Could Heavy Metal Exposure Contribute to Fluoroquinolone Toxicity

We are all exposed to heavy metals such as mercury, arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals on a regular basis, but the health detriments of low-level ‘daily’ exposure to these metals when they have not caused outright toxicity is controversial. These ‘daily’ exposures, however, could have implications for the predisposition for and healing of Fluoroquinolone toxicity.

Fluoroquinolones Damage DNA

One of the ‘mechanisms of damage’ is that Fluoroquinolones Damage DNA ¹. This is undisputed in the scientific literature, and is the mechanism by which tendon cells are damaged, leading to the undisputed adverse reactions of tendonitis and Tendon Damage, phototoxicity², and probably most other serious toxic reactions, including the Mitochondrial Damage from the Fluoroquinoones that can lead to Fluoroquinolone induced disability.

Our bodies, however, have natural mechanisms inside of each cell to repair DNA from ongoing daily insults. This probably explains why the majority of people do not have toxic reactions to Fluoroquinolone antibiotics. Their ‘cellular repair’ mechanisms are working properly and allow them to fix the damage done to their cells.  However, cellular exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals, the ‘power houses’ of the cells and the location of our cellular DNA, can inhibit the inherent DNA repair mechanisms in our cells ³.  These DNA repair mechanisms require nutrients such as magnesium and zinc to effectively carry out these reactions ⁴. In fact, magnesium is intricately involved in nearly  every aspect of DNA processing in the cells⁵. Yes, it’s really that important.

Heavy Metals Compete for Nutrients

Ironically, these heavy metals actually compete with magnesium, and when present will displace magnesium in the cells. What’s ironic about this is that a known action of the Fluoroquinolones is to ‘chelate’ or remove magnesium from the body. This inherent quality of the Fluoroquinolones actually encourages DNA Damage and, in fact, this DNA damage is how the Fluoroquinolones WORK to kill bacteria. They damage its DNA so badly that they kill the single-celled organism.  But they also kill human cells, tendon cells, skin cells, liver cells, and more in the process. No one likes to think that taking a substance that damages DNA in bacteria cells will also damage some of the cells of the organism that carries that bacteria, yet you’ll never be told that is how the Fluoroquinolones work.

In most people, the amount of cellular damage is not overwhelming, and they can repair the damage or simply get along without the damaged cells without noticing it very much because they are otherwise healthy. However, those with underlying health problems, most of which are not even known about even after damage and injury by the Fluoroquinolones, can predispose certain people to damage by these drugs. These predispositions can include, as we’ve seen, higher than normal exposure to heavy metals, magnesium deficiency, zinc deficiency and more. Could you have these problems and not even know about it? Could that be why certain people get Fluoroquinolone damage and not others? It seems extremely likely that is the case.

If you are interested in learning more about the Fluoroquinolones and how to recover from these damaging drugs, we recommend getting The Fluoroquinolone Toxicity Solution. We have worked closely with the authors and were helped immensely by this book and the personal attention we received from them. After spending over $25,000 on doctors and treatments that did not work, we began following the protocol and recovered function more than doing anything else we tried.

We do receive a small commission for each book that sells through the links on our site, and we hope that, if you do choose to purchase this book, you’ll purchase it through our link to help us keep this site running and support our efforts at continuing to educate about the Fluoroquinolones, and help those who were damaged by them. We recommend the book because it worked for us and many others we’ve spoken to, and we highly value the information it contains.

Sources

Research on Fluoroquinolones and DNA Damage page