contracting disease—and of passing along those risks to their children. Despite the fact that epigenetic influences are not hard-coded into DNA, epigenetic effects influence traits that appear to be inherited by offspring.
A full understanding of this phenomenon should cause immediate alarm in the mind of anyone reading this. Epigenetic inheritance of toxic side effects from dietary exposure to heavy metals means that toxicity is trans-generational. This means that the toxic environment in which we live today will negatively impact future generations for an unknown number of generations even if we eliminate all exposure starting tomorrow.
For example, studies have shown an inverse relationship between a mother’s cumulative cord blood lead levels and the epigenome of her developing fetus, strongly suggesting that toxins interfere with “long-term epigenetic programming and disease susceptibility.”11,12 Arsenic exposure was likewise found to affect DNA methylation in fetal development, damaging DNA and disrupting gene regulation.13
In many ways, we are already too late to save future generations from the harmful effects of exposure to toxic elements. And because exposure is only getting worse, not better, trans-generational negative effects are likely to significantly worsen with each subsequent generation. This cycle may place the very sustainability of the human race in a precarious situation, with its effects only becoming more widely apparent in the coming years. Broadly speaking, we may already have doomed ourselves to global increases in infertility, devastating cancer rates, and a planet-wide decline in cognitive function due to heavy metals exposure in modern-day foods.
In other words, we may have already set out on a path by which the great-grandchildren of today’s young adults will be increasingly mentally challenged, infertile, and possibly incapable of surviving without significant medical assistance. The destruction of sustainable human life on our planet, in other words, may have already been set into motion, only to play out through several generations of suffering and bewilderment as government regulators and food companies continue to push their conspiracy of silence about the actual underlying causes.
Heavy metals interfere with your biology
There are many ways in which heavy metals interfere with and distort healthy biological functions. As just one example, heavy metals may interfere with normal cellular methylation cycles. When lead builds up in bones, it can negatively distort DNA methylation processes in white blood cells, which of course originate in bone marrow.14 White blood cells are essential to a healthy immune system as they help the body fight infection by attacking foreign invaders such as viruses, bacteria, and germs.
Many metal toxins are classified as electrophiles, meaning these molecules are driven to steal electrons and bind to chemical compounds in the body in processes similar to methylation. Lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium are biochemical vampires, latching onto and interfering with vital molecular groups, disrupting their immunological and metabolic contributions to healthy biology. Even after they are expelled from the body, these heavy metals can go on to cause damage in downstream biological systems such as fish, amphibians, and ocean ecosystems.
Natural chelation and the removal of heavy metals from the body
Health-conscious consumers naturally want to find ways to remove heavy metals from their bodies. The most important method for accomplishing that is to eliminate dietary exposure to toxic heavy metals. Once sources of exposure are eliminated, the body’s natural elimination processes will automatically and over time remove toxic heavy metal buildup in organs and tissues.
But even the process of removing heavy metals from your body can be toxic. One of the most common methods for this is called chelation, or the binding of metal ions. Chelation therapy involves the administration of chelating agents to bind to metals so they can be more easily excreted and removed from the body through detoxification.
When heavy metals are chelated out of the body’s organs and tissues, they are dumped into the blood supply, which can have toxic effects on the body.
If this process is too rapid, the levels of heavy metals in the blood supply can increase so rapidly that they become acute and toxic on their own. This danger is why any heavy metals detoxification program must be pursued under the guidance of a clinically qualified chelation expert, naturopathic physician, or other holistic practitioner with years of experience in removing heavy metals from the body.
If you are looking for a chelation expert, my recommendation is to contact the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating physicians and other health professionals about the efficacy of using integrative medicine, or medicine that treats the whole body, including the mind and spirit. ACAM’s healthcare model focuses primarily on preventing illness, rather than masking symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs. At Acam.org, you can locate a qualified heavy metals removal clinician in your area.
The topic of heavy metals removal from your body is covered in more detail in the sections on specific heavy metals. As you read through these sections, however, keep in mind that removing the sources of exposure is the single most important principle of detoxification. Failure to remove the sources of exposure—even while undergoing aggressive detoxification therapies—will net you very few overall gains.
Chelation strategies are based on a metal element’s natural affinity for molecules with a certain chemical charge. Chemical binding properties provide a pathway for removing damaging heavy metals from the body. Even the best chelators, however, are limited in their abilities. No chelation strategy offers 100 percent removal of any heavy metal from the body. Specifically, beware of dietary supplements that claim to rapidly pull heavy metals out of your brain or body tissues. Although certain supplements (such as oral ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid [EDTA]) may offer benefits if used over a very long period of time, many dietary supplements are presently sold with dubious detox claims backed by nothing other than wishful thinking. Some of them may even pose real dangers to your health.
In my view, no detox regimen should be pursued without first consulting with a naturopathic physician.
ZEOLITES AND HEAVY METALS
Beware of powdered zeolites sold alongside claims that they remove heavy metals from your body. All powdered zeolites contain very high concentrations of lead—typically 50,000 ppb and sometimes more—and their aluminum levels are many times higher. I recently discovered that powdered zeolites were being dishonestly marketed as a daily dietary supplement, pushed by unscrupulous companies that claimed you should “detox daily” by consuming these finely ground rocks containing very high levels of lead and aluminum. Remarkably, one of the primary claims of zeolite marketers was that it removed lead and aluminum from your body. To “prove” this, one of the companies commissioned a small-scale clinical trial in which the presence of toxic metals was measured in the urine of people consuming zeolites daily. Sure enough, people who consumed zeolites were found to urinate out higher levels of lead and aluminum (two elements found in powdered zeolites). From this, the study author “concluded” that zeolites remove heavy metals from the body.1
People who eat lead and aluminum, in other words, were found to urinate out lead and aluminum. Should we be surprised?
Talk about junk science!
In a clinical setting, common chelating agents for lead, arsenic, and other metals include meso-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), dimercaptopropanesulfonic acid (DMPS), and 2,3-dimercaprol (BAL).15 These chelates—termed after chela, or “claw,” a Greek-derived Latin word—are often used in combination with vitamins and other antioxidants structured to bind more effectively with the metal while enhancing metabolic pathways for the metals’ removal. While DMSA and DMPS are the most widely used
