When Have You Had Sufficient Chelation for GDD? Listen to What Your Body is Telling You.

The most obvious and crucial example of paying attention to your health is the thirst mechanism.

We all consciously/ subconsciously continuously monitor our serum Sodium level to maintain a 135- 145 mmol/L. We generally drink sufficient fluids to maintain that crucial level of serum Sodium. If we deviate too far from it, we die.

For many years the theory on how our body recognizes when to stop drinking is by the subconscious perception of gastric distension. More recent literature (there is a NEJM article from 6 years or so ago- I don't have it handy) suggests this subconscious recognition occurs earlier in the drinking process through a throat recognition. The point is we really don't know why we recognize when we have drunk a sufficient amount - the point is, whatever the mechanism is, we do.

So if the question arises, are we able to recognize consciously/ subconsciously what our body needs, the answer is absolutely. This is how we stay alive. It should therefore come as no surprise that our body can recognize even more nuanced needs for other substances to keep us alive and healthy. This is true for many electrolytes and substances, we crave what we need. Unfortunately we also crave many substances that are health degrading, but this is material for another blog.

The extent of Re-equilibration Flare and the level that it increases when pausing chelation for a few months is the guide to pay attention to when enough is enough for chelation. This reflects two processes,1) the amount of Gd leaving bone to move to other reservoirs of Gd in our body to re-establish equilibrium is now small enough that it does not set off an alarm to our immune system to react intensely to the passage of Gd - so the immune system has calmed down, and 2) in general terms that amount of Gd in our bodies has greatly diminished to a manageable level.

This calming of the re-equilibration Flare is the marker to pay attention to. This appears to occur relatively early in the total recovery phase, so at something like 70% back to your normal self, this starts occurring. It may be a number of people can continue to recover to a higher status on their own. At some point this is worth trying. I recommend pausing when you are at 80% back to your functioning self. If it was me I would look to pause when I was 85-90% back to my perceived normal self.

How do you know you are at either 80% (worth considering stopping) to 85-90% back to yourself? It turns out, I don''t think presently there are objective markers reliable enough to tell us that., In the future maybe serum cytokines could act as a guide. So there is nothing that can tell you when enough is enough right now, other than listening to your body. It will tell you when enough is enough. This falls under the rubric of gut instinct, which should be something we pay attention to in all matters. I do not recommend overdoing chelation as I have written before, because you can always remove more Gd with effective chelator, but at some point you may be causing more harm than good.

So the extent of re-equilibration Flare tell us when we should consider to stop. This is: beyond 4 weeks since the last chelation there is minimal to no increase of GDD symptoms.

Richard Semelka, MD