Re: Is the urine challenge test adviseable? Andy and the ARI seem to disagree??

[Guest guest]

the major thing i am confused about is that why people say the urine

test is completely useless, becuase some of us have had this test

before we heard about andys work and the possible side effects etc.

But i would not have known about chelation at all had i not had a

urine test that showed up metals. and also these metals are inside us

so if a urine test finds them surely this is a good thing, so we can

get rid of them, thats why i dont understand why people say they are

completely uselss, also they surely offer some sort of diagnostic use

as the doctors that do them do them on many patients so just among the

patients they do it on they must be able to see that some people are

very toxic and others less so, by comparing them to each other.

> >

> > , after weeks of research I've decided to do the DDI hair

> elements

> > test on my son (8 yrs) because the challenge test is *not* accurate

> > (see other posts). I want to know exactly what the score is

before we

> > start chelation - also, like you want to make sure the chelation

> won't

> > cause complications. More expensive, but don't want to miss

> something,

> > or chelate when symptoms are caused by something else. Joy

> >

>

> Joy,

> Yes thanks. We are waiting the results of a hair elements test along

> with a urine porphyrin from Paris which I found an interpretation

> method to use it with. I am still in complete CONFUSION over the

> difference in protocols between the ARI and Andy. The two major

> conflicts seem to be frequency and amount. Their ideas of the half

> life of DMSA are different and the amount is 20 times more with the

> ARI - DAN protocol. It is very troubling for a skeptical parent.

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Let me see if I can explain this....

>

>

> the major thing i am confused about is that why people say the urine

> test is completely useless,

A urine challenge test is useless with respect to estimating the body

burden of metals. There are a number of reasons.

When a large dose of challenge agent is giving in one single dose it

will pick up some of the most readily available metals. It will not

pick up the more tightly bound metals, it will not pick up metals

embedded deep in organs, and it will not pick up any metals from the

brain. Whatever metals it does pick up are, therefore, not

representative of what is available in the body.

Someone who has large amounts of metals in the brain could have low

numbers showing up on a challenge test because the challenge agents

used are usually DMPS or DMSA and they don't chelate metals from the

brain.

Mercury toxicity interferes with the ability to excrete metals.

Someone who is seriously toxic could show low numbers of metals on a

challenge test simply because they are so toxic that their body wasn't

able to get rid of the metals from a single challenge dose.

The normal range that is used to compare challenge test results to is

determined from urine samples from people who did not get challenge

doses of chelators. Of course most people will have larger numbers

when given a challenge agent as compared to those who were given no

challenge agent because in our society we are all exposed to some

heavy metals.

There is a large amount of error associated with sampling urine. This

is never taken into account by anyone who talks about urine sampling

and test results. In order to determine the amount of error and

whether or not one sample result is statistically significantly

different from another a person would have to do more urine tests than

they could ever possibly afford to do.

becuase some of us have had this test

> before we heard about andys work and the possible side effects etc.

You will notice in " Amalgam Illness " Andy does describe how he would

do a challenge test if a person needs to get someone to take the

condition seriously enough to prescribe treatments, or to qualify for

insurance benefits. Andy also gives his own test results in " Amalgam

Illness " . Perhaps completely useless is not the correct expression -

more like the results are misleading but most people don't understand

that.

Personally, I don't like to read the stories from people who were

damaged by challenge doses because if that person can't get insurance

or any prescriptions from doctors from the results, then the damage

done to them was for nothing. The cost of doing the test is often

much higher than any potential gain from the results. I especially

don't like to read the stories from parents who gave their autistic

child a challenge dose of chelator and got a horrific reaction from

the child. That child has a lifetime ahead of them and the damage

from the test could be permanent.

> But i would not have known about chelation at all had i not had a

> urine test that showed up metals.

There must have been symptoms that encouraged you to go to a

practitioner and that the practitioner used to suspect metal poisoning

as a possibility.

If more people understood how to interpret hair tests metal poisoning

could be detected in a far less invasive way. A urine porphyrin test

would also be less invasive and comes with essentially no risk of harm

to the individual.

>and also these metals are inside us

> so if a urine test finds them surely this is a good thing, so we can

> get rid of them,

Yes, it is a good thing to know that there are metals in the body and

to remove them.

Was there anything in the test results that helped you to make any

treatment decision?

thats why i dont understand why people say they are

> completely uselss, also they surely offer some sort of diagnostic use

> as the doctors that do them do them on many patients so just among the

> patients they do it on they must be able to see that some people are

> very toxic and others less so, by comparing them to each other.

>

Doctors do seem to use them for that purpose without understanding

what the results actually mean.

It used to be that doctors relied on their own observations, patient

reports of symptoms, as they were making a diagnosis. Now doctors

rely heavily on test results. Getting numbers on a test result is

something that they can put on file in case anyone wants to question

their treatments in future. This can be very important for doctors

who are trying protect themselves from litigation or from persecution

by their own medical associations.

J