Government statistics show in the early 1990’s (1994), almost 1.7 MILLION young children had excessively high blood levels of lead. This is almost 9% of all preschool children in the U.S.! ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER (ADD) and HYPERACTIVITY have been linked to lead exposure. It is considered very dangerous both because it is so pervasive in our environment and because, like radioisotopes, IT IS A CUMULATIVE POISON!
Unfortunately, early symptoms of lead poisoning, such as nervousness, irritability, headaches, fatigue and general weakness, muscular problems, constipation, and indigestion, are hard to pinpoint as caused by lead. As it continues to accumulate in our bodies, lead creates widespread damage. Its chronic toxicity has been implicated in a sweeping range of physical, mental, and emotional disorders including convulsions, tremors, visual disturbances, mental retardation, twitching of face muscles, jerking of the limbs, to serious degenerative diseases and insanity. For specific diseases associated with lead, call for a copy of the Chart of Diseases referred at the end of this article.
Dr. William Strain, director of the Trace Element Laboratory at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, calls lead pollution "the greatest neuro-toxin (a substance that damages nerves) threat to mankind." Strain and several other noted scientists cite ample evidence to indicate that lead was a factor that contributed to the fall of both the Greece and Roman Empires. During their heyday, the Greeks and Romans began to smelt and use lead in a variety of ways, which produced wide-ranging and unmanageable physical and behavioral disorders throughout their populations.
According to Dr. Clair Patterson, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology and a leading lead researcher, the average American has more than one hundred times as much lead in his or her blood as the average person did before smelting began. The lead content of bones is now five hundred to one thousand times higher. Although lead is now found throughout the world and already affects everyone, inhabitants of industrialized nations contain six times the amount of lead in their blood, as do inhabitants of remote areas.
Dr. Ellen K. Silbergeld of the U.S. National Institutes of Health reported to scientists at this meeting, "We know that lead is one of the most ubiquitous and persistent neurotoxins in the environment. The laboratory evidence shows that adverse effects occur at very low levels, but the biochemical bases of lead toxicity do not support the notion that there is any safe threshold for lead exposure."
After testing 35,504 people, Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, professor emeritus at the University of Alabama, and Dr. Gary Gordon, Chairman of the Board of the American Academy of Medical Preventics, concluded that more than 38 million Americans are currently being slowly and silently poisoned by lead. According to Dr. J. Blosser, one out of four American men and 10% of American women suffer from lead poisoning. The percentage of women will increase as more enter the workplace, with pregnant women especially at risk.
CHILDREN AND LEAD
Children are extremely vulnerable to lead because they absorb 30% to 50% of ingested lead, whereas adults absorb 5% to 10%. According to Blosser, more than 40% of all urban children in America have health problems due to lead poisoning. Lead causes a wide range of disorders in children, including nerve damage, brain dysfunction, skeletal retardation, and behavioral and learning problems. (ADD)
In 1979 Dr. Herbert L. Needleman, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that every child probably to some degree is affected by lead, and that the threshold for safety has long since been exceeded. The areas of behavior or learning disabilities that Needleman correlated to lead absorption were: lack of ability to follow simple directions and sequences, lack of ability to organize, propensity for daydreaming, distractibility and excitability, a degree of frustration tolerance, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness, lack of ability for independent work and/or persistence with a task, and in a general lack of being able to function well.
COMMON SOURCES OF LEAD POLLUTION
Lead can be both ingested and inhaled. Common sources of lead pollution are the 1,300,000 to 1,400,000 tons of lead used annually to make such products as solders, the anti-knock substance in leaded gasoline, batteries, pottery, pigments, smelting, fabricating lead, and burning leaded gasoline exposes workers to high lead levels, and releases more than 600,000 tons of lead into our atmosphere each year, which we routinely inhale. We also ingest it after it has settled on our food crops and in our water supply. Moreover, as researcher L.R. Ember notes, "Food could also be contaminated by lead from the solder in tin cans, pesticide sprays, and cooking utensils. In older homes, where the plumbing consists of lead pipes and the water is acidic and low in mineral content, lead may leach into the water supplies. Weathering of lead-laden paint and putty in older homes contaminates dust with lead, which can be inhaled or ingested; chipping, peeling, and flaking paint in these homes may offer a child a tempting but dangerous morsel."
Patterson's research group reports that the standard tin-plated can containing food at a supermarket is sealed with solder that is 97 % lead. Patterson states that whether the cans are varnished or not, the lead content of foods in lead-soldered cans is consistently much higher than the lead content of the same foods in fresh or frozen forms.
Exposure to cigarette smoke can significantly increase our daily intake of lead as well as tobacco fertilizer.
Lead is not only absorbed through our air, food, and water, it is also absorbed through our skin. Lead can be absorbed from many other sources. Lead and cadmium are leached, especially with acidic foods such as tomatoes and fruit, from improperly glazed ceramic food containers, dinnerware, and utensils. Consumption of alcohol allows high levels of lead and other toxic heavy metals and chemicals to settle in soft tissues, including the brain. Fruits and vegetables grown in roadside gardens are likely to contain higher levels of lead than those grown further from roads and highways.
GET THE LEAD OUT WITH NUTRITION (SUPPLEMENTS)
Although the risk of lead toxicity poses a serious threat to all citizens, rich or poor, urban or rural, the good news is that fortunately there are several natural remedies that have been documented as protecting against the toxic affects of lead. Foods and their nutrients protect against radiated and chemical toxins in a variety of ways. Many of the same nutrients counteract the effects of lead, also through several different mechanisms. Some prevent or at least decrease the absorption of lead; others remove lead from body tissues, and some block lead from interfering with metabolic functions.
