RathyKay
06-15-2007, 12:19 AM
Well, Wendy kind of guilted me into posting an update. I've been slack about starting new threads lately.
In case you don't know, chelation is the removal of toxic metals from the body - mercury, lead, and whatnot. For some autistic kids (and probably our neurological kids), the body has an impaired heavy metal excretion system. My usual disclaimor, Tom is not technically autistic, but since he responded so well to the "autism diet," we are pursuing other autism treatments.
About three weeks ago, we did a chelation challenge. For the challenge, you are supposed to take a relatively high dose of a chelating agent, and then collect urine for a certain amount of hours to be analyzed. We had two different chelators - one does a better job removing lead, and the other mercury. Of course, I panicked a little. Tom is his only med-free epileptic patient, and I wanted to make sure this challenge didn't trigger a seizure. Anyway, Tom's DAN! doc is very good about not pushing when parents are hesitant. So, we did the challenge, but we used a smaller dose of one of the chelators.
We went last week to get our results. Before the challenge, we had to sign some paperwork saying we knew all the risks, etc. etc. We're one of those couples where I'm totally immersed in Tom's situation, and Mr. Kay pays the bills and is more oblivious to it all. When it came time to sign the paperwork, he had a ton of questions that I couldn't answer. So, I made sure he came to the appt this time (he hasn't been since the first appt:rolleyes:).
Results showed little lead and little mercury. Yay! Except, we didn't do a "proper" challenge, so the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. So, we are going to try chelation for a time or two, and see if / how the results change to see if we need to continue. I think typically, you can count on at least two years of chelating to get all the mercury out. As our doc said, the metals are stored in the bone, and take awhile to get them to move to soft tissue, then blood where it can be more readily removed. It's better to go relatively slowly to remove the metals than to push hard to get them at once. Two other results of interest: his tin levels were high. That's something I'll have to investigate. The other... his aluminum levels have significantly dropped since our first round of testing. (That would be a result of my throwing away our non-stick pans, and no longer baking with my "good" aluminum pans.)
We haven't started yet. Samantha and Mr. Kay have their birthdays two weeks apart. With all the extra sugar (cake and cookies and whatnot), Tom's yeast was already acting up, when we did the challenge. Unfortunately, the chelators seem to feed yeast. It's one of those things to watch out for. So, we will not being doing any chelating until we're able to beat back the yeast. Ugh. We do have a couple of yeast-fighting options now. Our DAN! doc says that yeast is very resistant, so he likes to rotate the yeast fighting agents.
Once we start chelating, we will give the chelator and yeast agent for 3 days in a row. Then, we'll fight yeast for the next 11 days (no chelating)... making up a two week round. We'll use a different yeast fighting agent each two weeks. For the fourth round, we collect urine again to see what's coming out of his body. Anyway, my plan right now is to try it for one or two cycles, and re-evaluate. If we can't keep the yeast in line, we'll quit sooner.
In case you don't know, chelation is the removal of toxic metals from the body - mercury, lead, and whatnot. For some autistic kids (and probably our neurological kids), the body has an impaired heavy metal excretion system. My usual disclaimor, Tom is not technically autistic, but since he responded so well to the "autism diet," we are pursuing other autism treatments.
About three weeks ago, we did a chelation challenge. For the challenge, you are supposed to take a relatively high dose of a chelating agent, and then collect urine for a certain amount of hours to be analyzed. We had two different chelators - one does a better job removing lead, and the other mercury. Of course, I panicked a little. Tom is his only med-free epileptic patient, and I wanted to make sure this challenge didn't trigger a seizure. Anyway, Tom's DAN! doc is very good about not pushing when parents are hesitant. So, we did the challenge, but we used a smaller dose of one of the chelators.
We went last week to get our results. Before the challenge, we had to sign some paperwork saying we knew all the risks, etc. etc. We're one of those couples where I'm totally immersed in Tom's situation, and Mr. Kay pays the bills and is more oblivious to it all. When it came time to sign the paperwork, he had a ton of questions that I couldn't answer. So, I made sure he came to the appt this time (he hasn't been since the first appt:rolleyes:).
Results showed little lead and little mercury. Yay! Except, we didn't do a "proper" challenge, so the results have to be taken with a grain of salt. So, we are going to try chelation for a time or two, and see if / how the results change to see if we need to continue. I think typically, you can count on at least two years of chelating to get all the mercury out. As our doc said, the metals are stored in the bone, and take awhile to get them to move to soft tissue, then blood where it can be more readily removed. It's better to go relatively slowly to remove the metals than to push hard to get them at once. Two other results of interest: his tin levels were high. That's something I'll have to investigate. The other... his aluminum levels have significantly dropped since our first round of testing. (That would be a result of my throwing away our non-stick pans, and no longer baking with my "good" aluminum pans.)
We haven't started yet. Samantha and Mr. Kay have their birthdays two weeks apart. With all the extra sugar (cake and cookies and whatnot), Tom's yeast was already acting up, when we did the challenge. Unfortunately, the chelators seem to feed yeast. It's one of those things to watch out for. So, we will not being doing any chelating until we're able to beat back the yeast. Ugh. We do have a couple of yeast-fighting options now. Our DAN! doc says that yeast is very resistant, so he likes to rotate the yeast fighting agents.
Once we start chelating, we will give the chelator and yeast agent for 3 days in a row. Then, we'll fight yeast for the next 11 days (no chelating)... making up a two week round. We'll use a different yeast fighting agent each two weeks. For the fourth round, we collect urine again to see what's coming out of his body. Anyway, my plan right now is to try it for one or two cycles, and re-evaluate. If we can't keep the yeast in line, we'll quit sooner.