The Toxin You May Be Breathing

the-toxin-you-may-be-breathing_300A heavy metal found in air pollution and tobacco smoke is believed to be a serious danger to your liver. Chelation therapy may be able to eliminate the toxin from your body. Unfortunately, nobody has been paying much attention to this inhalable poison.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that people with high levels of cadmium in their bodies had about a 3.5 times higher risk of dying from liver disease during the six years of their study than those with lower levels.

In a review of the health history of more than 12,000 people, the investigators discovered that the cadmium-liver disease link mostly affects men. The researchers believe that older women enjoy protection because menopause redistributes stored cadmium from the liver and kidneys, where it can do more damage, into bones where it is stored more safely.

Cadmium levels in the body accumulate during the course of a lifetime because it has a long half-life.

“We already know about the health hazards of heavy metals like lead and mercury, but we don’t know much about what cadmium does to the body,” says researcher Omar Hyder, M.D. “In (lab animals), chronic cadmium exposure has been shown to cause liver failure, but we need to understand more about the factors that may cause liver disease in humans, and whether we can do anything to prevent it.”

Medications are available that bind to heavy metals and remove them from organs, but such chelation therapies have not been used on those with chronic cadmium exposure because their value is unclear, Hyder says.

Carl Lowe

By Carl Lowe

has written about health, fitness and nutrition for a wide range of publications including Prevention Magazine, Self Magazine and Time-Life Books. The author of more than a dozen books, he has been gluten-free since 2007.

«SPONSORED»