Heavy Metal: How Much is Left Behind.

 Gd, lead and mercury stay more or less permanently in the body. Everyone, more or less, can tolerate some amount of them, especially Gd and lead. Some metals the retention is described as more transient, such as Thallium. The durability of the retention reflects how stable the presence of the metal is in the most durable reservoir it stays in the body. Gd and lead presence in bone is very durable. This also explains the need for repeat chelations with gaps between treatments to allow for re-equilibration as an important means for removal.

 My estimate with Gd is 1-3 % of the dose is left behind at 1 year, and every year from there, 1% of that 1-3% seeps out of the tissues and is eliminated primarily by the kidneys. Probably all metals follow a similar path, the difference is that we know how much Gd has been taken in, but no idea about how much is taken in with the other metals. So we don't know the denominator of other metals.

If you are sick from the metals you need them actively removed to reduce their total body burden. Chelation is essentially the only way to do that. The concept of detoxification is to train the body to tolerate the presence of the metal, not remove it. Essentially the only way to test if you are sick from Gd (or other heavy metals) is to undergo chelation and look for metal removal Flare and metal re-equilibration Flare. Any metal that goes up in quantity from 24 hr pre-chelation to 24 hr post-chelation can theoretically contribute or be responsible for the toxicity, if there is Flaring. . With Gd this is more straight-forward because the initial symptoms of Deposition Disease come on shortly after the GBCA injection. Eventually with more research cytokine response will be able to show this in an objective fashion..

Richard Semelka, MD