Chelation therapy is a procedure that has and continues to have a lot of supporters and doubters. Science is split right down the middle on whether chelation therapy is a legitimate treatment for ailments such as heart disease and arteriosclerosis. The beginnings of chelation therapy are the only thing that scientists can agree on and that is that EDTA, a man made amino acid, is good at removing toxic heavy metals from the human body. Many years ago this chemical EDTA was used to remove things like aluminum and lead from human's bloodstream. Back a handful of decades ago the battery factory workers were falling ill to lead poisoning.

The doctors figured out that if they injected EDTA into their system that the EDTA would run around the person's blood stream and gather up all of the toxic metals from their body organs and eliminate it through the urine. This was the start of chelation therapy. After that was learned the scientist began to look closer at the patients that were needing chelation therapy to eliminate toxins and some scientist figured out that the patients were seeing improvements and lessening of their pain from their blocked arteries. These scientists inferred that the chelation therapy is the responsible party and that chelation therapy could be a cure for heart disease. Right from the start there were doubters.

These supporters of chelation therapy thought that the EDTA was grabbing a hold of the calcium form the blocked arteries and causing the plaque to weaken and break up. The loss of the plaque would let the arteries heal and the heart disease would go away. Scientists that were not believers in chelation therapy theorized that the EDTA was not getting rid of the calcium but in fact the free radicals. When the free radicals were gone the arteries could then have time to heal and thus reducing the heart disease. This became a more popular theory because now scientists know antioxidants can get rid of free radicals and coincidentally chelation therapy often involves doess of antioxidants as well. So which is helping heart disease, antioxidants or chelation therapy or both?

It is possible that we will never know and as long as we do not know the hot debate on chelation therapy will continue. Highly debated or not chelation therapy is still a very popular option for many patients in need of help and as long as there are patients seeking chelation therapy there will be doctors performing it.