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Detoxification – - Are You Afraid of Being Poisoned?

Are you afraid of being poisoned? Sure you are. That’s why you wash your food and cook it properly. Because you know that if you don’t, you may get stomach upset, diarrhea and headaches. But that won’t last long, right? What you don’t know is: you may get poison you don’t know about and get so sick that you may die. But you may not get proper help because symptoms can come so late and be so unspecific, that you won’t get helped.

August 14, 1996. The professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Karen Wetterhahn, who is specializing in toxic metal exposure, accidentally spills a few drops of innocent looking colorless Mercury component called dimethylmercury on her hands, covered by latex gloves. She knew that dimethylmercury is very toxic. What she didn’t know was: it can and it did penetrate her undamaged latex gloves and her skin and deadly poisoned her whole body in 15 seconds. She was fine and she didn’t have any symptoms for a few months and considered herself healthy. Six months later she became very sick and in January 1997 was admitted to the hospital. Then she went into coma despite being treated and died in June 1997.

What strikes me in this case is: even though everybody knew that she was dealing with mercury, they couldn’t make a diagnosis early enough to save her life. That’s how dangerous toxins are. That is how difficult it is to diagnose poisoning.

But she was not alone.

210 BC. Ancient China. The Emperor of the United China and the initiator of Great Wall of China project Uin Shi Huang is looking for eternal life. But how can he get it? He needs an exit of life. He believes it is hidden in Penglai City on Penglai mountain, which was the base of the Eighth Immortals. Emperor sends thousands of men on the ships to find this mounting. Nobody comes back, because they know: without elixir of life they will be killed. Therefore they went ahead and found and colonized Japan. That’s why the Chinese Emperor had to get magic pills from his doctors and scientists. After taking them he died. The reason: those pills contained too much mercury. Those pills did not make him immortal, but they make his name immortal because he became the first famous man, poisoned and killed by one of the most dangerous and well known contemporary poisons  - mercury.

The privilege of being poisoned by mercury did not belong to famous people only.

Have you ever heard the expression: “mad as a hatter”? Sure you do. What you may not know is: in 18th and 19th centuries many felt hat manufacturing workers got mad. Because they’ve got too much mercury from solutions for curing animal pelts. Apparently mad was Theophillius Carter, whom Lewis Carrol, the author of ” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “, personally knew and who is believed to inspire Mad Hatter. Don’t forget that selling hats was the dominant trade at that time.

Mercury is very dangerous: it damages brain and nerves, kidneys and lungs. It causes fatigue, pains, itching, swelling, hair and teeth loss, muscle weakness, memory problems, irritability, personality changes and insomnia. Because it blocks clearing your body from catecholamines, you get too much epinephrine with resulting palpitations, sweating and high blood pressure. Enough? But how can you get this deadly toxin in your body?

October 23, 2008. Broadway Manhattan New York. Famous American actor Jeremy Piven appears in the Broadway hit play “Speed-the-Plow”, co starring with Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men and Raul Esparza, three times Tony nominee. But very soon Mr. Piven misses a few performances and then announces, that he’s not going to perform because of mysterious illness. The author on the play David Mamet was joking that Mr. Piven decided to leave “to pursue a career as a thermometer”. It was a very cruel joke, because Mr. Piven was suffering from Mercury toxicity. But how could he get that? Sushi twice a day for 20 years and possibly Chinese herbs. But sushi is not the only source you can get mercury from. Other sources of mercury are thymerosal from vaccines, fluorescent lamps, cosmetics, waste disposal and other human generated sources, as well as dental amalgams. According to OSHA dental amalgam is toxic and dentists cannot throw it into the waste basket. But they can put it into your mouth for 15 to 20 years. Funny? Not really.

Mercury is no the only heavy metal, that is deadly poison. There is another one, that is always around us. It poisoned and even killed a lot of human beings. Famous people are among them. But it takes sometimes more that one century to find out what the killer is.

