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Migraines, Seizures, and Mercury Toxicity
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Source:
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
MAGAZINE
www.alternativemedicine.com
Issue 21 Dec, 1997 / Jan, 1998.
Migraines, Seizures, and Mercury Toxicity
Chronic pain and other long-term symptoms often get resolved after a
series of injections with a local anesthetic. It’s called NEURAL
THERAPY, and it works through the nervous system.
RICHARD LEVITON
Maisie, a 32-year-old actress, had suffered from migraine headaches
for nine years. They occurred twice a week and were so intense that she
had to retreat to her bed with a cloth over her eyes, all the lights
off, and the blinds drawn. Most of the time, the pain lasted through the
day, and the next morning she would feel nauseous and exhausted from the
ordeal. Maisie was taking a serious amount of conventional migraine
medications but none of the drugs abated the frequency or the severity
of the attacks.
Maisie was fortunate in making contact with a physician who has an
unusual approach to treating chronic pain conditions such as migraines.
Dietrich Klinghardt, M.D., Ph.D., who practices in Seattle, Washington,
asked Maisie when her migraines started.
She told him that, nine years before, she had been injured on a movie
set when a prop gun discharged wrongly and seared her upper arm with
powder burns. The burn wound was surgically treated three times to
produce a cosmetically acceptable result, but it still left a large,
highly visible scar. Maisie’s migraines started four months after this
accident; she had never had migraines before. From Dr. Klinghardt’s
perspective, the scar was the cause of the migraines, and this
understanding suggested the proper course of treatment.
After he gave Maisie a single injection into the scar of 1%
procaine, a standard local anesthetic, she never had another migraine
attack. That was ten years ago. The secret of how a scar can cause
migraines and many other chronic conditions, and how injecting the
scarred sites with an anesthetic can produce lasting relief, is the
essence of Dr. Klinghardt’s approach, and success.
What a Scar Remembers
"Any part of the body that has been traumatized or ill—no
matter where it is located—can become an interference field which may
cause disturbance anywhere in the body," explains Dr. Klinghardt.
In his estimation, 30-45% of all illness or pain is caused by an
interference field or a linked series of such fields.
Any scar that results from an accident, surgery, or illness can
produce a strange, hidden, but long-lasting effect on a person’s
health, explains Dr. Klinghardt.
Say you once had an acute upper respiratory tract infection involving
the sinuses or tonsils. Even though you apparently recovered long ago,
the residual tissue changes of the sinuses or tonsils from the processes
of illness can still interfere with the health of other body systems
today. It is as if the traumatized tissue still remembers the illness or
trauma years later. The connection are various and surprising.
Sinus trauma, for example, can create chronic severe neck pain,
migraines, chronic fatigue, or PMS, says Dr. Klinghardt. A gallbladder
scar can cause chronic hip pain; traumatized tonsils can affect the knee
joint; leg scars can spark sciatica; pelvic scars can trigger arthritis,
PMS, or depression; trauma in the prostate, stomach, or sinus can
produce neck pain; an appendectomy can lead to rheumatoid arthritis or pelvic pain.
Dr. Klinghardt notes that an injection in tonsil tissue can often
relieve chronic migraines. The four front teeth of the upper and lower
jaw are related to the urogenital system; problems with these teeth are
frequently responsible for pelvic pain, chronic kidney disease, and even
cancer in the pelvic organs.
In Dr. Klinghardt’s vocabulary, scars, traumatized organs and
teeth, or old injuries are essentially equivalent in the way they interfere
with any healthy functioning of the boy. "Any part of the body that
has been traumatized or ill—no matter where it is located—can become
an interference field which may cause disturbance anywhere in the
body," explains Dr. Klinghardt.
In his estimation, 30-45% of all illness or pain is caused by an
interference field or a linked series of such fields. He cites a case in
which a woman with pelvic pain improved after she received procain
injections in both her uterus and thyroid. In one of the now classic
cases in this field (1940), a physician injected a leg scar and provided
immediate relief for a severely painful shoulder.
This way of medical thinking is part of a discipline called neural
therapy, first pioneered in Germany in 1925 by two German physicians
(and brothers), Ferdinand and Walter Huneke, as a way of eliminating
pain and chronic illness. In neural therapy, local anesthetics are
injected at the sites of old injuries to remove an irritating energy focus
in the body that is blocking the flow of electrical and nerve energy.
In neural therapy, a standard anesthetic is carefully injected into
specific points in the nervous system. This temporarily restores proper
nerve function, enabling cells to eliminate toxic waste, says Dr.
