The Trap of Chelation Therapy for Bipolar

Posted on April 4, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Paranoids Psycho-bunk Psychotropics Scoundrels

A woman came into a support group meeting with her husband. He immediately walked to the center our circle and began trying to set up a place for himself and his wife there. We persuaded them to take a seat with the rest of us, but throughout the meeting he was extremely agitated. The buzz of mania shook his entire body. Even the hairs on his balding head vibrated.

His wife knew, too, but after the meeting we learned that she had a paranoia all her own. You see, she’d heard that lithium was “a heavy metal” from a practioner of chelation therapy. Not having the wit to check the periodic table of the elements ((Lithium is the third lightest element after hydrogen and helium.)) she had signed her man into a dubious treatment engineered by a practitioner who sold people the line that the psychiatric profession was a big fraud out to milk people dry through prescriptions. This “therapist” was going to “cleanse” the man’s blood.

Now we never saw this woman again, but I have my well-informed doubts about chelation therapy. It flies a huge red flag, namely that it can cure everything: Not just bipolar disorder, but also heart disease, [[hypertension]], heavy metal poisoning, prostrate trouble, [[autism]], and just about anything you are willing to pay the chelator ((Yes, it does sound like “cheater”. I bet that is why they don’t call themselves that!)) to remove. It amounts to a pricey piece of witch doctoring whose only proponents appear to be the practitioners themselves.

Dr. Stephen Barrett, a notable anti-quackery activisit, has set up Chelation Watch as a clearinghouse for information. Among other things you can learn from this site are that chelation therapy has long been on the U.S. Public Health Service’s list of suspect treatments, that it is toxic to the kidneys, and of dubious value in the treatment of [[atherosclerosis]] — the one condition for which there is any legitimate literature. It is prescribed usually based on fraudulent tests that indicate lead or mercury poisoning. The most respectful of advocates for it recommend it only as a last resort.

Chelation for bipolar sufferers feeds into the stigma against those of us living with mental illness. The suggestion is that we have been poisoned by our environment and that — not chemicals in our brain or gut, not the pressures that families and workplaces can put us under, not our decisions to self-medicate as opposed to seek proper treatment by a trained professional psychiatrist — everything can be reduced to heavy metal concentrations that usually aren’t there. Science has shown again and again that concentrations of the light metal lithium are most efficacious in preventing bipolar mania. If this proves wrong for our bodies, there are other things that can be substituted. The man I described was far from the point of last resort. Rather his wife had panicked and run to the first quack who could promise her a miracle cure.

You’d think if they’d found that their money was worth it, they’d have told us. But they didn’t.

This post is in response to Day 4 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: Ludicrous Headline or Cure. Do a news search and choose a ridiculous headline or proposed cure about your condition and write what you think about it. Can’t find one? Write your own.