May 7, 1824 Kärntnertor theater in Vienna. Famous composer and conductor Ludwig van Beethoven is eager to defeat italian composers like Rossini in Vienna, where italian music was dominating. He changes the premiere of his Symphony #9 from Berlin to Vienna. He new, that this is the first time when composer uses voices in symphony. What he did not know was: Symphony # 9 will become the best known piece of classical music ever known and the part if it, called “Ode of Joy” will become the European Anthem. He is standing in from of the orchestra and chorus and conducting. The symphony is finished. Music ends. Audience bursts into cheers. It gives the composer standing ovations. But strangely Ludwig van Beethoven is still conducting. Orchestra players knew the composer’s best kept secret and immediately realized what is going on. The contralto Caroline Unger comes to the composer — conductor and turns Beethoven around to see audience’s standing ovations. People in the audience knew, that they just heard one of the best music pieces ever written. What they did not know was: the composer and conductor Ludwig van Beethoven was deaf. But it was not only deafness, that made him see physician after physician to get helped. He was suffering from abdominal pain, indigestion, mood swings and depression. His health was deteriorating rapidly. Soon he became bedridden and died in 1827 at age 57. Just before his death he wrote: “As soon as I am dead, if Dr. Schmidt is still alive, ask him in my name to discover my disease…” Even autopsy did not shed any light on the cause of his death. Despite his request and autopsy the cause of his deafness and death remained the mystery.

Until now. One extravagant stealing and one heroic act of mercy helped to solve the mystery of Beethoven’s deafness and death and to write a new page in the toxicology story.

1994. London. Famous Sotheby’s auction. Mr. Ira Brilliant, the founder the Beethoven Center at San Jose State University in 1985, is sitting quietly and watching the new items appearing in the auction. What he is looking for is not the art masterpiece, for which Sotheby’s is famous. He is looking for a lock of 582 brown, white and gray hair in wood and glass frame. As per Sotheby’s catalog this lock of hair is Ludwig van Beethoven hair. That is why Mr. Ira Brilliant byes it for 7200 dollars thanks to money given by a urologist Dr. Alfredo Guevara from Nogales Arizona. But they want to be sure, that the lock of hair really belongs to Ludwig van Beethoven. They request the proof. And a few months later they received a letter from Denmark signed by Mr. Thomas Wassard Larsen. His grandfather Dr. Kay Alexander Fremming was practicing in a small village Gilleleje in Denmark, which was only 10 miles from Norway by water. He was helping to rescue Jews from Nazi, and one of the salvaged grateful Jews gave him his most precious thing — the lock of Beethoven’s hair as a gift. But how cold this Jew get it from?

Stealing is not a good idea. Especially from the dead. But when Ferdinand Hiller, Jewish composer and Beethoven’s admirer snipped the lock of Beethoven’s hair on the next day of his death, he did not think about it. He just wanted the reminder. And other people did the same things too. What Ferdinand Hiller did not know was: this lock of hair will eventually shed a light on the cause of Beethoven’s death.

Now Mr. Ira Brilliant and Dr. Alfredo Guevara were sure, that the lock of hair really is Beethoven’s hair. And bold idea comes to their mind: what is by analyzing hair they can figure out the cause of Beethoven’s death? Hair goes to forensic experts at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson. What they found shocked them. Beethoven’s hair were heavily loaded with another deadly heavy metal — lead!

Lead damages almost every our body part: brain and the rest of out nervous system, heart, digestive system, kidneys, bones etc. It causes learning problems, insomnia, mood disorders, abdominal pain, tremors, seizures and death. Children are especially sensitive to lead and may develop permanent damage. But where can we get lead from? Paints! Other sources are air, food, soil, consumer products. There is a hypothesis why Roman empire fell: because they drank water from pipes, made from lead!

What about if lead and mercury are together? They multiply the damage, made by both of them. When they are together it is not like 9 plus 9 equals 18. It is like 9 multiplied by 9 equals 81!

When did you check your mercury and lead levels last time?

Even though heavy metal toxicity is extremely dangerous and difficult to recognize, it was not what really scared the scientists.

1980s. Fishermen in the US and Canada are very concerned because of declining salmon population. So scientists had to look into it. It looked like there were too many females and witty little males. But how did that happen? Mother nature started doing major mistakes? So they decided to check male to female ratio after hatching. And it was okay. But when they checked the ratio down the river females are outnumbering males. So what happened to males? Did they die? There are no evidence of it. So how do they mysteriously disappear? This remained a mystery.

Until they decided to check salmon’s genes. Initially scientists refused to believe what they found. Salmon with male genes was actually a female. So somehow after hatching males became females while going down the river. That’s what scientists had never heard or seen before — sex reversal. First they tried to explain this by low temperature – didn’t work. Then they tried to explain sex reversal by partial migration between sex chromosomes because of mysterious external forces – didn’t work. Eventually every well-known fact came to their mind as a plausible explanation: male can become a female issue in early life it is exposed to estrogens. But there are no natural estrogens in Columbia River, where studies were done. So it must be other man-made compounds like pesticides, detergents etc., that work like natural hormones-so-called environmental estrogens 5. That’s when they really became scared. Because it was not the only disaster they found.