Klinghardt. Several important ganglia exist in the neck. A ganglion is a
bundle, know, or plexus of nerve cell bodies with many interconnections
that acts like a sorting and relay station for nerve impulses. There are
several dozen ganglia throughout the body. In other words, scars and
sites of physical trauma generate an energy field that interferes with
the body’s proper functioning. Dr. Klinghardt estimates that dental
factors, extraction sites or root-canaled, devitalized or impacted
teeth, can account for between 50% and 80% of interference fields.
Often the results of neural therapy can be seemingly instantaneous—practitioners
call this the "lightning reaction"—as if something dammed up
has been suddenly released in the body. This reaction frequently entails
an emotional release; every injury or surgical scar carries a memory of
the events involved in producing it, and somehow the anesthetic releases
them, says Dr. Klinghardt.
For example, when he injected at various points in a woman’s pelvic
region, she had a spontaneous memory of childhood sexual abuse. With the
memory came a release of anger, rage, and tears and, soon after, an end
to her long-standing pelvic pain.
rheumatoid arthritis : the
body's immune system attacks the connective tissue around joints,
especially in the feet and hands. This leads to inflammation of the
(fluid-filled) membranes surrounding the joints. As the condition
becomes chronic, neighboring soft tissue hardens and erodes, resulting
in deformities and disabilities.
The Inner Life of a Ganglion
To understand how neural therapy produces its dramatic results, it’s
necessary to think about processes at the cellular level. Each cell in
the body can be regarded as an organism, explains Dr. Klinghardt.
"Ever cell needs to eat, drink, and detoxify itself, to have the
cellular equivalent of a urination and bowel movement." It does
this across the cell walls, taking in nutrients and eliminating waste
products. The rate at which substances are exchanged across the cell
membrane determines how efficiently the cell is working, Dr. Klinghardt
says. "It determines the healing ability and aliveness of
the organism. The more rapid the transport, the more vital the
body."
This rapid transport is dependent on the status of the membrane
potential, which is a difference in electrical charge on both sides of
the cell membrane. "Whenever a cell has lost its normal membrane
potential, the ion pumps and ionic channels in the cell wall stop
working," says Dr. Klinghardt. In effect, the cell becomes
electrically paralyzed and cannot eliminate the waste products of its
own cellular processes. "This means that abnormal minerals and
toxic substances accumulate inside the cell, leading to an inability of
the cell to heal itself and resume normal function."
Here’s what the scar and interference field come into the picture.
Scar tissue can actually produce a measurable electrical charge of up to
1.5 volts. The typical cell’s electrical charge is only 80 millivolts.
This means the interference field functions like a battery
inappropriately implanted in the body, says Dr. Klinghardt.
The interference field generates abnormal electrical signals which
disrupt the autonomic
nervous system and the membrane potential of nerve ganglia and nerve fibers. The result can
be electrical chaos in the spinal cord and brain, and a cascade of nerve
disturbances throughout the body which manifest as chronic pain or
dysfunction.
"Neural therapy attempts to break this cycle by identifying the
‘primary lesion,’ or interference field—the structure [scar or
focus] that gave the original abnormal signal into the autonomic nervous
system," Dr. Klinghardt says. The local anesthetic,
"infiltrated" through the cell wall, temporarily restores the
natural membrane potential in nerve cells at the site of physical
trauma.
During this respite, which lasts perhaps 30-120 minutes, "the
cell uses the time to eliminate a sufficient amount of the toxic waste
to regain normal function, often lastingly."
Now let’s put the theory of neural therapy back into action, with
two examples. Dr. Klinghardt treated a man who had been diagnosed with
severe arthritis of the hip joints and lower back. He indicated his
arthritic symptoms began after a serious bout of prostate gland
inflammation. Within seconds after infusing a local anesthetic into the
autonomic nerve ganglia surrounding the prostate, the man was pain-free,
and the pain did not return in later days.
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While neural therapy, when performed by a trained, qualified
health professional is generally safe and free of side effects,
occasionally there are minor complications following treatment. |
Dr. Klinghardt notes that in many cases involving women with lower
back pain, pain relief and lasting cures can be achieved by injection
the Frankenhäuser ganglia (it regulates the sexual organs and
functions) surrounding the vagina and uterus. Usually, stress from
childbirth or prior pelvic infections create disturbances in the pelvic
ganglia which, in turn, generate the pain. "We have consistently
observed that with neural therapy, women’s’ premenstrual symptoms
and pain during menstruation disappear along with the back pain,"
says Dr. Klinghardt.
