DR. GLEN WILCOXSON
CHELATION, CANDIDIASIS, & ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

A Moneychanger Interview:

 DR. GLEN WILCOXSON
CHELATION, CANDIDIASIS, & ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

 Over the years I’ve written quite a bit about EDTA chelation therapy.  You can visit our website, http://www.the-moneychanger.com, for a long & technical interview with Dr. Elmer Cranton (or send us a 55¢ SASE for a copy).  Chelation first came to my attention personally when a friend was diagnosed with heart blockage.  The physician recommended a bypass operation.  My friend asked, “What are the odds?”  The physician replied that within 5 years, 85% of bypass patients either had died or needed another bypass.  My friend demurred, & began taking chelation.  After fifteen more years of physically strenuous life, my friend died last year.

About two years ago a friend & I took a series of EDTA chelation therapy treatments.  We didn’t have any symptoms of heart disease or lead poisoning, two of the primary applications of chelation, but we both wanted to take chelation preventively. 

In May Susan & I went down to Gulf Shores, Alabama to visit our friend, Dr. Glen Wilcoxson & to take some further chelation treatments (Susan’s first, boosters for me.  As many as one a month ongoing treatments are recommended.)  Visiting with Glen I found out that he does far more than just chelation, & I wanted to share that with you.  He kindly made time for this interview on June 1, 2000. 

You can contact Dr. Glen Wilcoxson at New Beginnings Medical Group; 1 Timber Way Suite 102; Spanish Fort, Alabama 36527; (251) 447-0333

Dr. Glen Wilcoxson grew up in Florence, Alabama & graduated from Birmingham Southern College & Alabama School of Medicine (1970).  For a number of years he served as an anesthesologist, & in 1994 entered his present practice in allergy, bariatrics, chelation, degenerative diseases, nutrition, preventive medicine, prolotherapy, restorative medicine, rheumatology, Wilson’s syndrome, & yeast syndrome.

PUBLISHER’S WARNING & DISCLAIMER:  By publishing this interview neither The Moneychanger nor Dr. Wilcoxson recommends or endorses any specific treatment or therapy for any physical condition or disease.  Neither The Moneychanger nor Dr. Wilcoxson guarantees or warrants any results from any treatment discussed.  Neither The Moneychanger nor Dr. Wilcoxson assumes any express or implied liability for any use to which the reader puts this information.  By this interview Dr. Wilcoxson does not prescribe any treatment whatsoever for anyone who is not his patient. 

WILCOXSON  Let me begin with a mission statement.  Alternative medicine works to relieve patients with chronic debilitating disease, as opposed to acute diseases. Through antibiotics & such things modern medicine can fairly well control acute diseases, but it has not adequately addressed chronic conditions like arteriosclerosis.  Good alternative medicine aims at curing or modifying those diseases so that the patient doesn’t have to go to the hospital or nursing home & remains self-sufficient in their later years. We try to prevent disease or to restore our patient to his original healthy condition. 

MONEYCHANGER  When I was down at your clinic I was interested to hear you admit that chelation does not always work. In what percentage of the patients does it not work?

WILCOXSON  The American College for the Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) claims about an 80% benefit with patients.  In my personal experience, I have seen more like 95-98%.  With more research we are finding that arteriosclerosis is often precipitated or aggravated by certain viral or bacterial infections in the arterial wall or in the plaque on the arterial wall.  If you treat that with short-term antibiotics or hydrogen peroxide, the success rate improves.  Sometimes it takes antibiotics, because, e.g.,  chlamydia pneumonii is known to cause frank heart attacks by infecting the arteries & closing them off. Several antibiotics will kill that bacteria in an acute or chronic mode.

MONEYCHANGER Most of your chelation patients come in with heart disease or rheumatoid arthritis?

WILCOXSON  Most of them already have a diagnosis.  In other words, most of them attempt restoration rather than prevention, which is the wrong way to stay healthy.

MONEYCHANGER  How many people take chelation preventively?

WILCOXSON  Only about 10-15%. 

MONEYCHANGER  At what age would you recommend that someone begin preventive treatments? 

