“allergic load” and detoxificationmaterial through the gut wall that might trigger a reaction some-
where else in your body. This is one of the main reasons why, to
help many chronically ill patients with multiple complaints, you
not only evaluate them for food intolerance but also for “bugs” and
abnormal bacteria in the gut. Using probiotics and treating any gut
infections can improve intestinal permeability and reduce the al-
lergic load and many bodily complaints that are far away from the
gut (e.g., headaches, joint pain, sinus congestion, asthma, etc.).
Toxic Metals and Allergic Load
Metal toxicity is a very controversial area. It can definitely ag-
gravate one’s allergic load. The question is not whether acute expo-
sure to toxic metals (lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, aluminum,
nickel, manganese, selenium, etc.) is harmful, because it obviously
is. The question is whether low-level chronic exposure to these
metals can cause chronic health problems. I believe the answer is
yes, but it is not so easy to quantify and treat.
In the 1970s, the great Herbert Needleman, MD, a pediatrician
from the University of Pittsburgh, discovered elevated lead in the
teeth of children and correlated this level with lowered cognitive
function/IQ in poorer children, and then, to his surprise, in well-
to-do children as well. This led Dr. Needleman on an odyssey that
eventually directed him to take on big oil in getting lead out of gas-
oline after showing that nationwide lead exposure correlated with
criminal behavior and that elevated lead in the blood correlated
with lowered IQ levels.^7
At our clinic, we measure toxic metals with a six-hour urine
collection after an intravenous chelation challenge. If you do a pre-
and post-urine challenge for toxic metals, most of the time, you
see no metals in the urine before the chelation challenge. If you do
find metal elevation in the pre-challenge urine, it is likely to be an
acute exposure. While we virtually never see elevated metals pre-
challenge, we frequently see patients who have some type of sig-
nificantly elevated metals post-chelation challenge. What we are
looking for is a five-fold or more increase over the normal range.