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Standard anatomy describes
two components to the nervous system. The Central Nervous
System (CNS) comprises the spinal cord, containing millions of
nerve fibers, and the brain, while the peripheral nervous
system (PNS) is the network of nerves estimated to extend
93,000 miles inside the body. The PNS is the sensory motor branch
that pertains to the five senses and how sensory information from
the outside world gets translated into muscle movements.
The autonomic nervous system (ANS), involving elements
of both the CNS and PNS, is controlled by the brain’s
hypothalamus gland, and pertains to the automatic regulation of
all body processes, such as breathing, digestion, and heart rate.
It can be likened to the body’s automatic pilot, keeping you
alive without your being aware of it or participating in its
activities. Neural therapy focuses its injections of anesthetics
into body structures whose nerve supply is linked with the
autonomic nervous system.
Within the ANS, there are two branches–the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches, which are
believed to counterbalance each other. The parasympathetic
nervous system slows heart rate, inhibits activity, conserves
energy, and calms the body, but stimulates gastric secretion and
intestinal activity.
The sympathetic nervous system involves the expenditure
of energy and is associated with arousal and stress. It prepares
us physically when we perceive a threat or challenge by increasing
our heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. The
sympathetic portion links all the cells of the body together; it
regulates the contraction and expansion of blood vessels; it
regulates the activity of connective tissue necessary for
regenerating body systems; and it regulates the voltage (membrane
potential) across the cell wall in every body cell. Neural therapy
primarily addresses this system.
A ganglion is a bundle, knot, or plexus of nerve cell
bodies with many interconnections that acts like a sorting and
relay station for nerve impulses. There are several dozen ganglia
throughout the body.
Membrane potential refers to
differing electrical charges, which constantly change around a
certain baseline, measured in millivolts, inside and outside of a
cell. This, in turn, influences how easily (or not) substances
(nutrients or toxins) can pass into and out of a cell. Sodium ions
are pumped out of the cell (to create the normal resting potential
of -80 mV) and potassium ions are pumped in. The three means by
which substances are transported across the cell membrane are
called ion pumping, ionic channel transport, and carrier-protein
transport. This mechanism is voltage dependent and resembles the
ebb and flow of tidal water, with nutrients "washing in"
and toxins washing out with each pulse of the electrical current
every 2-5 milliseconds.
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autonomic nervous system : has
2 major divisions: the sympathetic nervous system and the
parasympathetic nervous system. These two divisions comprise the nerve
networks that regulate the actions absolutely essential to life. The
autonomic nervous functions must be carried on continuously without
interruption, independent of the will. The sympathetic system is closely
related to the hormone adrenaline and is primarily a stimulator, or
accelerator, of metabolic activities.
membrane potential: refers to differing electrical charges,
measured in millivolts, inside and outside of a cell. This, in turn,
influences how easily (or not) substances (nutrients or toxins) can pass
into and out of a cell. Potassium ions are pumped out of the cell (at a
resting potential of -80 mV), increasing the membrane potential (to +40
mV), then sodium ions are pumped in, restoring its normal value (-80
mV). The process, variously called ion pumping, ionic transport, or the
ion channel, resembles the ebb and flow of tidal water, with nutrients
"washing" in, and toxins washing out with each pulse of the
electrical current every 2 to 5 milliseconds.
parasympathetic: system is closely related to the vitamin-like
substance choline, and operates mainly as an inhibitor, or brake, for
metabolic activity. Branches of both sympathetic and parasympathetic
nerves send electric impulses to all of our glands and organs. The
sympathetic system's basic message is "speed up," while the
parasympathetic system's is "slow down."
blood: is classified into 4 blood types or groups according to
the presence of type A and type B antigens on the surface of red blood
cells. These antigens are also called agglutinogens and pertain to the
blood cells' ability to agglutinate, or clump together. Type O blood
(containing neither type) is found in 47% of the Caucasian population;
type A, 41%; type B, 9%; type AB, 3%. Another form of blood grouping is
according to Rh-positive and Rh-negative types, based on the
distribution of 6 different Rh antigens.