WILCOXSON  Even though arteriosclerosis is seen in very young people, as young as 15, it usually doesn’t become a problem for preventive medication until around age 35.  However, if you’ve been around a known source of contamination, such as city water or work environment, that’s another matter.

MONEYCHANGER  Contaminated with heavy metals?

WILCOXSON  Basically heavy metals, yes, aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, & mercury. There’s a whole list of heavy metals, usually in ground or surface water.

MONEYCHANGER EDTA chelation actually pulls those out of your system?

WILCOXSON  Yes, the metal ions themselves carry a charge.  The kidneys cannot excrete anything with a positive charge, like the metals.  So you combine it with something (EDTA) that makes it neutral & excretable through the kidneys.

MONEYCHANGER  What about oral chelation?

WILCOXSON  Even the manufacturers of oral chelation products will admit that only 5% of EDTA is absorbed through the gastro-intestinal tract.  As it goes through your intestinal tract it binds up things like selenium, chromium, & zinc that you need.   You have to raise your doses of minerals or you’ll become mineral deficient.  Oral chelation is a poor back door treatment.

MONEYCHANGER  Doesn’t intravenous chelation treatment do the same?

WILCOXSON  It binds up only reserve minerals, rather than things that are being used in cellular activities.  Oral chelation binds your source minerals, whereas IV chelation binds up your reserve only, which is easily replaced.

MONEYCHANGER  You also treat candidiasis, primarily with diet.  In American society we are used to seeing fads come & go.  First it’s bell bottom pants, then tight pants, then bell bottoms again.  Medical fads come & go the same way.

WILCOXSON  Absolutely.

MONEYCHANGER  A few years ago it was hypoglycemia. Right now fibromyalgia (not the specific, but a generalised type) is hot. I thought that candidiasis was the same sort of fad. 

WILCOXSON  It is a modern day epidemic.  It has been brought on by overusing antibiotics & steroids, both found in meats, eggs, & milk sold commercially.

MONEYCHANGER  Because they treat the animals with them?  Bovine growth hormone, for example.

WILCOXSON  They give them to the animals because they increase growth & production.  They are supposed to remove them before slaughter time, but I don’t really think they do.  A few more pounds means a few more dollars

Stress is also a big factor in suppressing the immune system. The symptoms of fibromyalgia & hypoglycemia (which you mentioned) are two of about forty symptoms that candidiasis patients have. 

MONEYCHANGER  What is candidiasis?

WILCOXSON  It is a yeast overgrowth in the intestine.  It is not an infection, but merely an overgrowth, an imbalance in the intestines’ microflora that sometimes spills over into the bloodstream.

MONEYCHANGER  “An imbalance” means an imbalance among the various microscopic flora – bacteria & yeast -- that live inside our GI tract & aid digestion?

WILCOXSON  Yes, it has its own ecosystem.  If you have too many lions in the forest, you won’t have as many deer.  Too much yeast suppresses the growth of other beneficial organisms in the body.

MONEYCHANGER  I won’t ask you for all forty symptoms, but I have heard candidiasis characterised as a general decline of health, energy  & vigour – not imagined, but real. 

WILCOXSON  Yes, it’s genuine.  When I worked in emergency rooms some years ago I used to see people who seemed just crazy.  Surely they couldn’t have that many symptoms & still be walking around, but they did.  It is a satanic thing -- not immediate death, but a slow giving up of your faculties until you are disabled or suicidal.

MONEYCHANGER  How do you treat it?

WILCOXSON  Basically with a high-protein, low carbohydrate diet, because yeasts are fermenters & live off carbohydrates.  That’s about 50% of the program.  The other part of the program is yeast inhibitors in the form of supplements.  You also need a good, basic nutrition program.  When you are aware of the causes of candidiasis – stress, sleep deprivation, foods high in steroids & antibiotics -- you can avoid them.

MONEYCHANGER  Candidiasis sufferers should avoid store-bought eggs, meat, & milk?

WILCOXSON  As much as possible, yes.  Just about everyone in the US lives close enough to a rural setting to find someone who raises beef, chickens, yard eggs, & all that sort of thing. 

MONEYCHANGER  Doesn’t that make the diet awfully expensive, though?

