What Are The Pros And Cons Of Chelation Therapy In Coronary Artery Disease Treatment?

Chelation therapy is a process that helps remove heavy metals from the blood. For a long time, it has been used to treat metal poisoning, but over the past few years, this therapy has helped treat other conditions as well. Heart disease is one of them.

Understanding chelation therapy

Once these agents reach the bloodstream, they bind to the metals inside. When this happens, the chelators gather the heavy metals they find as they travel through the bloodstream, and then create compounds that are eventually filtered by the kidneys. Your body then eliminates them through urine.

While beneficial, chelation therapy can also be expensive, as each treatment session has a price that varies between $75 and $125. Depending on the level of metal in the bloodstream, a person may be required to attend a chelation therapy session every week, for months on end.

Thankfully, there are plenty of insurance plans that cover chelation therapy with FDA-approved substances and conditions.

Benefits of chelation therapy

Chelation therapy’s main role is to help the body get rid of heavy metals. These include copper, iron, arsenic, lead, mercury, and nickel. People can end up with heavy metal poisoning by ingesting lead paint, breathing polluted air, or drinking polluted water.

However, there has been speculation that chelation therapy might actually help treat atherosclerosis, one of the prerequisites of coronary artery disease. The ones who suggest this type of therapy might be an efficient claim that chelators bind to the calcium which is found in plaque, much like they bind to the heavy metals to eliminate them from the body.

Risks of chelation therapy

Like other forms of treatment, chelation therapy is not risk-free. Chelators are powerful substances and can cause mild to severe side effects. Typically, people experience a burning sensation in the area where the injection was made. Others develop a fever, headache, or feel nauseous.

In more severe cases, chelation therapy can lead people to experience a drop in blood pressure, have permanent kidney or liver damage, become anemic, have cardiac arrhythmias and seizure, and also a severe allergic reaction that can lead to anaphylactic shock.

Why else is chelation therapy used?

Aside from the suspicion that chelation therapy might be effective in treating atherosclerosis, there are a few other conditions that this therapy may or may not help with.

Diabetes

The first example is diabetes. While it doesn’t actually treat the condition since diabetes patients are more likely to end up having heart problems, the link between chelation therapy and diabetes treatment is linked indirectly by the potential benefits it may have for treating atherosclerosis. Back in 2015, a subgroup analysis revealed the fact that ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid reduced the risk in patients who suffered from diabetes. Even if the results aren’t enough to draw a more general conclusion, they are promising.

Autism

It is believed that one of the causes for autism is themisoral, a mercury-containing preservative found in certain vaccines. People who believe in the controversy that said vaccines cause autism might also think that chelation therapy is also efficient in treating autism, although a 2010 study busted that myth. There was also some speculation that the lead in baby teeth could be linked to the development of autism. Even so, back in 2005, there was a case where a boy with autism passed away as a result of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid treatment.

Parkinson’s disease

People who suffer from Parkinson’s disease have iron build-ups in the brain. Based on this knowledge, some people assume that chelation therapy might be useful in removing iron from the body, and therefore treating Parkinson’s. However, there is very much that isn’t yet understood about how exactly iron influences this disease. In other words, researchers are not sure if removing iron from the brain can actually cure Parkinson’s disease. A 2016 review showed that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that chelation therapy might actually be useful in treating Parkinson’s.

Alzheimer’s disease

There are also speculations that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by the aluminum coming from deodorants, foods, and water, pots and pans, as it builds up in the brain. Even so, it turns out that there is no supporting evidence to link Alzheimer to aluminum exposure. Even if someone would be able to prove that there is indeed a connection between these two, the vast majority of chelators can’t cross the blood-brain barrier because of their large size. This barrier is responsible with filtering whatever enters and leaves the brain.

Conclusion

There are still people out there who believe that chelators can bind to the calcium found in artery plaques and remove them from the build-up, but since the risk involved are major compared to the potential benefits, doctors will much rather turn to the more traditional and well-known methods of treating atherosclerosis.