Five years ago chiropractor Dr Mindy Pelz, near San Fransico CA, learned she had a very high level of the heavy metal lead in her body. She had wondered why she had suddenly become very tired and weak even though she ate a healthy diet, exercised regularly, did meditation and enjoyed her work. Once she learned of her high lead level, she worked to lower it and then devised what she believes is the best way to help people detox heavy metals. Since then she said has helped thousands of people clear out these toxins.
After listening to the 11 videos about heavy metals in Dr Pelz’s playlist for heavy metal detoxing, I decided to be tested for heavy metals using the method she recommended. The test shows a profile of 20 heavy metals. I was surprised to see how high my lead level was-over 5 times the amount considered “safe”. I was also high in mercury, barium, cadmium, and thallium but those were in the “reference range”. Dr Pelz explains there are no safe amounts of heavy metals to have in one’s body.
Although this article concentrates mostly on lead and mercury, it is important to know that common signs of heavy metal toxicity include: chronic fatigue, autoimmune diseases, skin irritations, neurological disorders, brain fog, poor memory, depression, dementia, insomnia, digestive problems (like IBS), anemia and chronic pain.
Dr Pelz states that detoxing lead “saved my life”. She also said helping her patients detox has changed the course of people’s emotional and physical health. Dr Pelz states that many people who do this detox sleep better and can think more clearly. When she has tested whole families, she can see how the children of parents with high levels of heavy metal toxicity also had high levels. She noticed that the oldest child has the highest levels, and each younger child’s levels are lower.
Dr Lawrence Wilson uses the hair tissue mineral analysis to test for heavy metals. He said he has tested 3 month old babies, and states “they are all full of toxic metals from their mothers. They are passed on right through the placenta from mother to child.” Wilson noted that serial killers are consistently high in manganese, while people who struggle with anger often have too high a level of iron and people who have suicide thoughts often have nickel toxicity.
Dr Pelz said that having too much lead in one’s body causes depression, trouble sleeping, poor memory, poor concentration, poor word recall, and fatigue. She said “It is the metal that slows everything down…It numbs the nervous system out.” Other symptoms of having lead in one’s body include joint pain, stiffness, chronic pain, and poor comprehension. Dr Pelz states, “Lead is traumatizing to the nervous system. It is traumatizing to the muscular skeletal symptoms… Lead lives in the skeletal bones… Lead can weaken the thyroid”. Dr Pelz stated many of the patients she has worked with to clear the lead from their bodies have had chronic pain leave them.
While lead slows the body down, having too much mercury in one’s body revs the body and nervous system up. ADHD and high anxiety can be caused partly by having too much mercury in the body. Mercury is excitatory for neurotransmitters. Mercury comes from dental fillings, flu shots, fish, latex paint, cleaners, cosmetics, vaccines and other sources.
Lead can be passed down from up to 4 generations back. This is a frequent cause of what causes too much lead in one’s body. Dr Pelz said every one of the thousands of people she has tested for heavy metals are high in lead. Most are also high in mercury and other heavy metals. Pelz said that lead is in drinking water, the soil, and the air. It used to be in our gasoline for our cars. People who have remodeled old homes get exposed to lead from the lead based paint. Main stream commercial beauty products, especially lipstick, have lead in them. Local CBS news special on 1-3-19 reported that when 45 different brands of fruit juice were tested for heavy metals, each brand had heavy metals in them.Dr Pelz said some supplements have heavy metals in them.
There are 3 ways to test for heavy metals: 1) blood test 2) hair analysis test 3) provoked heavy metal test using sulfur in the form of a supplement called DMSA to pull the heavy metals out for a 6 hour urine test. The 6 hour provoked urine tests will provide the most accurate results because it pulls the heavy metals out of the tissues they hid in. However Dr Wilson explains that there is no test to find out how many heavy metals we have in us because they are so deep in the tissue. Dr Pelz told about one woman who did her 3 month heavy metal detox and when she did another 6 hour urine test, it showed an increase in the heavy metal she wanted to clear from her body. Dr Pelz explains this is due to the heavy metal coming out of the body tissue.
