The Dangers Of Heavy Metal Chelation And How Toxic Metals Can Adapt

The body is intelligent in that it has learned to adapt to toxic metals in a biological system. 

Toxic metals do not belong inside of a cell, and most are ejected out or never allowed inside the cell to begin with. 

The challenging part is when similar pairs of metals from the same column on the table are identical enough in size, binding capacity, or valance.

This is just similar enough to allow them in and just different enough to wreak havoc. 

This is were cadmium and zinc are caught in a biological crossfire! 

Cadmium (Cd) sits directly under zinc (Zn), making Cd a bit heavier and larger than Zn, but a lot more toxic. 

In fact, cadmium is so similar to zinc that it is often an impurity substituted into a zinc ore. 

Cadmium can fit perfectly into what was originally zinc’s parking space (enzyme binding site) as it binds its way in, but it can only do maybe 20-30% of zinc’s chemistry. 

When cadmium does stick to the binding site and does zinc's chemistry, this is when it changes from toxic to useful–which is a biological adaptation for the greater good of survival. 

For example, one of the oldest zinc enzymes is carbonic anhydrase that adds an extra oxygen onto CO2 to make it more dissolvable in water to turn a greater acid, carbon dioxide, into a lesser acid called carbonic acid that the body can safely evict out through the lungs and or kidneys. 

Zinc will normally hold water still so its oxygen can be added to CO2, but it's funny how cadmium can do the exact same thing by using its binding stickiness to get the job done when zinc is deficient or when it has been displaced as toxic metals build up and displace the nutrient minerals. 

So removing carbon dioxide is a must for our survival–and yes, Cadmium can do that job successfully in this case. 

But what about the other 200 enzymatic functions of zinc that cadmium cannot do?!

This is why your body must have the preferred minerals before you start aggressively chelating heavy metals out of the system. 

If you do not get the zinc up to speed when aggressively removing cadmium or other heavy metals, your body will crash and burn. 

This is why I recommend patients start with a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis to find out toxic metal levels and why I take so much caution when helping patients during the detoxification process.

If you are thinking about removing heavy metals from your body, or if you think heavy metals could possibly be behind your health problems and would like guidance, contact me for a complimentary consultation.