Last Health Tip I couldn’t help but remind you of Chicago’s NUMBER ONE position in the
U.S. in terms of miles of lead pipes still in use AND President Trump’s blocking of funding dedicated to lead pipe removal, allocating the money instead to ICE. On the good news side, this gesture of relentless contempt toward Chicago was recently blocked by the Federal courts.
But really, folks, just how did Chicago end up with the nation’s largest lead pipe inventory? Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you can guess. It’s a combination of political clout and
plumber-friendly building codes. The very powerful plumber’s union forced city residents to install lead lines all the way up to 1986 when, finally, lead lines were banned federally by the EPA and all plumbers (union or not) were compelled to work with copper or plastic pipes.
The financial interest was obvious. If you wanted work to be done by a trained union plumber, you got lead pipes and you lived (or died) with them. Since the union was extremely clout-heavy, City Hall simply looked the other way.
TESTING YOURSELF FOR TOXIC METALS
Lead is one of what are termed “heavy” metals, all of which are bad for you. Once inside, they’re hard to remove (but, like lead, it can be done). The other toxic metals, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and aluminum can all be absorbed by your body and stored there. Not that this is new. Here’s a picture of someone from 150 years ago. The expression “mad as a hatter” was caused by the mercury being absorbed during the manufacture of felt hats. Oh, BTW, in 2020, the Trump administration rolled back the safety regulations on mercury because “they were too burdensome on the coal industry.”
Heavy Metal Accumulation
As heavy metals accumulate in the body, any of them can cause multiple and mystifying symptoms, both physical and mental. When conventional physicians encounter a patient with longstanding and seemingly unrelated symptoms, they virtually never screen the patient for heavy metal toxicity.
The most common symptoms linked to heavy metal toxicity are fatigue, headaches, depression, brain fog (with measurably lower IQs in children), diminished memory and cognitive ability, and peripheral neuropathy (numbness/tingling in extremities).
Also, because toxic metals can make their way into the millions of metabolic reactions throughout your body, these metabolic processes start shutting down, triggering susceptibility to damage from free radicals, destroying delicate cellular membranes, and causing functional
decline of brain, kidneys, heart, and bone marrow in addition to increasing susceptibility to certain cancers.
We tend to think that heavy metal toxicity happens to other people and not us. This is pure NIMBY (not in my backyard) logic. You protest that lead poisoning, which occurs when kids munch on sweet-tasting paint chips (among other ways), could only happen in neighborhoods and cities not as nice as yours.
Sorry, but lead exposure is mostly related to the age of housing and how much lead in old buildings is stirred up during renovation.
Scientists know for certain that heavy metal exposure/accumulation accelerates the aging process. Here’s just one of many studies on this subject, linking cadmium levels to walking speed (a common measurement of premature aging).
Your susceptibility to toxic metals is likely genetic, with some people more susceptible to accumulating (or being able to clear them) them than others. For example, a single meal of sushi can cause a measurable increase in blood levels of mercury in one person but not in another.
There are good reasons to get tested for toxic metals.
First, if you’re pretty sure you have a history of exposure, get tested. For example, you once lived near a factory whose smokestacks were visible from your bedroom window, you’ve been living in an old building (pre-1950) for years, you do craft work with metals in an unventilated area, or you really like sushi (which carries methylmercury, also a toxin) and eat it a lot.
However, concerning dental amalgams, know that the Dental Amalgam Wars between dentists themselves have been ongoing for 150 years (!), since amalgams were first introduced. The question: do dental amalgams, which are 40% mercury, actually release enough mercury to be a health hazard?
The updated FDA guidance says it’s a possibility, and if you’re worried you can ask your dentist for porcelainor, if you’re flush with cash, go for gold.
Remember, toxic metals remain stored in your fat deposits. If, as you look back on your life, you remember playing with those fascinating little beads of mercury for hours on end, you volunteered to clean out an abandoned paint factory (cadmium), or your hobby was making stained glass windows (lead in the solder), you should probably get tested.
Second, if you’ve got some of the chronic symptoms I listed earlier (fatigue, muscle/joint aching, brain fog) and you endlessly hear, “We can’t find anything wrong with you and all your tests are normal,” get tested.
In addition, consider testing if you have any premature chronic health problems (heart, lung, or kidney disease or cancer anywhere in your body) that seem inappropriate for your age.
Listen up: when you care for your body correctly, your vital organs should last well until your late 80s or early 90s. If you learn that you’re falling apart prematurely, it’s possible you’re being poisoned by toxic metals you were exposed to long ago.
Getting Yourself Tested
Getting tested for toxic metal exposure should be straightforward and fairly easy, but when patients want to explore testing, they meet with some real barriers. Except for the blood tests offered to children being screened for lead poisoning or to worried sushi devotees for mercury, most conventional physicians are taught little about toxic metal testing.
As a start, ask your doctor for a “toxic metal screen.” This is a blood test that should include lead, mercury, arsenic, aluminum, and cadmium, all of which are troublemakers. It is generally covered by your health insurance. By the way, testing hair samples for toxic metals, popular several years ago, fell into disfavor when hair from the same volunteers was sent to four different labs and received four completely different results.
If the toxic metals screen reveals that your blood levels of toxic metals are found to be virtually zero, you’re probably out of the woods. However, low blood levels indicate you still might have issues.
If any of your scores are not zero, the next step is called a “provoked urine challenge.” With this test, you’re given oral DMSA (dimercaptosuccinic acid), a chelating compound that literally pulls a sample of the toxic metals from storage in your body and sends them into your urine. You then mail a bit of urine to Doctor’s Data in St. Charles, IL, which has been testing fortoxic metals for almost a half a century.
Although not covered by insurance, this test is only $125 and will completely rule out whether or not any of the toxic metals is an issue for you.
TESTING YOUR HOME FOR LEAD IN YOUR WATER
This is actually easy, but you’d better get moving before Washington finds a way to defund it and turn more money over to ICE, the coal industry, or to buying Greenland. Go to this website. Get a home test kit (FREE!), follow the instructions (carefully!). If you have lead in your water you’ll get an in-home water filter (FREE!!) and in a few months, the City will come out to replace the pipes going into your home (FREE!!). I did this a couple of years ago; found lead in the water of my 135-year-old house and the City did everything as promised.
IF YOU HAVE LEAD OR OTHER TOXIC METALS IN YOUR BODY
Schedule with one of the WholeHealth Chicago practitioners and we’ll guide you through the chelation process.
Be well,
David Edelberg, MD