Preventing lead poisoning- no, not exactly porridge. "we poison ourselves; the world laughs."
SoreShoulder
Member Posts: 3,148 ✭✭✭
Warning: I am not a doctor and I believe some of these things can aggravate kidney stones if a person hasn't been eating healthy.
The short version: Have an alkaline or reducing diet when exposed to heavy metals in order to minimize risk of solubilizing and reabsorbing metals as the body tries to eliminate them.
Start a day before shooting, continue for a while after.
That basically means potatoes and vegetables, very little fat or concentrated protein. Many fruits are OK too. Look up the PRAL of your favorite foods online. (Potential Renal Acid Load.)
Or, try an alkaline or reducing diet for a few days when you're not shooting. See if it makes you feel better. You might have a bigger issue with metal toxicity than you think.
The PRAL charts may tell you how much meat or other acid-forming foods you can have with your vegetables and still stay alkaline.
Warning: I am no doctor. This is just my impression of what to do to stay safe, based on casual research.
If unhealthy or excess metals are carried into the colon or bladder for excretion and run into an overly acidic residue, the metals can be converted back into a more soluble form by the acids in the waste. One of the functions of the colon is to conserve water from spent food and this process may cause heavy metals to be reabsorbed if the matter inside the colon is acidic.
I have heard some old time advice that people should have porridge after shooting and that metalworkers who were likely to be exposed to heavy metals because of their job ate porridge all the time.
Porridge used to refer mainly to buckwheat porridge which is slightly alkaline when in whole grain form. Other things that might be called porridge today are cream of wheat and oatmeal, which become slightly acidic after digestion. Those may not exert the same protective effect for toxic metal exposure.
Some weak acids like citric acid are also good because they will keep the metal wastes in metallic, solid form where they can be eliminated. A weak acid can reduce hydrochlorides
Sulfur helps eliminate metal toxicity. Onions, cabbage, cruciferous vegetables all contain sulfur. Protein also has sulfur but protein-rich foods are always acid-forming.
Comments
I ain't no doctor and I haven't stayed at a Holiday Inn in a while, but I have run two indoor ranges and help our state OSHA office write a program for indoor ranges a few years ago. In my opinion you would have to do one hell of a lot of shooting before lead would become a problem. We did lead test on employees working on the range and sometimes if they didn't do what they were supposed to, the levels could get a bit high. I would pull them off the range for a month and the levels would usually go right back down. Large doses of Vit C seemed to help as well.
Maybe Soba noodles are popular in Japan because of all the metalworkers. Those are made from buckwheat.
I googled some vegetable curries and found potato curry with buckwheat chapati. Potatoes and onions are alkaline and curry powder is a strong reducing agent. The buckwheat chapatis are also alkaline.
This is sure a traditionally-themed Indian combination but it may have been adopted to the needs of metalworkers by including alkalizing ingredients instead of wheat bread or lentil or meat curry which is acidifying.
Many vegetables contain chelators like phytic acid. The function of phytic acid is to hold necessary minerals bound until ready to use at which point an enzyme releases the minerals.
A mineral phytate such as magnesium phytate will release its magnesium if it encounters a heavier mineral such as iron. This property gives mineral phytates in vegetables the ability to chelate heavy metals.
However, it can also mean that a diet excessively heavy in raw vegetables or vegetable juice can cause mineral depletion because the lighter phytates can carry away the heavier essential minerals like zinc, iron, or copper. Or it can simply mean that the nutrition of the minerals remains unavailable.
Cooking, sprouting, fermenting, leavening, or soaking reduces phytic acid and other antinutrients. They are rarely eliminated entirely.
It is unhealthy to chelate heavy metals which the body cannot excrete because they tend to be redeposited in not necessarily the same place they were removed from. This gives them the opportunity to damage several sites. This is why it is not a good idea to rely on a one-time dose of chelation but to sustain it.
During that time, reabsorption of heavy metals will be minimized if an alkaline or reducing diet is maintained.
In order to have an alkalizing or reducing diet with no or minimal meat or milk but also without mineral deficiencies, alkalizing foods which are well cooked to reduce antinutrients should be eaten, such as well cooked vegetables with the broth. But some raw or lightly cooked vegetables or raw, fresh juice should also be included in order to obtain some chelation of heavy metals. If the diet consists mainly of alkalinizing, cooked vegetables, there should be an overabundance of healthy minerals.
