Classical oral chelation is charge-specific. For example, EDTA is a classic oral chelator with a charge of -2, so it will go around the body and take out anything that has a + 2 charge. That certainly includes lead, but it also includes magnesium and calcium. And so, when you’re chelating with something like EDTA you have to keep adding magnesium and calcium back into the patient, and eventually you have diminishing returns where the only thing you’re chelating out is the magnesium and calcium you keep adding back in, with the result that you never get all of the heavy metal out of the system.

With the zeolite, it has a much higher affinity for the heavier metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic and very low affinity for the lighter minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and sodium. The easiest way to think about this is, imagine a lion’s cage at the zoo. The lion is trapped in the cage, but a mouse can run in and out at will – and that is really what happens with these lighter elements.

So the really toxic metals – the cadmium, lead, mercury, and arsenic will be captured before anything else and then not re-released into the system?

Absolutely. There have been two published studies in ruminants; goats, sheep and cows. In the studies, all of the animals were fed a nutritional supplement along with their usual animal feed. Half of the animals were also fed the zeolite. Across the board, the animals fed the zeolite actually had better nutritional status and better mineral content in the form of things like calcium and magnesium than the animals not fed the zeolite. So, not only did the zeolite reduce the toxic metals in their system, it actually improved the nutritional status of these animals. So there is no risk that the zeolite would reduce these healthy minerals, making it a better choice over classic oral chelation.

So you can say this is a nutritional enabler?

Yes, that is a very good way to put it.

If you would, talk a little bit more about how the heavy metals in your body can interfere with enzymatic or ATP or other functions?

Yes, metals have a lot of toxic side effects. I do recommend that people can read about this in the Environmental Protection Agency website at www.epa.gov and also at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.CDC.gov

There’s great information on heavy metal toxicity and the topical database that shows us what we’re exposed to in a daily basis. It can be pretty frightening. But heavy metals do have many toxic actions in the body. One of them has to do with enzyme inhibition and protein inhibition. As an example, zinc finger proteins are proteins that are stabilized by a zinc atom in the middle of the protein, and if the zinc isn’t there, the protein won’t work, and zinc finger proteins are necessary for cellular division, especially for the immune system. So when we are under, say a viral attack or bacterial attack and we need to make more immune system cells to deal with that, we need to make more zinc finger proteins to be able to make those additional cells. And this is the reason why you may use a zinc lozenge when you have a cold, for example. The additional zinc allows you to create more immune system cells.

But that zinc can be displaced by certain heavy metals – for example, mercury or arsenic–and when that zinc is displaced, the protein doesn’t function. By removing those heavy metals, the zinc now can get to where it needs to be. It stabilizes that molecule, and you wind up with a more stable immune system. That’s just one example. Another good example is adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is the energy currency of the body. That needs to be stabilized by magnesium. In fact, active ATP is called Mg-ATP for magnesium ATP. And magnesium can be displaced by mercury, so if you have mercury poisoning, you have less energy, worse neurological function–partially because of the down-regulation or inhibition of ATP. Once you remove the mercury, magnesium can get to its proper binding state on the ATP and you’ll have better use of the energy currency in your body. And that’s one of the reasons that many people on the Natural Cellular Defense feel more energy within a few weeks of taking it.

You’ve mentioned in some of the talks we’ve had that this is not a panacea, but the downstream consequences of using this are profound and varied.

Absolutely, I hate the concept of the panacea, when people say that they have the product that cures everything and does everything. I will tell you that the zeolite has a quantifiable physical mechanism of action. We see how it works, we know exactly how it works, but the implications of its action are profound. By removing these toxins, removing these heavy metals, helping stabilize pH, you allow the body itself to function much more efficiently. And so these downstream implications of the quantifiable physical mechanism of the action of the zeolite are really too numerous to enumerate.

Are we even aware of all the things that this does or could potentially do yet?

No, absolutely not. I am hearing new things every day. When I hear a testimonial, an anecdotal report, or a report from a physician I have to strain to find the mechanism of action that might be responsible for it and see how we can repeat that, because we’re hearing incredible things in a daily basis.

Let’s talk about the three things that this will do, that I talk about on a regular basis:
1. It will detoxify the body in a profound way
2. It will help balance the pH
3. It acts to help the immune system function properly.

On the detoxification front, is there any place in the body that this cannot or will not get to?

We’re looking into that right now, but, as a whole, this is a systemic product and does get all over the body.

Even if you have (for instance) metals deep inside bone, it will pull those out also eventually?

Eventually what happens is that there’s an osmotic response where, as you lower concentrations all over the body, these will start to leech out of fat, muscle and bone. One of the ways that the body sequesters heavy metals from doing damage is it builds fat or other tissue around the heavy metal. And this is interesting, because we actually have seen people lose weight on the Natural Cellular Defense, and this is not associated just with water weight, but with actual loss of fat. One of the theories is that as we remove the heavy metals, that fat is no longer necessary to sequester the heavy metal, so it’s available for lipolysis, the breakdown of fats.

In other words, your body is protecting itself by wrapping the toxins in fat and storing it?
That’s one of the ways the body does that through sequestration. It sequesters the metal away from other tissue.

And when that’s no longer necessary, it can just let that fat go.

Exactly.