Membrane potential: refers to differing electrical charges,
measured in millivolts, inside and outside of a cell. This, in turn,
influences how easily (or not) substances (nutrients or toxins) can pass
into and out of a cell. Potassium ions are pumped out of the cell (at a
resting potential of -80 mV), increasing the membrane potential (to +40
mV), then sodium ions are pumped in, restoring its normal value (-80
mV). The process, variously called ion pumping, ionic transport, or the
ion channel, resembles the ebb and flow of tidal water, with nutrients
"washing" in, and toxins washing out with each pulse of the
electrical current every 2 to 5 milliseconds.
Reversing Pansy's Five Years of Epileptic Seizures
Pansy was 17 at the time she began treatment with Dr. Klinghardt for
severe epileptic seizures. She had suffered from daily grand mal
seizures for five years, with all the unpleasant consequences, such a
biting her tongue and urinating at inappropriate times. Sometimes she
had seizures twice a day. When Pansy took conventional seizure
medications, she became psychologically unbalanced, tending toward the
psychotic and/or schizophrenic.
After considering her case, Dr. Klinghardt concluded that the cause
of her problem lay in her teeth–specifically, the tin and mercury
content in her dental amalgam fillings. It appeared that these heavy
metals had migrated from her fillings into her brain. As the first step
in his treatment, Dr. Klinghardt made a series of neural therapy
injections in Pansy’s face (nose, cheeks, forehead, and around the
eyes) and scalp making a "crown" of shallow injection points.
This kept her seizure-free for three days, "an improvement that
told me I was on the right track," comments Dr. Klinghardt.
Next, the mercury/tin amalgam fillings were properly replaced
and, once monthly for the next year, Pansy received intravenous
infusions of a nontoxic chemical to bind ("chelate") the
mercury distributed throughout her body tissue and help eliminate it
from her body. At this point, Pansy experienced seizures only once a
week. Of course, this wasn’t a good enough recovery for Dr. Klinghardt,
so he added a new element to his approach.
He gave Pansy a series of neural therapy injections in nerve ganglia
on both sides of her neck (stellate ganglion) and on her right temple (sphenopalatine
ganglion). His analysis revealed that both nerve bundles were
contaminated with mercury and tin; in Dr. Klinghardt’s clinical
experience, it is common for heavy metals to migrate to and accumulate
in nerve ganglia. The neural therapy injections reduced the frequency of
Pansy’s seizures to about once per month.
At this point, which was 18 months into the treatment, Dr. Klinghardt
added yet another element by which he hoped to eliminate Pansy’s
seizures for good. He had her start taking an alcohol-based tincture of
cilantro (Chinese parsley); the fresh herb is known to detoxify the
brain and central nervous system of heavy metals while the alcohol base
guarantees fast delivery of the cilantro to the brain. Pansy took ten
drops of cilantro tincture twice daily, and continued this for a year.
After the first dose, she never had an epileptic seizure again, says Dr.
Klinghardt.
Cilantro mobilizes mercury or tin stored in the brain and spinal cord
and it moves it out of those tissues, but it does not facilitate the
removal of heavy metals from the body. For this, a natural detoxifying
agent such as chlorella (a freshwater single-celled green algae powder)
is needed to bind up the mercury and carry it out of the body through
the feces. Dr. Klinghardt notes that a typical dosage of chlorella for
this purpose is 12 capsules daily with each capsule containing 330 mg.
How Mercury Disrupts the Body
Dr. Klinghardt offers the following strong statement: "As soon
as anybody has any type of medical illness or symptom, whether medical
or emotional, the amalgam fillings should be removed and the mercury
residues should be eliminated from the body, especially the brain."
Once it has leached from the dental fillings and infiltrated the
body, mercury becomes a neurotoxin, says Dr. Klinghardt. Strangely, a
neurotoxin is a substance the nerve cells voluntarily absorb, even
though it is poisonous.
They do this out of curiosity, Dr. Klinghardt explains. Nerve endings
in the peripheral nervous system constantly scan their environment,
engulfing foreign particles and bringing them across the cell membrane
for inspection. "These substances may then travel all the way up
from the foot to the spinal cord and get presented to the nerve cells
there." If the substance is judged to be harmful, the body tries to
produce an antitoxin to neutralize it an eliminate it from the body.
But there are two problems here when it comes to mercury, Dr.
Klinghardt cautions. "As it travels up in the nerve, it destroys
the body’s mechanism and substance, called tubulin, for transporting
substances in the nerves (breaking down the bridges behind it, as it
were), and in effect, destroying the nerve. Second, the body has not yet
learned how to make an antineurotoxin against mercury."
Laboratory studies have shown that within 24 hours of injecting a
minute dose of mercury into a muscle anywhere in the body (monkeys were
used in the study), it would be present in the spinal cord and brain.