Old-time, well cooked whole buckwheat porridge was alkaline and had some chelating ability because cooking removed some of the phytic acid and rendered some of the mineral content of the buckwheat available for digestion while leaving some of the phytic acid available to chelate heavy metal. The heavy metal phytates would remain in chelated or metallic form when they were carried out of the body by the colon or bladder because they were alkaline if porridge was the only or main food. It did contain little sulfur so a diet of buckwheat porridge would be greatly improved by the addition of onion or powdered onion or garlic.
Or, looking up the PRAL, 100 grams of oatmeal made with milk and butter could be paired with 50 grams of orange juice and the meal would be net alkaline.
I shot a lot of indoor pistol and smallbore rifle since the age of 13-14, I can't count the TONS of lead I have turned into bullets hand casting. My lead just came back at a 5. It is above normal background lead but I am not worried about it. A reading of 40 for industrial workers is considered max.
never had mine checked but I remember as a kid chewing on lead sinkers while fishing not just biting them in place on the line just chewing because they were soft I am sure exposed to untold pounds lead paint as a kid , wait what these aren't potato chips no wonder they were so many colors . never mind It just hit me why i am so messed up ,,oops
carry on
Why not try an alkaline or reducing diet for a week and see if you feel better? Better yet, a few months.
Potatoes, well cooked or steamed vegetables, orange juice, and only as much meat or bread as the PRAL charts allow in order to stay negative.
Some sources say the phytates in potatoes are not heavily reduced by most of the usual cooking methods. So they may remove lead.
Potato chips are included in the diet. A little meat every now and then doesn't destroy the diet.
The lead is probably stored in bones or soft tissues such as the neural pathways of your brain.
There are things that could cause it to migrate and do more damage even if you're not exposed to more.
Chelating agents in food could stir it up and excrete some of it but cause some of it to be redeposited to do damage at a new site. There are natural ones in vegetables and artificial ones in processed foods.
Trying a diet of mostly potatoes and well cooked vegetables and minimal meat or milk for a few months might show just how debilitating that 5 has been.
This thread should be called "how to get the lead out". Lot of folks need to do that.
Dad would always yell, "son get the rag out".
Trying to figure out a healthy diet,with all the information available these days,is probably one of the most confusing things I have attempted.
From 1966 to app 1987 l sat at bench working on ckt boards. Soldering lron in my left hand, dikes or needle nose plyers in my right. Solder between my teeth. l learned long ago lead is harmful ONLY@HIGH VELOCITY☠️
Soldering produces less lead dust than shooting which involves lead compounds being exploded and blasted into the air from the primer as well as bullet metal being worn off onto the barrel or blasted off the base and maybe sides of the bullet by muzzle blast and blowby.
Our ancestors have been eating cooked vegetables and tubers for millenia. Having potatoes and vegetables and maybe just a little milk and meat every now and then is not a big gamble with your health.
Keeping your insides not acidic in order to prevent reabsorption is not too rare or strained of a theory.
It's easy to try. Some bags of potato chips, some OJ, keep meat or milk to a scant minimum, see if you feel better in a few days even though you'll be craving the food you've gotten yourself used to.
About a month ago, A friend gave me an old cast iron lead melting pot full of lead projectiles that were covered in rust. I removed the contents and the pot was also rusted up badly. I put a wire brush adapter on my cordless drill and masked up with a cloth face mask like what we are all wearing these days to go out in public.
That pot came out clean as new. It took me a couple days to blow all that old rust and lead out through my nose! 😐️
My health crashed in 1990. I was in great shape, excercised all the time, no pre existing conditions. I had all kind of problems that built up over the next few years including hypothyroid.
Hypothyroid will ruin your day, then it will ruin your week, and then it will ruin your entire year.
It took me years to get diagnosed and treated and the MDs of Georgia were of no help at all. Finally I found that I had lead and mercury poisoning.
It is bad to have and it is very difficult to treat. Jokes about lead poisoning are not at all funny to me.
Masks work well don't they? 🤣
If you are dealing with a serious respiratory hazard, a KN95 MEDICAL mask is about as useful as a crocheted condom. Get a REAL respirator- N99 or R99.9.
When I am casting, I have a lip ventilator on the side of the pot away from me, exhaust is outdoors.
I know very little about diet, but would offer the advice- after shooting, reloading or casting- GO WASH YOUR HANDS. Does not need to be super duty magical cleanser. Soap. Water. Rinse. Before you eat, drink, smoke or dip. Most lead intake is from ingestion- eating it- unless you are grinding or sanding on lead, where inhalation is a hazard. .