subject: Autism Treatment – Heavy Metals, Fecal Metals Test and Treating Autism [print this page] Autism Treatment Heavy Metals, Fecal Metals Test and Treating Autism
This is video number 5 in the series of heavy metal testing. Another assessment for heavy metals is the fecal metal test. While some people use a stool test to check for heavy metals, but I do not typically. Over the years I have had a few patients where patterns began to emerge after a while in their metal excretion and then we've used the fecal metal test to review metal excretion over that period of time. But as a rule I don't monitor metal detoxification through that test because metals in the feces are very easily influenced by environmental components.
The test can become contaminated by you encountering something in the environment, even through food and water. This means that if you ingested something high in cadmium or aluminum, that does not mean it was absorbed by the body, even if it did show up high on a urine test. The variables are too great. But the fecal metal test can be a good screening tool to check for everyday exposures, I have used it for that. Several years ago I had a patient that was registering very high on their fecal metals test in lead and arsenic. We were able to go in and do an analysis of their home to find out that they lived in a area that has been used for a lot of farming. Farming areas generally have high arsenic due to the use of herbicides and pesticides. The lead in the region was elevated as well. So the fecal metals test can be quite helpful in these cases.
Using a fecal metals test as a way to asses and make a determination whether a child has high metals levels or not is just too variable in my opinion, I don't recommend that. I generally use the hair analysis as an up front screening tool, as I mentioned in video 1. The urinary porphyrin test is something I talked about in video 2. When I have results from both of those tests, I can then use them as a general screening tool and see whether or not there is a high likelihood of heavy metal toxicity. And if the answer is yes, then we can consider other ways to test for heavy metals and of course ways that we can implement a heavy metal detoxification program.
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