difficult patients. I see the patients with vascular disease. They're told they didn't have a bypass. They're told they need to have an amputation. They can't walk a block because they get pain in their legs or they get chest pain. Those are the people they need IV treatment. Okay, they've gone too far. So, people who wanna do good things for their health, you can take natural key laders cilantro, alphalepoic acid you can Google these oral key laders, there's a lot of them out there. Vitamin C actually chelates.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, even there's a lot of herbs that binds the metals too.
Speaker 2:A lot of herbs, yeah, different things.
Speaker 1:Eating a breadth of good nutrition can help. The body has its own purging mechanisms. It's not like a detox only happens when we schedule it. It's always trying to get these things out and it's just up to us to be prudent managing the systems of our body so that it can work. And I guess two things I'll comment on relative to your answer there. One is it totally makes sense to me that hair is outside the body and so, like, what's on your, what's your shampoo, what hair dye do you have? You're possibly testing those kind of things, not so much what's coming out of your urine, which would be a different animal.
Speaker 1:And then, when it comes to foot baths, I've heard similar things that we used to have one of those in one of our studios and my experience with it was that people get so excited about the color of the water. But to me the magic isn't in the, you know, the toxins leaving via the feet, it's more in the blood and its ability to circulate better. Couple of fascinating stories I had one. I had a diabetic come in and put his feet in the foot bath and he was finished and he picked up his feet and put them on the floor. He's like the floor is cold, like it was the first time in years he had felt any temperature in his feet from one in one 20 minute session, whatever how long it was.
Speaker 1:And. But yeah, I don't, I don't have any. Like you, I haven't found any evidence that it's actually pulling things through the skin that way, but it sure is a an interesting. There's so many different ways that the body gets support to your point about maybe there's more in just what we know and there's other perhaps mechanisms going on. But anyway, that was just one. I'm glad you brought that up because that's one other thing I had heard about and I'm I just like you. I haven't been able to find a convincing way to say, yep, sure enough, things are exiting via feet tissue, but maybe it's got some other merit somewhere. So, okay, well, any other things. If somebody's interested in looking into EDTA, they're hearing this episode and they want to find out more, what's your best suggestion for where they go? To either learn about it or to find a practitioner who does it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just one quick comment thing that I like to say to patients is getting the metals out of your body, is they muck up the system and what I like to say is we get the metals out and your body does what God designed it to do and that's heal itself, but these metals block that from all the environmental exposure we have. So if people would like to find a practitioner of them, there's a website called acamorg American College of Advancement in Medicine and they have a tool on there to put in your zip code and find a doctor near you that is doing chelation therapy, and that's probably the easiest way To get more information. There's a website called chelationme and they've got a lot of wonderful information on their website, my website drandrogarnercom. I have information on there about chelation therapy.
Speaker 1:Right on, okay, so if people want to find you specifically, that's the best place to go is your website.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is, and I'm in. I'm located in upstate New York and, if anybody has quite, I've had people call me and I refer them to doctors near them by, basically, the acam website. But that's a great resource.
Speaker 1:Okay, give people your website once again, in case they didn't catch it drandrogarnercom or just Google my name, Dr Ader Garner, and you'll find it. Right on, okay, and you said the TAC trials. The second version of it's likely to be out in April of 2024, is that right?
Speaker 2:Next month they're gonna present the findings at the American College or one of the large cardiology meetings. Now, just as a little spoiler alert, I don't think they'd be presenting if they didn't have good results. So that's all I know.
Speaker 1:Yep. So if you're more research minded and you want to look into it that way, keep your eyes peeled, for, depending on when you listen to this, that study probably is already published. But yeah, thank you so much for your time today. Any other parting thoughts or encouraging words you'd have for the listener?
Speaker 2:You know. Again, just to reiterate what I said, there's a universe of problems we gotta deal with. You know you do what you can do in your world. Christian can help you with. You know a lot of things to help you improve your health. You need to look at the plasticides, the glyphosate and toxic metals from a practitioner perspective to try to help you detox with those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2:I sure appreciate it All right, good talking to you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:You're very welcome.
