Heavy Metal Toxicity
A year ago, if you had told me most chronically ill individuals carried a significant load of toxic metals in them, I cant say I would have been surprised. However, despite tirelessly searching for the root cause of my issues, it wasn’t until January 2023, I began focusing on how heavy metals may be playing a role in my physiology.
After coming across the work of Doctors Chris Shade, Daniel Pompa, and John Lieurance, I felt like I had finally found the missing pieces of the puzzle. These doctors, through their hefty experience with heavy metal toxicity, especially mercury, emphasized the role heavy metals played in chronic diseases.
Although, it doesn’t take a doctor to explain this issue. We have all heard stories about the “Mad Hatters” who went insane from Mercury poisoning, coal miners falling ill from the mercury content in coal (amongst many things), or AC-130 gunners developing cancer from repeated exposure to metals like lead.
Just a straightforward internet search for “Heavy metal exposure and autoimmune/cancer” yields numerous studies proving the dangers these toxins have on the body.
Here is an example1 :
“there is solid evidence that mercury can induce autoimmune disease both in humans and experimental animals”.
Intuitively, this phenomenon makes perfect sense, how could high levels of heavy metals ever produce a good outcome? Yet, it took me years before considering this to be an issue.
Why Heavy Metals are so toxic
Inflammation is a prevalent issue for modern man, almost every modern ailment involves some degree of out of control inflammation. Reactive oxygen species lies at the heart of the inflammatory process, capable of damaging your cells and their components from the inside out.
The NIH defines ROS in the following manner:
“A type of unstable molecule that contains oxygen and that easily reacts with other molecules in a cell. A build up of reactive oxygen species in cells may cause damage to DNA, RNA, and proteins, and may cause cell death”
Your mitochondria naturally produce ROS as a byproduct of the electron chain transport system (where you generate energy), however, the excess ROS is typically neutralized by endogenous antioxidants such as melatonin and glutathione.
Nonetheless, heavy metal toxicity can massively disrupt this normal process, as these metals overwhelm the antioxidant capacity of the cell. Metals put the cell into a state of oxidative stress, where the oxidant to antioxidant ratio becomes skewed in favor of oxidixation2 .
The Diagram below paints this picture
Cell Membranes
Another factor that contributes to cell degradation is a development called “lipid peroxidation”. Lipid peroxidation occurs when ROS molecules steal electrons from the lipid membranes that make up the cell walls.
The health and integrity of cell membranes are crucial for various cellular processes. Membranes are vital role in communication between cells, as well as within the cell itself. They coordinate the exchange of nutrients, support detoxification and contribute to the integrity of the cell as a whole.
Let’s take a moment to revisit high school biology for a second and recall how your teacher explained the concepts of Exocytosis (something leaving the cell) and Endocytosis (something entering the cell).
These processes are responsible for brining in nutrients like minerals, macro nutrients, vitamins, or expelling waste products like heavy metals and general toxins (if they are not broken down inside the cell).
Membranes are quite intelligent when it comes to governing the health of the cell and can distinguish what it wants and what it doesn’t want. When in contact with heavy metals, membranes decide what happens to these foreign toxins. A study3 examined this principle, explaining:
“Membrane transport of nonessential toxic heavy metals (type D heavy metals) not only controls their access to intracellular target sites but also helps determine their uptake, distribution, and excretion from the body”
The innate intelligence of the cell membranes protects our mitochondria, DNA, rNA and other organelles from being damaged from toxins. This double phospholipid “wall” does a lot more than we think from a first glance.
Final Thoughts
Because heavy metal exposure is such a fascinating topic, I want to break it up into a series. In the meantime, I hope your enjoyed this brief review of heavy metal toxicity! Stay tuned!
-Scott
Bigazzi PE. Autoimmunity and heavy metals. Lupus. 1994 Dec;3(6):449-53. doi: 10.1177/096120339400300604. PMID: 7704000.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427717/
Foulkes EC. Transport of toxic heavy metals across cell membranes. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 2000 Mar;223(3):234-40. doi: 10.1046/j.1525-1373.2000.22334.x. PMID: 10719835.