WILCOXSON  It’s a little more expensive, unless you can go directly to people who produce these things.  They usually sell them a lot cheaper.  If you buy beef directly from a farmer that raises it without steroids & hormones, it is about half the price.

MONEYCHANGER  So candidiasis sufferers should try to stay away from yeast-feeding foods?

WILCOXSON  Right, sugars & carbohydrates.

MONEYCHANGER  Is it a high protein diet?

WILCOXSON  High protein, medium fat.  Fat is not a problem.  It never has been, it never will be.  It’s a fad to cut out the fats, promoted because they’re expensive to produce & to shelve.

MONEYCHANGER  What about the Great Cholesterol Scare?  What about these low fat foods that have been introduced in the last ten to fifteen years?

WILCOXSON  Never buy anything that claims to be “low fat” or “low cholesterol”, because they use chemicals like benzene to take the fat out That leaves traces of the chemical, which is very harmful.  Cholesterol is not a problem.  As a matter of fact, it is an antioxidant made by your own liver.

MONEYCHANGER  Cholesterol is not a problem?

WILCOXSON  No.  Not unless it is extremely high, & those are very rare incidences.

MONEYCHANGER  What would be extremely high?

WILCOXSON  I don’t get concerned about someone’s cholesterol unless it’s about 300 to 350.  Then, I’m not concerned about the cholesterol except as a signal that there’s a heavy oxidant load in the body that needs to be taken care of.

MONEYCHANGER  You mean a so-called “free radical” load?

WILCOXSON  Yes, free radical producers, such as heavy metals, or a diet that’s heavy in oxidated foods. 

I understand the anti-cholesterol drugs (the statin drugs) were originally developed as fungal antibiotics. Researchers noticed that lab animals’ cholesterol dropped when they gave them the drugs, but statin drugs weren’t very good fungal antibiotics.  As far as I can tell, they said to themselves, “We have to make up for all this money we’ve spent on research, so let’s find a disease for this drug.” 

Until the 1960s, normal cholesterol was 250.  You can look in the 1960 Merck manual & see that.  It appears they convinced labs to lower “normal” cholesterol levels to less than 200.  That immediately opened up a therapeutic field of approximately 50 million patients that could take the statin drug at the cost of $5 a pill a day.  There’s a $250 million per day marketplace right there.

MONEYCHANGER  Then the whole cholesterol scare is not only a medical fad, but also a medical fraud? 

WILCOXSON  Yes, & it is harmful.  If you plot incidence of cancer against cholesterol levels, you will find that cancer increases as the cholesterol level goes down, to the point that if you have a cholesterol of about 130, you are almost guaranteed cancer. 

MONEYCHANGER What are “oxidants” in the body?  An oxidizer in chemistry is a substance that is very prone to react, like oxygen or chlorine.

WILCOXSON  Right.  It burns things.  It pulls electrons off of atoms.  The entire body runs on an electro-chemical basis & produces oxidated by-products.  Unless these are disposed of, they will de-nature things in the body.  For example, if you break & egg open & put it in a pan, it is clear.  When you heat that egg or pour vinegar in it, you denature that protein; it turns white.  It turns to something it wasn’t before, from a living thing to a dead thing. 

The same thing happens in your body.  If you don’t take care of the things that oxidise, they will denature your muscle & your flesh.  They have to be squelched.  Vitamin E & vitamin C are two very important components of that antioxidant system, although there are many others.

MONEYCHANGER  So, as a general rule everybody should supplement his diet with vitamin C & vitamin E?

WILCOXSON  Yes.  Since vitamin E is an oil, it is often removed from foods because oils go rancid.  We are talking shelf life, & that  means money.  White flour will sit on the shelf for years, but whole wheat flour has a shelf life of only a few months because it contains so much wheat germ oil.

MONEYCHANGER  …which is rich in vitamin E.  So, anti-oxidants scour your body for oxidants on the loose?

WILCOXSON  They are there to be sacrificed instead of your body.

MONEYCHANGER  Doesn’t that have a lot to do with ageing?

WILCOXSON  Oh, yes.  Ageing is just a slow, slow burnout.  The more you retard that burnout, the less you age.

