Chelation therapy for heart patients finally comes out of the shadows
“Game changers” in treating heart disease don’t come along too often.
But unfortunately, one of the best prospects for beating heart disease — especially if you’re diabetic — has been dismissed as fringe medicine, even trickery, for decades.
And that’s despite the excellent success that doctors who practice complementary and alternative medicine have had using this therapy.
Now, the National Institutes of Health are putting a grant of $37 million on the table to help bring chelation therapy out of the shadows and into every cardiologist’s office in America.
“If TACT2 is positive, it will forever change the way we treat heart attack patients.”
Dr. Gervasio Lamas, chief cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center’s heart division in Miami, is talking about a new trial he’s heading up to further study chelation therapy.
And Dr. Lamas sounds as excited as a kid in a candy store when he talks about it. But to fully appreciate why that speaks so highly of chelation therapy, you have to know what Dr. Lamas said about the treatment a little over a decade ago.
He called it “quackery.”
Now, not only is he one of the biggest supporters of chelation therapy to treat heart disease, but he believes that for diabetics, “there’s nothing like (it).”
Chelation therapy is an IV infusion of a chelating agent called EDTA, usually along with vitamins and minerals. EDTA binds to heavy metals and calcium along with free radicals that are in the walls of your blood vessels, enabling you to pass them out in your urine.
As of this time, the FDA has only approved chelation therapy for the treatment of lead poisoning. But many experts believe that heavy metals in the body are linked to heart disease, especially hardening of the arteries. For that reason, chelation therapy has been used with great success for over 60 years by alternative practitioners in treating heart disease.
As I said, Dr. Lamas once thought that chelation therapy was a sham. And because of that, he got involved with the first big trial, called TACT (Trial to Access Chelation Therapy) back in 2002, mainly for the purpose of dismissing chelation for heart patients once and for all.
But when it was completed four years ago and the results tallied, Dr. Lamas was sold hook, line and sinker.
He found that the trial participants who got chelation therapy along with vitamin supplements were able to lower their risk of a second heart attack, a stroke and even the need for bypass surgery by over 25 percent.
But that’s not all.
The patients who suffered from diabetes were able to slash their risk of heart problems by an incredible 49 percent!
With those kinds of results in the bag, Dr. Lamas convinced the FDA to go along with a follow-up study, one that could possibly make chelation therapy an FDA-approved treatment for heart disease. The new trial, TACT2, will be conducted at 100 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada and take five years to complete.
Dr. Lamas says that if this study turns out as well as the first, “we will move to chelation of toxic metals as front-line therapy for heart disease.”
If you would like to find a doctor who currently practices chelation therapy, check out our “Find a doc” page here and click on your state.
Also, the TACT2 trial is currently looking for participants. To qualify, you must be at least 50 years old, have diabetes and have suffered a heart attack.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can go to the website for the trial here.
Sources:
“Feds fund groundbreaking $37 million chelation heart study” Nick Tate, September 27, 2016, Newsmax, newsmax.com
