Question:
I have been told that we should wait two or more years after platinum based chemotherapy to begin any detoxification. But I have now heard conflicting information – has something changed?
Answer:
That was a common and long held belief that for maximum efficacy one should not detoxify or chelate for 2 or more years following platinum based chemotherapy. A while back Dr. Davis Lamson and I posted about this on the OncANP group. Basically the idea may make some “sense” but is not true. Brouwers 2008 gets into the kinetics of it and Oun 2018 also does.
The bottom line is after therapeutic dose it’s eliminated from tissues as a toxin (and I write in the book (Outside the Box Cancer Therapies) a little about this – more as an oncogenic toxin causing later cancer growth) and critically it is not eliminated in the form that “works” as a chemotherapeutic agent. So although I don’t normally start chelation the day after platinum chemotherapy ends it’s probably better to chelate 2-6 months after final course of these chemotherapies. That said general depuration strategies (if not started prior to the end of chemotherapy) should be initiated as soon as possible after the chemotherapy course ends.
As for magnesium depletion and potential benefit for patients in repletion the case for magnesium depletion (and other minerals) are noted by Lajer and confirmed Oronsky. In the data using magnesium preloading presented by Yoshida 8mEq magnesium preloading before cisplatin administration significantly reduced cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity. I would expect repletion of the other minerals mentioned by Oronsky to also be quite useful as well.
References:
Brouwers et.al 2008 PMID: 18796166 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2559818/
Oun et.al 2018 PMID 29632935 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29632935/
Lajer H et.al 1999 PMID: 10212589
Oronsky 2017 PMID: 28730291
Yoshida T 2014 PMID: 24503028
