Chelation, Candidiasis and Alternative Medicine

An interview with Dr. Glen Wilcoxson (June 2000)

Over the years I’ve published quite a bit about EDTA chelation therapy, including a long and technical interview with Dr. Elmer Cranton. 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, and began taking chelation. After fifteen more years of physically strenuous life, my friend died last year.

About two years ago a friend and 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.

Susan and I went down to Gulf Shores, Alabama to visit our friend Dr. Glen Wilcoxson and 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, and I wanted to share that with you. He kindly made time for this interview on June 1, 2000.

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

UPDATED June 2014 — Dr. Wilcoxson has retired from his medical practice but has graciously provided his current contact information for Moneychanger readers. You may reach him by phone at (251) 753-4552 or (251) 753-2148 or via email at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).


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 and 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 and 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 and 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, and 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 and 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, and 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 and go. First it’s bell bottom pants, then tight pants, then bell bottoms again. Medical fads come and 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 and steroids, both found in meats, eggs, and 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 and 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 and 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 and yeast—that live inside our GI tract and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and antibiotics -- you can avoid them.

Moneychanger: Candidiasis sufferers should avoid store-bought eggs, meat, and 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, and 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 and hormones, it is about half the price.

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

Wilcoxson: Right, sugars and 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 and 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, and 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 drugsweren’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 and 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, and 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 and produces oxidated by-products. Unless these are disposed of, they will de-nature things in the body. For example, if you break and egg open and 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 and your flesh. They have to be squelched. Vitamin E and 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 and 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, and 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 and nails and that sort of thing. Today, industry concentrates chemicals and metals and releases them where they don’t need to be released. They wind up in our food and 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 and 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, and 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 and a half or longer. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her and 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 and probably many more things that we are not aware of yet. It is also directly viricidal and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and suddenly their problems disappear?

Wilcoxson: It takes a while, but it is not protracted. We had one lady with emphysema out of her wheelchair and off her oxygen in five treatments. At eight treatments—she’s 87—she was driving her car and almost gave her daughter a heart attack. She saw Mom pulling out of the driveway and 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, and 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 and 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 and researching them.

Wilcoxson: Yes, and 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 and 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 and 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 and give it back to the patient. Doctor Satori and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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 and 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, and mentions Syndrome X.

Moneychanger: What is Syndrome X?

Wilcoxson: It is a combination of signs and symptoms of obesity, hypertension, and 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.


WARNING & DISCLAIMER: By publishing this material, neither The Moneychanger nor the author/interviewee recommends or endorses any specific treatment or therapy for any physical condition or disease. Neither The Moneychanger nor the author/interviewee guarantees or warrants any results from any treatment discussed, nor assumes any express or implied liability for any use to which the reader puts this information. By this interview, the interviewee does not prescribe any treatment whatsoever for anyone who is not his patient. All the information here is offered for information purposes only, subject to the reader’s own research, prudence, and judgment.


Originally published June 2000