Chelating effect

Carnosine has the ability to chelate metals.

What does it mean? The expression chelate comes from the greek "chel" = "claw", which expresses the ability to join, combine some substances (carnosine in this case) with an excess of metals in cells and the bloodstream. Chelates are substances that can easily be eliminated from an organism by the liver and kidneys. Chelate therapy is a common detox therapy used mostly in occupational medicine, and various chelating drugs, like penicillamine or EDTA, which are used in intravenous applications. This therapy effectively eliminates heavy metals from the body. Chelate therapy is also used as an additional therapy for many other diseases, as it can bring the following benefits:

• Vasodilatory effect
• Antihypertensive effect
• Antioxidant activity
• Increases oxygen cell intake
• Removes toxic metals from the body
• Improves memory
• Removes limb pain
• Increases vascular elasticity
• Increases blood flow in heart, brain, organs and limbs
• Increases enzymatic activity

Chelation therapy with EDTA was a favourite atherosclerosis therapy method in the late 50´s. EDTA was used to remove the calcium from the sclerotic vessel walls to renew vessel elasticity. However, this therapy was very expensive and tedious, because EDTA was applied intravenously for 3 hours and repeated 10 to 20 times. Carnosine as a nutritional supplement provides the same chelating effects as that of EDTA but inexpensively via oral chelatotherapy. It has the ability to chelate prooxidative metals like copper, zinc, iron to other toxic metals like arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel.