Roi Judge’s experience with chelation therapy

When 77-year old Roi Judge arrived at Dr. Fred Hui’s office, he had undergone a quintuple bypass and diabetes was killing his leg. Could chelation therapy help him?

“The last thing I wanted was an amputation,” says Judge, Whose numb and tingling knee woke him up at night.

Cliff McTavish, 52, suffered from angina and the nitrogen patches gave him headache.

“I was braiding some rope and I thought I pulled a muscle,” says McTavish, who doesn’t smoke, runs with his dogs and drinks a little beer. Both men have a family history of heart problems.

Both men also tried chelation therapy, which Dr. Hui added to his practice last year.

Dr. Hui, well-known in the media and on the lecture circuit for his expert knowledge of traditional and alternative medicine, once called chelation “shady”.

“Twenty years later,  I’m doing it and realizing what I was missing all these years,” he says.

Chelation (key-lay-shun) removes accumulated heavy metals and calcified plaques in the arteries, Dr. Hui compares the body to a car and says, “with time all our pipes start rusting. No matter how you use the fuel,  you have some gasoline not 100% burned, so you send out some products (free radicals) that are not well balanced.”

Once these radicals attack the arterial walls’ lining these walls start “rusting.” Blood platelets congregate and clot together. When sticky, “especially in the presence of metals, iron, lead or cadmium, they form a metal mesh with the platelets sticking them together. Swimming cholesterol gets caught in the mesh. If you were a smoker it would be like spraying salt on rusting process/” Excessive blood sugar (diabetes) “further accelerates that clotting.”

Chelation Therapy removes the body’s “rust” via an intravenous drip of ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA), mixed with magnesium, which relaxes the muscles surrounding blood vessels, B-complex vitamins, sodium bicarbonate and anti-oxidant, Vitamin C. Within 24 hours, the kidneys excrete the “rush”.

The chelation failure rate runs between one and 15 percent, with no death results, but clinics opened in southern Ontario only last year. In the 1950s, Dr. Norman E. Clark pioneered chelation at Providence Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Researchers in Denmark, Germany and New Zealand have also studied Chelation. Currently, Dr. Hui, with cardiologist, Dr. Paul Dorian and medical student, Mark Chiu, are conducting an unfounded study, which involves Dr. Hui’s angina patients filling out a questionnaire.

“Some preliminary results already show statistically significant improvement in the symptoms of angina and quality of life measurement,” says Hui.

Medical doctors, such as Dr. Hui  who run the clinics, took chelaiton training from the American College of Advancement in Medicine. In Europe and New Zealand chelaiton is required before considering heart surgery.

Not covered by OHIP, chelation costs up to $5,000; a bypass, although OHIP-covered, can cost up to $45,000. Ontario’s Health Disciplines Act, 1987, banned chelation except for heavy metal poisoning, but the replacement 1993 Regulated Health Professional Act omitted that section.

Ontario’s College of Physicians and surgeons now classifies chelation therapy for other-than-heavy metal treatment, as alternative or complementary. Their policy is available at their website, http://www.cpso.on.ca.

Dr. Hui says this year, The College of Physicians and Surgeons audited doctors practicing chelation.

Judge says, “I think they (medical professionals) could educate themselves a little more, instead of condemning it.” His family doctor and specialists  “pooh-poohed” chelation.

Twice a week. Judge and McTavish relax in easy chairs in one of Dr. Hui’s two Toronto offices. During the three hours the EDT A drip is attached to an arm vein, they can read, sleep, talk or eat, while medical doctors monitor them. Afterwards, they consult with Hui about their treatment plan. Hui keeps them on their medication, but says “as symptoms become better I may take away their pills.” He also advocated the high protein/vegetable, no carbohydrate diet.

McTavish, a bagel addict, finds it “hard to change”. However, he notices some improvement from chelation – normal blood pressure and he’s ditched the nitro patches.

After 28 treatments, Judge says “the numbness has gone down and I don’t wake up with a sore leg at night.”

Judge’s wife, Eileen calls chelation “a godsend for him.” She also decided to have breath and a little chest pain.”

“From my point of view, ” says Dr. Hui, “it’s much more gratifying to treat those with symptoms.”

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