1970. Lake Ontario. Biologist Mike Gilbertson is observing unusually high death rate among gull chicks. What he found was: 80% of the dead chicks died before hatching. But what striked him was: they had a huge unusual deformities. He is desperately looking for the explanation. Deformed chicks looked like usually familiar, they looked like he has used them before. But he cannot remember where. Suddenly his memory gives him an answer: he had seen such strange looking chicks who were exposed to a dioxide poisoning. But his colleagues almost laughed at him: there was no dioxide in Lake Ontario. It took them more than 20 years to solve this mystery.

1988. Great Lakes. Mrs. Theo Colborn, who is a professor of zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, is interested in unusual gull’s behavior: two gulls nesting together. Usually they are male and a female, who nest together. What she observed was: they were both females, nesting together. Were they “gay gulls”? Colborn is desperately looking for an answer. The only thing that can change gull’s behavior is hormones. But she is trained in zoology and does not know that much about hormones. It looked like endocrinologists, who could and who should solve the mystery, where not really interested in it. So she didn’t have any choice, but to buy endocrinology textbook and look into it herself. She learned that Swedish toxicologist Bengtsson was concerned with fish testicle shrinkage because of Baltic water contamination by organochlorine compounds. Could it be hormone disruption? In 1991 she gathered 21 scientists from 15 different areas to discuss the facts about gender change secondary to environmental toxins, that behave like hormones. And they issued a document”Wingspread Consensus Statement” 6 in 1991. This meeting became famous because that is where the terms “endocrine disruption” and “endocrine disruptors” were made.

But why are they so dangerous?

Normally hormones are substances hormone disruption, that are messengers, like errand boys, that deliver the signals from our brain derivatives to endocrine glands and then to the rest of our body. Therefore only a tiny amount of hormone is necessary to transmit the signal. It’s like a small key can open a huge safe. That’s why only a few molecules of an environmental toxin, that works like a hormone – endocrine disruptor, is necessary to destroy the beautiful regulation system mother nature created for us. That is why they are so dangerous, probably much more dangerous than mercury, lead, cadmium etc. Remember Lake Ontario dead chicks and no dioxin? That’s because the amount of poison can be so small, that it cannot be picked up by regular water analysis. And the consequences of being exposed to endocrine disruptors are disastrous: our body cannot regulate itself anymore, even to the extent that gender is changed. It’s like if you try to insert the wrong key in a your apartment door lock and it gets stuck and you break the key: you cannot even to open your apartment with the right key and you are stuck.

Endocrine disruptors are everywhere: in our water, food, air, dust, detergents, cosmetics, pesticides, plastics, etc.. They can cause fertility problems, fetal loss, cancer, menstrual problems, low IQ and learning problems, behavioral problems, ADHD, autism etc.

But shouldn’t mother nature protected us from various toxins?

Normally when toxin gets into our body, it is removed by the liver in two stages. First stage which is called phase 1 is immediate inactivation of the toxin by the group of enzymes called cytochrome P 450, when intermediate byproducts from the toxin are made. The next stage called phase 2 is making these intermediate byproducts water-soluble so that they are going to be excreted in the bile through the gut or by the kidneys. As soon as this is accomplished, toxin is inactivated and byproducts are removed from the body. Danger is over.

But what if our body is not familiar and is not prepared for the toxin it gets from outside? Like heavy metals. Or like a man made endocrine disruptors: pesticides, plastics, cosmetics etc.? Or your liver is getting too much toxins so that it doesn’t have enough resources to deal with them? Then the natural detoxification system is broken. And you’re in real trouble.

Bottom line is simple: if you are experiencing symptoms of toxicity such as

• fatigue

• mood problems or psychiatric problems

• ADHD

• insomnia

• palpitations

• tingling and/or abnormal sensations

• unexplained high blood pressure

• menstrual problems

• memory problems, etc.

you may be suffering from toxins.

What you need to get better – you need to be checked by a doctor, who is specializing in detoxification.

Detoxify yourself to:

* get more energy

* improve your mood

* get better sleep

* lower your blood pressure

What you need to do to get better:

1. Listen what your body is telling you: no energy? Cannot sleep? No Libido? mood swings? Hot flushes? Weight gain?

If yes, then:

2. Do your problems make your life harder, even miserable? if yes, then:

3.  Find a physician whom you trust and who is specializing in detoxification.

For more information go to www.doctorkalitenko.com

About the Author

Ruff day on the Columbia River Springer Fishing

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