Measuring Toxic Load

There are a variety of complex and sophisticated measuring instruments called spectrometers such as ICP-MS, ICP-OES, AF and GC-MS that can be used to measure the levels of xenobiotics in blood, urine, feces, hair, sweat and other body tissues. We do a number of different tests to determine two things:

1.  Is your body (your immune system) firing a response against a toxin in your tissue (it would then be called an antigen).

2.  What is the health of your detoxification pathways (we do this by assessing the chemical byproducts of the liver detox pathways).

First, let's begin with a blanket statement that is important to understand:

WE ARE ALL TOXIC AND THERE IS NO WAY OF DETERMINING THE TOTAL TOXIC LOAD IN A LIVING HUMAN! 

I mentioned LIVING HUMAN here, as it is possible to determine the total load of xenobiotics in a dead human - you would simply incinerate the person and measure the total load of xenobiotics in the ashes! This is a little impractical to perform when the person is still alive!

Flippancy aside, this is important to understand as often people BELIEVE that IT IS POSSIBLE to measure the total load of the body in absolute figures. They also believe that they can get absolute figures when measuring the effectiveness of a chelating agent - for example, they take a chelating agent for 3 months and take a pre-urine sample before beginning treatment and this measures 10ppm mercury. After the three months they take a post-urine sample and this measures 5ppm.

So they conclude that their TOTAL MERCURY loads have reduced by 50%. Nonsense! This is false logic as they were not measuring the TOTAL load of the body in the first place, only what was present in the urine and therefore circulating around the blood at THAT MOMENT IN TIME. The post-urine sample is again another SNAPSHOT of the levels that were present at the moment the sample was collected.  These figures cannot be interpreted as ABSOLUTE figures - they are only ARBITARY at best and need to be interpreted carefully to make any meaning out of them. The point is - we don't want to just do a 'detox' and hope or think we are 'clean'.  We are always 'toxifying' ourselves every time our input exceeds our output.  It's really hopeless!  The purpose of detoxification (as a process to achieve health) is to 'pull out' as much of an antigen (that which is causing an immune attack) as possible to STOP the immune system's response.

What we find using medical testing and kinesiology is that there is a PERCENTAGE DECREASE in the post samples/testing, compared to the pre-samples/testing. What does this mean? It basically means that the treatment protocol was mobilizing and eliminating the metals being measured.

TOXICITY TESTS

The purpose of deeper testing is to identify 'faults' in the detoxification pathways and to measure the presence of different toxins the immune system is 'firing against'. Generally the body does not like these lethal toxins in the blood, so it 'shunts' them to fat cells where they are stored in body tissues at the earliest opportunity.  In order to determine whether there are metals or other chemicals STORED in the tissues and organs, another type of test has to be conducted using either urine or feces or both.

To determine what is being eliminated from the body's organs and tissues we need to use a chelating agent that has the ability to "push-out" the metals into the blood where they can be collected in the urine - the post-sample. If indeed our chelating agent is doing this, then we would get a percentage increase of metals in this post-sample, compared to the pre-sample, taken before using the chelating agent. Typically, a URINE test is most appropriate as you will NOT show toxic levels of anything in the blood except in acute exposure.

Research has shown conclusively that different chelating agents aid in eliminating many different metals and chemicals, and possibly other xenobiotics. These tests are expensive for the patients and their interpretation requires the wisdom of an experienced practitioner but they are INVALUABLE.

Personally, as a clinician and researcher I generally do not get my patients to undergo expensive pre-post tests before recommending the Metametrix complete Organex Test. Why, do you ask? Well, I have been doing this long enough to conclude that EVERYONE is toxic, so it really is a decision about WHAT the immune system is all 'crazy' about. There is enough research that has been conducted that has demonstrated that this blanket statement that "WE ARE ALL TOXIC" is true - let's examine some of this research so that we can be more convincing.