Dr Pelz takes people through group heavy metal detox that involves 3 stages: 1) opening up the detox organs pathway (the detox organs of digestion, liver and kidneys) 2) body detox 3) brain detox. This takes 3 months or more to complete one round of the detox. Often people will need to do additional months and sometimes years of this kind of detox to get the levels to a safe level. Her method is pricey (about $1400) but she has studied with a medical doctor to develop special supplements to help this process. She also offers email consultations with one of her staff that knows how to deal with difficult detox symptoms and 4 webinars using zoom where participates can ask her questions directly. I have studied other methods of heavy metal detox but her method is the most comprehensive.
Testing for heavy metals through Dr Pelz’s office is also expensive. The test kit costs $325 while the DMSA cost an additional $65 (as of August 2021). I searched for a lower cost DMSA but the prices were higher. Lab Corp will do the 6 hour urine test for heavy metals for $199. You can order your own bloodwork at: requestatest.com if your health insurance does not pay for it.
Dr Josh Axe has a video about 10 ways to detox heavy metals. However it is hard to know which ones would work for you and how much to use them. His video HERE:
Getting heavy metals out of the tissue is not easy. The supplements that pull the metals out can cause tiredness, joint pain, irritability, mood swings, and other unpleasant detox symptoms. They also may pull out minerals that need to be replaced. The detox symptoms can be reduced using coffee enemas, exercise, massage, extra rest, and saunas.
Dr Lawrence Wilson, author of the book Sauna Therapy, writes extensively how well near infrared saunas can help someone detox heavy metals. He said our skin is a very important detox organ but that the skin of “most people is inactive, congested and toxic.” He also writes that “medical studies demonstrate that most toxins can be eliminated through the skin, relieving the burden on the kidneys and liver.” Dr Wilson has extremely helpful information on saunas at his website: HERE
Inspired by Dr Wilson’s articles, I built my own infrared saunas and wrote a blog article about this kind of sauna that can be found here.
I completed my 3 month heavy metal detox using the supplements and guidance of Dr Mindy Pelz. I think I feel somewhat better but I know that given how high my lead level was, it may take years to fully clear out using her method.
Dr Lawrence Wilson has a different method of clearing out heavy metals than Dr Mindy Pelz. Pelz uses supplements that are natural chelators such as activated charcoal, Zeolite, and others that bind to the heavy metals and helps pull them out while providing extra nutrition to make up for the good nutrients that also come out with the binders. Dr Wilson writes that “natural and synthetic chelators …remove toxic metals in an unnatural order, and they do not remove them deeply enough.” He states he has worked with several thousand people to help them remove toxins from their bodies. Based on this work, he wrote, “In my experience, one never simply has mercury or lead toxicity. Most of the time, one has mercury beneath some lead, which is beneath copper mixed with pesticides and a chronic infection secreting toxins beneath that. Each layer of toxicity is deeper within organs or other tissues.”
Dr Wilson’s approach to remove heavy metals is to assist the body’s normal toxin elimination by designing a program that “balances body chemistry while assisting ALL toxin elimination”. He recommends people take mineral supplements, eat a strict diet of no sugar, fruit, fruit juice or raw vegetables, live a simple lifestyle, sleep 9 hours a night and REST a lot! A tall order if you ask me but if you read his reasoning it all makes perfect sense. He explains that too much stress and a poor diet depletes important nutrients, especially minerals that are like the body’s spark plugs. If we are deficient in minerals, our body absorbs and uses toxic metals for it’s enzyme system. The toxic metals “may function 5 -50 %, enough to sustain life. As more of these accumulate, however, enzymatic activity deteriorates until illness occurs.”
Dr Lawrence Wilson’s notes that people who are vegetarians tend to be low in sulfer such as taurine, cysteine, carnitine, and methionine, all which help remove toxic heavy metals.
I hope this article has been helpful. I am continually learning and searching how to help people become healthier in affordable ways. If you would like me to help you improve your emotional health, call me at 586-799-2399 or write me at: suzanneenergy@gmail.com.