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Comparison of Therapeutic Effects of Garlic and d-Penicillamine in Patients with Chronic Occupational Lead Poisoning
re: heavy metals
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
re: Heavy Metals Tracking: Trend Down for Lead and Mercury, Arsenic Doubles
This article caught my attention to my ongoing attempts to reduce my blood lead level.
Prospective, double-blinded, randomized clinical trial.
What pisses me off is that when I researched chelation therapy, no mention was ever made of this natural risk-free alternative. And with powdered (not fresh) garlic, no less.
Comparison of Therapeutic Effects of Garlic and d-Penicillamine in Patients with Chronic Occupational Lead Poisoning
2011-12-09
Previous studies on animals have revealed that garlic (Allium sativum) is effective in reducing blood and tissue lead concentrations...
For decades, lead (Pb) poisoning has been known as an important disorder that affects individuals through acute, subacute and chronic exposure in environmental and occupational settings... It is suggested that no threshold for lead toxicity exists, as even low-level lead exposure may result in nervous, renal, skeletal, haematopoietic and reproductive complications. Moreover, the level in which clinical manifestations of lead poisoning appear differs extensively and is highly dependent on the acuity, age and individual variations. Despite this variation and predomination of neurological and gastrointestinal manifestations, chronic lead poisoning may involve multiple systems. Loss of short-term memory, inability to concentrate, irritability, depressive mood, paresthesia of extremities, loss of coordination, generalized abdominal pain and nausea are common symptoms of chronic lead poisoning in adults. Patients may also complain of headaches, weakness and myalgia. Anaemia and abnormal reaction time of deep tendon reflexes (DTR) are common signs in chronic lead poisoning.
...Previous studies on animals have demonstrated that garlic is effective in reducing blood and tissue lead concentrations through unknown mechanisms. Besides, garlic has already been recognized to have antimicrobial, hypolipidaemic, anticancer, antioxidant and antithrombotic effects.
...During the pharmacological treatment, 37 patients (31.6%) experienced side effects. The frequencies of adverse reactions were 19 and 18 in the d-penicillamine and garlic groups, respectively, as shown in table 2. The most common side effect was hypersensitivity, which affected six and five patients in the groups, respectively. Chi-square test showed that the frequency of adverse effects differed significantly (p = 0.023) between the two groups, because 17 workers in the d-penicillamine group were excluded from the study as a result of severe adverse reactions compared with seven individuals in the garlic group. In addition to those who were excluded from the study owing to the occurrence of complications, 33 patients failed to complete treatment because of changing of workplace, lack of taking drugs in a timely manner, going on holiday and not participating in giving blood samples after treatment.
...Conclusion
Based on the results of this study, garlic was as effective as d-penicillamine in significant reduction of BLCs. In addition, garlic revealed less side effects and more clinical improvement than d-penicillamine. Thus, garlic may be considered as an alternative to d-penicillamine in the treatment of mild-to-moderate occupational lead poisoning. However, more studies are required in larger groups of patients including women and children to make a general conclusion.
WIND: I have been taking liposomal glutathione for the better part of a month*. If my next heavy metals test does not result in a trend improvement for blood lead, then I might try the garlic approach in place of or perhaps in addition to, depending on what the trend suggests.
Even if garlic works for high blood lead levels, itwould it also work when levels are only moderate, eg 20-50 range as in the study vs 15-6 range as in my case?
* Liposomal glutathione is suggested to help with elimination of mercury (Pb), but whether it does so for lead (Pb) is unclear. And I would like to see all of {Pb, Hg, As} come down as they are all too high.