The mercury was also present in the kidneys, lungs, bloodstream,
connective tissue, and adrenal and other endocrine glands. In the brain,
it tended to congregate in the hypothalamus, which regulates the
sympathetic nervous system (associated with the brainstem), believed to
be the organic seat of emotions.
While mercury levels slowly dissipate in a predictable amount of time
from other body tissues and even from the teeth (in six weeks, its
levels might be halved), mercury does not have a "half-life"
in the nervous system or brain. Instead, it binds firmly to a specific
chemical compound which happens to exist there in the body’s
highest concentrations.
"The main devastating effect of mercury in the nervous system is
that it interferes with the energy production inside each cell,"
says Dr. Klinghardt. "The nerve cell is impaired in its ability to
detoxify itself [and excrete the mercury] and in its ability to nurture
itself. The cell becomes toxic and dies, or lives in a state of chronic
malnutrition. A multitude of illnesses, usually associated with
neurological symptoms, result." Among these are chronic viral and
fungal illnesses, recurrent episodes of bacterial infections, and
chronic fatigue.
By a curious self-preservation reflex of the body, the emergence of
these conditions can be viewed as a way of accommodating the
heavy metal presence, speculates Dr. Klinghardt. "Most, if not all,
chronic infectious diseases are not caused by a failure of the immune
system, but are a conscious adaptation of the immune system to an
otherwise lethal heavy metal environment."
Mercury suffocates the cells and they die, so the immune system
cultivates fungi and bacteria which are able to bind large amounts of
the toxic metal in their respective cell walls, thereby enabling the
patient’s cells to breathe again. The downside, of course, is that the
body must now feed these otherwise undesirable microbes and deal with
their toxic waste. In addition, a person with mercury contamination
often becomes zinc deficient and the functioning of copper and other
minerals in the body will be compromised as well.
This perspective leads Dr. Klinghardt to the following strong
statement: "As soon as anybody has any type of medical illness or
symptom, whether medical or emotional, the amalgam fillings should be
removed and the mercury residues should be eliminated from the body,
especially the brain."
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For information on safely removing fillings, see
"Health Hazard in your Teeth," Digest #13. See also
"The Truth About Quackery in Dentistry," Digest #20,
"The Mercury Hazard in Your Mouth," Digest #19. |
Neural therapy is useful in treating mercury-based problems in the
nerve ganglia, says Dr. Klinghardt. Mercury, as a heavy metal
(which means, heavier than water), tends to accumulate in the lowest
parts of the body, such as the floor of the mouth, the pelvic floor, and
the feet. Pelvic symptoms, in both men and women, "are very
commonly caused by metal toxicity of the Frankenhäuser ganglia."
A mercury accumulation in this nerve plexus can account for premature
ejaculation and an enlarged prostate in men, and endometriosis, pelvic
pain, and hormonal dysfunction in women, Dr. Klinghardt says. Neural
therapy "cleans up" this area by injecting the Frankenhäuser
ganglia (just above the pubic bone) with a local anesthetic.
"This opens up most of the ionic channels in the cell wall; the
cell is then able to excrete a high number of its toxic
components." This painless injection spurs the body to dump a large
amount of mercury into the urine, Dr. Klinghardt says.
"Very often, at the same time, any emotional material the
patient hasn’t worked out before, mostly to do with sexual development
or abuse from earlier years, will be remembered. A memory that was not
accessible before will suddenly right there in front of a
patient, very alive, and one will momentarily relive some of the
traumatic moments from their past which are associated with that body
region."
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For complete information on clinically proven treatments for
all types of headaches, see An Alternative Medicine Definitive
Guide to Headaches (Future Medicine Publishing, 1997; ISBN
1-887299-03-3); to order call 800-333-HEAL. |
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To contact Dr. Klinghardt: American Academy of Neural
Therapy, 410 East Denny Way, Suite 18, Seattle WA 98122; tel:
206-749-9967. Dr. Klinghardt regularly instructs physicians in the
U.S. and Europe in neural therapy techniques. For information
about cilantro tincture, contact: Dragon River Herbals,
P.O. Box 28, El Rito, NM 87530; tel: 800-813-2118 or 505-581-4441;
fax: 505-581-4441. For chlorella, contact: Nature’s
Balance, Inc., 635-A Southwest Street, High Point, NC 27260; tel:
800-858-5198 or 910-882-4102; fax: 910-882-4119. |
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