Quicksilver

[Guest guest]

" HSI - Jenny Thompson " <HSIResearch

HSI e-Alert - Quicksilver

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 07:00:00 -0400

 

 

 

HSI e-Alert - Quicksilver

 

Health Sciences Institute e-Alert

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August 30, 2005

 

 

 

Dear Reader,

 

What would you do?

 

Imagine your child is autistic. You've followed your doctor's advice

and tried powerful antidepressant and antipsychotic medications with

no results. Special diets haven't worked. Sensory integration and

other therapies haven't worked. At that point you might be open to

trying something outside the medical mainstream.

 

This would appear to be the situation that a family from the U.K.

found themselves in when they decided to bring their five-year-old boy

to a Pennsylvania clinic for chelation therapy. Last week, after his

third session of chelation, the boy died of apparent cardiac arrest.

 

The loss of a child is tragic, but even more so when the parents are

doing everything they can to insure their child's well being. Autopsy

results are still pending, so we still don't know if the cause of

death was directly related to the therapy. But regardless of those

results, a new controversy has already erupted on the borderline that

separates mainstream medicine from alternative healthcare.

 

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Be good or be gone

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This time last week I would guess that most people had never even

heard the word chelation (pronounced " key-LAY-shun " ). And it's too bad

that they should be introduced to this therapy by a tragedy because

chelation is a useful tool. And despite the dire opinions you may have

heard (one doctor told the Associated Press that she found chelation

" very scary " ), chelation is an FDA-approved therapy for treating

children who have lead poisoning.

 

But there's a catch.

 

Chelation was first developed in the 1940s by the U.S. Navy to treat

lead poisoning. In addition to lead, chelation purges other heavy

metals as well when the chelating agent binds to metals and removes

them from the body through urination. Chelation also binds with

mineral deposits and is often used to treat arterial disease by

removing plaques from artery walls. So chelation is like a bouncer at

a nightclub, locating unwanted patrons and escorting them out the door.

 

Now here's the catch: In spite of the FDA approval to use this therapy

on children, the medical mainstream CAN'T recognize the effectiveness

of chelation in treating autism because that would amount to an

official recognition of one of the suspected causes of autism: mercury

toxicity from the vaccine preservative thimerosal.

 

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Ignoring connected dots

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I'm not going to reopen the thimerosal can of worms in today's

e-Alert. (If you'd like to see the most recent e-Alert on this subject

- " Doctored Up " 7/12/05 - you can find it on our web site at

hsibaltimore.com.) Suffice it to say that the twin mainstreams of

medicine and the media seem determined to place as much distance as

possible between autism and the slightest hint that a vaccine

ingredient might be at the root of the stunning rise in autism rates,

which happen to parallel the rise in the use of thimerosal.

 

There's just one little problem with the mainstream dismissal of the

thimerosal/autism connection. For many autistic kids, chelation works.

And this is one of those rare cases where there can be no placebo

effect. Children don't snap out of autism just because they're aware

they're being treated.

 

Like so many alternative therapies, chelation has not been

exhaustively researched. But when you're the desperate parents of an

autistic child, you don't have the luxury of waiting until the day

when we know all there is to know about this therapy. According to the

Associated Press, a 2001 Autism Research Institute report showed that

in a survey of more than 23,000 parents who resorted to chelation for

their autistic children, nearly three out of four said this detox

method had helped.

 

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Will level heads prevail?

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Earlier this year, a child died after passing out on a space ship ride

at Disney World. The park wasn't shut down. Its license to operate

wasn't revoked. And although the ride itself was closed, it was

reopened the next day.

 

I hope the heartbreaking death of the U.K. boy isn't exploited by the

mainstream and used as an excuse to ban chelation therapy. When the

details of this case come to light, hopefully we'll be able to

pinpoint exactly what went wrong. When I asked HSI Panelist Allan

Spreen, M.D., for his thoughts, he pointed out that we still don't

know what type of chelation was used (there are several - some are

considered more risky than others), what the dose was and how quickly

the dose was given.

 

He finished his comments with this: " Too bad the 600 people who die of

common oral aspirin EVERY YEAR don't get the same press! "

 

Excellent point. This is the first chelation-related death in nearly

half a century.

 

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....and another thing

 

A case of shingles may last less than 10 days, but it's the

post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) that can hang on and cause considerable

pain for long periods. Now research shows there may be an easy and

natural way to get quick relief.

 

In a study published in The American Journal of Medicine, researchers

divided 30 adults suffering PHN into four groups. One group received

topical treatments of geranium oil, while two groups received a mix of

geranium oil and mineral oil (at ratios of 1 to 1 and 1 to 10), and a

fourth group received only mineral oil.

 

All of the subjects who received any amount of geranium oil reported

pain reduction. And using a scale of zero (indicating no pain) to 100

(extreme pain), those who received treatments containing 100 percent

geranium oil experienced the greatest pain relief. Little or no relief

was reported by the placebo group, while relief was proportional to

the amount of geranium oil in the other two groups: The more geranium

oil, the greater the relief.

 

Some subjects experienced a slight irritation from the geranium oil,

but these irritations subsided within an hour or so.

 

Injections of vitamin B-12 and topical applications of peppermint oil

are also sometimes used to address PHN. More often, doctors prescribe

anti-viral medications that sometimes take days to work, if they work

at all.

 

Geranium oil (extracted from the leaves, stalks and flowers of an

Egyptian variety of geranium) has long been used as an

anti-inflammatory and a fungicidal. So if you're diagnosed with

shingles, prepare for the lingering pain that follows the healing of

blisters by checking with your local health store for geranium oil.

And as always, check with your doctor or naturopathic healthcare

professional before using any natural or over-the-counter treatment.

 

To Your Good Health,

 

Jenny Thompson

 

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Sources:

 

" Death Raises Questions About Autism Treatment " The Associated Press,

8/26/05, msnbc.msm.com

" Temporary Relief of Postherpetic Neuralgia Pain with Topical Geranium

Oil " The American Journal of Medicine " Vol. 115, No. 7, November 2003,

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

" Geranium Oil Effective for Post-Shingles Pain " Darin Ingels, N.D.,

Healthnotes Newswire, 12/18/03, pccnaturalmarkets.com

 

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