MONEYCHANGER  Chelation is one way to do that?

WILCOXSON  It is a way to remove a large portion of the fixed oxidative load that you have in your body.  You can’t naturally get rid of heavy metals very rapidly because our bodies were created to take care of heavy metal exposure at the levels of Biblical times – through hair & nails & that sort of thing.  Today, industry concentrates chemicals & metals & releases them where they don’t need to be released.  They wind up in our food & water.

MONEYCHANGER  Everyone who goes to the dentist runs the chance of heavy mercury exposure because they pack it right into your mouth.  The continued use of mercury amalgam fillings is perhaps the worst ongoing scandal in American medicine.

WILCOXSON  Right, but that controversy has been going on for 150 years now.   Some dentists realised it back in the 1840s.  A group of them broke away then & refused to put toxic material in people’s mouths.  That breach carries on today.

MONEYCHANGER You said that if the EPA found as much mercury in a ten acre lake as is present in seven fillings, they would shut down the lake.

WILCOXSON  That’s right.  Germany, Switzerland, & several European countries have outlawed mercury fillings.  That’s not because they think they endanger people who have them in their mouths, but because they fear contaminating the water system by dumping the mercury in it.  But if you have it in your mouth it’s in your own personal water system. 

MONEYCHANGER  You told me that water is a great antioxidant. 

WILCOXSON  Right – good water, i.e., from reverse osmosis or distillation.

MONEYCHANGER  Day before yesterday a fellow called me whose wife had been sick for a year & a half or longer.  They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her & finally determined it was dehydration.

WILCOXSON  Well, we’re only 60% water [laughing]  Water not only takes away the products of metabolism, but also dilutes them at the site of production.  Had you rather have seawater straight in a teaspoon or in five gallons of water?  The difference in concentration makes oxidants bad – not necessarily what the oxidant is. 

MONEYCHANGER  The dose makes the poison.

Tell me about hydrogen peroxide.  I have heard a lot of extravagant claims for it.

WILCOXSON  Well, it has its place.  It is not the most powerful of the oxidative treatments.  It stimulates the immune system in the body through cytokines.  Those stimulate killer T-cells & probably many more things that we are not aware of yet.  It is also directly viricidal & bactericidal. 

MONEYCHANGER  What concentration do you use in an IV?

WILCOXSON  We use a very low concentration, mixing an already highly diluted 3% hydrogen peroxide solution into 500 cc of dextrose & water. 

MONEYCHANGER Yet you see results?

WILCOXSON  It is the best treatment that I know for emphysema, for example. I have seen patients come in breathing supplemental oxygen & riding in wheelchairs.  Half way through their series of hydrogen peroxide treatments, they walk in the clinic with no oxygen.  It’s amazing. 

MONEYCHANGER  Surely that’s not from the small additional amount of oxygen they receive from the treatment? 

WILCOXSON  No, it is actually curative & exactly why, we don’t know. 

MONEYCHANGER  Curative of what?

WILCOXSON  Emphysema.  Yes.  It’s supposedly an irreversible disease, just like diabetes, but we’ve gotten people off insulin, too. 

MONEYCHANGER  With chelation?

WILCOXSON  Chelation & supplements.  Reviving their pancreas, showing them the right things to eat.  It is an integrated program, it’s not just one thing. 

MONEYCHANGER  So this is not a “wave the magic wand” deal where someone takes a few treatments & suddenly their problems disappear?

WILCOXSON  It takes a while, but it is not protracted.  We had one lady with emphysema out of her wheelchair & off her oxygen in five treatments. At eight treatments– she’s 87 – she was driving her car & almost gave her daughter a heart attack.  She saw Mom pulling out of the driveway & ran over shouting, “Mom, Mom, what are you doing?  Have you gone crazy?” 

She said, “No, I’m going to the store -- get out of my way.” 

MONEYCHANGER  Glen, I’m familiar with emphysema.  For two summers while I was in college I worked as an inhalation therapist at Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans.  I saw a lot of emphysema, & it is tough business. 