Lead competes with and replaces certain minerals, primarily zinc, iron, and copper, when there is a deficiency of those vital nutrients. (This tendency for the body to absorb similarly structured elements is referred to as "selective uptake."
Through the principle of selective uptake, optimal amounts of zinc, iron, and copper, protect against the absorption of lead and remove it from the body. Two other minerals calcium and chromium help to protect against lead toxicity. Calcium has both a preventive and curative effect, and it helps to eliminate the pain sometimes associated with lead toxicity. Optimal levels of calcium prevent the absorption of lead from the intestinal tract. Deficiencies of calcium result in higher levels of lead in the blood, bone, and soft tissues. In acute cases of lead poisoning, calcium and vitamin D administered together either orally or intravenously have effectively hastened recovery.
Vitamin A helps to activate enzymes that are involved in neutralizing lead and other toxins.
The B vitamins, taken together as whole B-complex, protect against the toxic effects of lead. Several health therapists have used additional mega doses of vitamin B1 (thiamine) along with a high B-complex, to counteract lead. Dr. G. R. Bratton of the University of Tennessee reported that thiamine removed lead from body tissues and also reduced the symptoms of lead toxicity. Daily dosages of addition B1 have ranged from 25 mg. To 100 mg. Together with high-potency whole B complex.
Vitamin C is a powerful anti-toxin. It neutralizes the toxic effects of lead, increases the elimination of lead in general, and specifically protects muscle tissue from lead damage. In order to protect against lead toxicity, the recommended adult dosage range of vitamin C is 1,000 to 3,000 mg per day. For acute lead poisoning, up to 10,000 mg. Per day of vitamin C can be used.
The herb, Siberian Ginseng (Eleutherococcus Senticosus), also counteracts the side effects of lead, especially damage to conditioned nerve and muscular reflexes.
GET THE LEAD OUT WITH DIET!
A diet that contains appropriate amounts of fiber has been shown to protect against the toxic effects of lead. Algin, or sodium alginate, is a form of fiber found abundantly in the family of sea vegetables known as kelp. Algin is a natural chelating agent, one that can attach to the lead in the intestinal tract and carry it harmlessly out of the body. Algin decreases lead absorption as it increases lead elimination from the body.
Pectin, another form of fiber, performs the same functions. It is found in sunflower seeds and just beneath the skin of apples. Pectin can be obtained in the form of a food supplement at natural foods stores, or as a jelling agent for jams, jellies, and preserve from some supermarkets.
Preliminary evidence indicates that a number of other foods and specific nutrients help protect against lead. Legumes and beans, when used generously in the diet, are considered to help eliminate lead from the body. Bee pollen, one of the most nutrient-rich foods, helps protect against and detoxify from lead poisoning.
Lecithin is another important detoxifier of poisons in the body. It also protects and repairs the myelin sheaths of nerve fibers from damage due to lead and other toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The sulfur-containing amino acids cystein and methioine, found in the cabbage family of vegetables, aid detoxification, as do other chlorophyll-rich vegetables.
In her book, Food & Behavior, Barbara Reed Stitt, a Chief Probation Officer in the Municipal Courts of Ohio, relates how food has a direct effect on behavior. She says, "Ask any hyperactive child, depressed, angry teenager, violent adult or criminal what they eat and you’ll find they "live" on junk food – sweetened boxed cereals, candy, carbonated drinks, potato chips, fast foods. Junk food abuses the mind, under-nourishes the body and distorts the behavior." She goes on to say, "that these toxins (lead and cadmium in the blood) could cause emotional and behavioral disorders." Her informative book with simple changes in the diet has helped thousands and is worth reading. Her studies relating diet to criminal behavior is an eye-opener for everyone.
GET THE LEAD OUT WITH CHELATION!
In 1972, Dr. Oliver J. David, a child psychiatrist, and his associates at the State University of New York Medical School reported in Lancet, the prestigious British Medical Journal, that there is a definite link between lead absorption and hyperactive behavior in children. Four years later David and his associates showed that lead-chelating agents successfully treated hyperactive children with learning-disabilities whose blood and urine lead levels were in a "nontoxic" range. Those levels were, however, in the upper ranges of "normal". The children studied had no brain damage or other apparent cause of their hyperactivity and learning disabilities except for lead.
GET THE LEAD OUT WITH SPECIAL CLAY BATHS!
We know now that there is a fun way for children (and adults too) to GET THE LEAD OUT! That is by taking a specific kind of clay bath. Lab tests and hair analysis reveal that clients taking tests before and after the clay baths show wonderful results in "pulling like a magnet" various metals such as arsenic, aluminum, mercury, cadmium, lead, and chemicals including pesticides and insecticides, from the body right through the skin and into the clays! By using specific clay formulas these toxins can be loosened and the results can be seen in the tub!
What an easy, non-evasive and inexpensive way to GET THE LEAD OUT!
Suggested Magnetic Clay Bath Kits
Sources of Information:
Surviving the Toxic Crisis by Dr. William R. Kellas and Dr. Andrea Sharon Dworkin. Fighting Radiation with Foods, Herbs, & Vitamins by Steven R. Schechter, N.D. Food & Behavior, A Natural Connection by Barbara Reed Stitt.