Get the Lead Out…Safely & Naturally

Lead is a heavy, toxic mineral. After decades of documenting how harmful lead can be even in tiny amounts, there is renewed interest in what to do to avoid such increasingly common risks. There is much you can do to reduce lead uptake and enhance safer lead removal from the body. The Health Studies Collegium Foundation recommends the following 21st Century lead risk and harm reduction plan:

Ascorbates based on C Cleanse determined amount – Always 100% l-ascorbate, fully buffered and reduced

High sulfur foods as diet staples ± supplementation – ‘Make staples out of condiments and condiments out of staples’

Enhance magnesium uptake and chaperone its delivery to cells – Combine ionized magnesium with special choline citrate

Selenomethionine as a helpful and detoxifying form of selenium – Nature’s safer, preferred form of selenium

Healthier cells have enough essential antioxidant and buffering nutrients to keep a reserve of energy in the form of magnesium ATP, the currency of cell biology. Healthy cells have an ATP to ADP ratio of 100:1 or more. This means efficient transduction of electrons from membrane through cytoplasm and chaperoned through the mitochondrial cell battery without free radical electrons inducing oxidative damage.

Ascorbates protect and recycle all other antioxidants

Ascorbate can safely chaperone toxic minerals such as lead from the body when taken based on individual C Cleanse. Ascorbate wraps around minerals like lead and escorts them into the urine, stool and sweat. Health Studies Collegium estimates that each gram of ascorbate is able to help remove about 10 micrograms of toxic minerals from the body. Given the toxic mineral load of most people, several grams of ascorbate are needed just to address the daily traffic or flux of dietary and environmental (xenobiotic) sources of lead and similar minerals. Since toxic minerals cause antioxidants to be used up, larger amounts of ascorbates are needed by individuals with larger body burdens of toxic minerals, especially those toxic minerals actively in traffic within the circulation and metabolically active tissues of the body.

Sulfur and magnesium help protect from toxic minerals

In addition, healthy people make a molecular sponge known as metallothionein (MT) to soak up and safely chaperone lead (and other toxic minerals) from the body. MT is a distinct polypeptide made up of the simplest amino acid (glycine) and a sulfur containing amino acid (cysteine). In addition, zinc and magnesium bind to the peptide. MT is found in every fluid and every part of the body as long as people are in healthier elective protective mode at the cell level.

In order for the body to produce MT, there must be ample sulfur sources in the diet and the cell must be energetic enough to produce elective protective molecules such as MT. Garlic, Ginger, Onions, Broccoli sprouts and Eggs, known by the acronym GGOBE, are good sources of sulfur in the diet. We recommend these five high sulfur foods be staples of the diet rather than condiments.

In addition to MT, there are other sulfur containing molecules that can be sacrificed so that toxic metals like lead do not wreak havoc on delicate cell centers and systems. These include glutathione, cysteine, and methionine. These sulfur-containing molecules bind lead and other toxic minerals making them more water soluble and less toxic. Sulfur-containing molecules can become depleted when they bind lead and other toxic minerals to prevent them from being free and more harmful. From drinking water to seafood; from air to water, food and medicines, it is impossible to avoid toxic minerals such as lead.

How much is too much

Physicians, in the 1970s, were taught that treatment was indicated for levels of lead in the blood above 50 micrograms (µgm). The threshold for treatment has been progressively lowered several times over the decades and now is at 5 µgm in the blood, based on World Health Organization and Center for Disease Control recommendations. Reduced intelligence, mood and impulse control problems and increased risk of chronic illness are all linked to increased body burden of lead and similar toxic minerals.

Since exposure to toxic minerals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and nickel today is from 100 to 10,000 times higher than it was just a century or two ago, it seems prudent to increase the safer antitoxins such as sulfur sources in the diet, ascorbates and other compounds such as selenomethionine that can bind irreversibly and render less toxic lead and other toxic minerals while helping remove them through urine, stool and sweat.

Mechanism of action

As is true for essentially all toxic substances, it is the lack of protective antioxidants and/or buffering minerals that allows the adverse oxidative free radical burst… the allostatic and homeostatic load to occur.

Magnesium also plays an important role in toxic mineral uptake and harm. When magnesium is sufficient, uptake of toxic minerals from the intestine is largely blocked. When magnesium is insufficient, uptake of toxic minerals is enhanced.

When magnesium is sufficient, B vitamins work better and cell proton gradients allow for mitochondrial batteries to delivery both ATP and acid protons to cell cytoplasm in exchange for electrons that shuttle through ascorbate, glutathione, and nucleotides as the sources for the ATP energy.

When magnesium is insufficient, risk of oxidative harm and free radical damage for toxic metals such as lead are greater. Cell metabolic acidosis means loss of the proton gradient essential to energy production. In practice, this means that people in the lower half of the usual range for serum magnesium have chronic latent magnesium deficiency (CLMD). CLMD increases lead’s adverse effects.
CLMD also increases risk of viral or other infectious agent finding a hospitable niche in people lacking the reserves to remove toxic minerals.

D-penicillamine when needed

Ascorbates, sulfur sources, magnesium and selenomethionine form a team to protect and defend from toxic minerals. Sometimes, additional therapy is needed. D-penicillamine (d-pen) is dimethylcysteine, a more water-soluble sulfur containing aminoacid. D-pen is also a divalent cation chelator; it wraps around and chaperones any mineral with two charges. This is the basis for the d-pen provocation test. The d-pen is taken for three (3) days and a 24 hour urine collected on the second day. This specimen can be analyzed both for essential, nutritional minerals and for toxic minerals. We suggest ICP-MS as the most reliable analytic tool.

Advantages of d-pen over other chelators include it being oral, water soluble, and easily able to go across all barriers without re-depositing toxins at the blood brain barrier, the loop of Henle nor the choroid plexus. D-pen is made by bacterial fermentation. No longer made form penicillin, d-pen shows little if any cross reactivity in people who are penicillin allergic. When needed, patch tests can confirm that people do or do not have delayed reactions to d-pen. Other chelators are more selective and less effective than d-pen. Examples include EDTA, EGTA, DTPA, DMSA and DMPS.

Now more than ever there is need to get the lead out more safely and effectively. Be proactive and confirm that you are getting enough of the essential nutrients to protect from toxic mineral harm despite the toxic environment in which we live.

PERQUE Can help get the lead out… Safely & Naturally

PERQUE Potent C Guard                      Based on C Cleanse

PERQUE Mag Plus Guard                    Base on 1st urine pH after rest

PERQUE Choline Citrate                      Enhance magnesium uptake & chaperone to cells

PERQUE Life Guard tabsules              40 actives including selenomethionine

PERQUE Detox IN Guard tabsules     Sulfur sources + lead-out nutrients

To get started with PERQUE, call 1.800.525.7372 or send us an email to