Question:
What is chelation therapy?
Answer:
Chelation therapy is used to remove heavy metals (like mercury or lead) from the body.
Heavy metals can build up in the body over time, from exposures at work (e.g. lead in old paint or plumbing), pollution in the air (e.g. iron from vehicle exhaust) or from food (e.g. mercury in fish). You don’t get lumps of metal inside you; metal ions (atoms with an electrical charge) get distributed throughout parts of your body.
Heavy metals interfere with the function of the body’s cells, tissues and organs and can cause severe health problems.
To remove the metal from the body, molecules that form tight bonds with the ions are given by infusion using a drip, intramuscular injection or as a tablet. The molecules bind tightly to the metal ions and together they are transported in the blood for elimination in urine via the kidneys.
Using chelators unnecessarily can cause serious health problems. The molecules can remove metals from the body that are needed for normal function (e.g. calcium).
The only approved reason for chelation therapy is for the treatment of heavy metal toxicity. However, it is being researched as a possible treatment for cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The misguided idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism (vaccination does not cause autism and there is no mercury in vaccines used in Australia anyway) has resulted in some people using chelation therapy unnecessarily in children, placing them at risk of substantial harm (including death).
Tim Moss
Healthy Male Health Content Manager
Associate Professor Tim Moss has PhD in physiology and more than 20 years’ experience as a biomedical research scientist. Tim stepped away from his successful academic career at the end of 2019, to apply his skills in turning complicated scientific and medical knowledge into information that all people can use to improve their health and wellbeing. Tim has written for crikey.com and Scientific American’s Observations blog, which is far more interesting than his authorship of over 150 academic publications. He has studied science communication at the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science in New York, and at the Department of Biological Engineering Communication Lab at MIT in Boston.