WILCOXSON  You probably saw a lot of the end-stage emphysema patients.  You can’t cure everybody.  If someone has emphysema so bad that he needs oxygen or is disabled & can’t walk – sometimes you can help him.  The bedridden ones  you can help, but you can’t cure.  There’s a point of no return on everything. 

MONEYCHANGER  What about ozone? Does it have a value?  That’s one of those treatments like colloidal silver.  Once penicillin was discovered, everybody stopped using & researching them.

WILCOXSON  Yes, & when the sulpha drugs came out.  I scoured the country to find a Merck manual from the 1940s just to find out about colloidal silver.  Back then it was used both topically & in injections. 

That was about all we had in the way of antibiotics, along with the arsenicals, until sulpha came out.  That wasn’t until World War II began.  Then penicillin, which is, of course, naturally derived.  It’s great, but then the pharmaceutical companies started synthesising them, based on the way penicillin worked.  It’s not quite the same.  Antibiotics are for the saving of life & limb, in any event, but they are so overused that we have some big problems in hospitals now with resistant bacteria. 

Back to ozone.  Eight thousand physicians in Europe think it’s pretty good.

MONEYCHANGER  What do they use it for?  How do they administer it?

WILCOXSON  There are several different ways.  You can withdraw blood, mix it with the blood & give it back to the patient.  Doctor Satori & Fudenburg, probably the world’s most knowledgeable ozone therapists, say the it’s best to give it directly into the vein, as a gas.  Of course this is done slowly so the danger is very, very small.  The blood absorbs the ozone before it gets to the lungs in any large amount.  If it did reach the lungs, they merely trap it in their small vessels & the blood absorbs it before it circulates to the rest of the body. 

MONEYCHANGER  I don’t understand.  I thought ozone was a heavy oxidiser & that one cause of ageing is too many oxidants in your body. Have I misunderstood something?

WILCOXSON  Not too much oxygen.  Usually the oxidisers that we take in, like oxygen, are very good.  There are oxidisers the body can use & there are oxidisers that we shouldn’t take in.  There are oxidisers that the body produces that must be eliminated. High-energy oxygen, such as ozone, is a beneficial oxidiser.  The body can handle oxygen very readily.  For instance, if you have ever put hydrogen peroxide on a cut or on blood, you know how it boils.  There is a catalyst in the blood that acts on the hydrogen peroxide & makes it release oxygen.  When white blood cells engulf a bacteria actually produce hydrogen peroxide to burn it up in the little vacuole that engulfs the bacteria.

MONEYCHANGER  What conditions would ozone help? 

WILCOXSON  If you read the literature, it is one of those things that you can use for almost anything.  We don’t understand the source of some diseases.  Many diseases, such as the rheumatoid diseases, are actually not autoimmune disease.  Rather, an infectious agent triggers them. Even cancer is thought to be started by infections sometimes.  With that in mind, if infectious agents start the disease, then ozone would be effective all the way from cancer to rheumatoid disease to multiple sclerosis – you name it. 

MONEYCHANGER  Then is it good to treat infections or degenerative conditions?

WILCOXSON  In the literature I have read, the basic use for it is cancer & infections. 

MONEYCHANGER  You have enough confidence in it to use it?

WILCOXSON  That’s kind of a loaded question.  I can go so far as to say that I have used it on myself & seen benefits.

MONEYCHANGER  Right, well, I guess that’s a recommendation. 

Do you have a diet for people with candidiasis?

WILCOXSON  Yes, Polly Walton in our medical group has produced a cook book for people on candidiasis diets. Your readers can order both the cookbook & the candidiasis program for $25 post-paid. 

MONEYCHANGER  I liked The Fourth Dimension Cookbook because it makes a potentially boring diet very, very tasty.. 

WILCOXSON  It covers more things than just candidiasis, too.  It discusses weight loss, hypertension, diabetes, & mentions Syndrome X.

MONEYCHANGER  What is Syndrome X?

WILCOXSON  It is a combination of signs & symptoms of obesity, hypertension, & diabetes.  A lot of people have it.

MONEYCHANGER  Does that mean there are a lot of fat people in America? 

WILCOXSON  Res ipse loquitur.

MONEYCHANGER Glen, thanks very much for your time. [End interview]

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