The past year has brought an epiphany to Chip Lofton.
He watched Justin Ashley, the rising Top Fuel star he has sponsored from the beginning, duke it out with eventual victor Brittany Force for the championship to the final day of the season. And he marveled at the Larry Morgan-built for the Pro Stock car that he and Mark Beaver field and Morgan drives. But what Lofton discovered in 2022 goes far beyond any dragstrip. The knowledge he has gained offers hope to individuals and families, possibly on a global scale.
Ever since hip-replacement surgery nearly four years ago, Lofton, now 73, has struggled with an assortment of medical issues, including cognitive dysfunction. Incorrectly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, Lofton pursued his hunch and confirmed that the cause of his side effects was cobalt poisoning.
As a previous article in Competition Plus (AFTER-EFFECTS OF COBALT POISONING TO SIDELINE KEY NHRA SPONSOR CHIP LOFTON | Competition Plus) revealed, Mount Sinai Health System, New York City’s largest academic medical system, cobalt toxicity can occur from the wear and tear of some cobalt/chromium metal-on-metal hip implants. This kind of implant is an artificial hip socket that fits a metal ball into a metal cup, or socket. As the patient walks, sometimes cobalt particles are released and introduced into the bloodstream as the metal ball grinds against the metal cup. And that cobalt can infiltrate vital organs. The results can be cardiomyopathy (the heart having trouble pumping blood), nerve problems, headaches, cognitive difficulties, vertigo, deafness, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), vision problems, hypothyroidism, and thickening of the blood.
Lofton has experienced several of those symptoms, including “brain fog,” vertigo, and vision impairment. But his health is improving, thanks to even further discoveries. And he said, “I still want the message to be: If you or a loved one or someone has had a metal hip, metal-on-metal hip put in the last number of years, and [you or] they have any kind of signs of dementia or Alzheimer or anything, mental confusion, then you should do a cobalt blood test. So I’m encouraging people not to put their parents in a home [and assume a dementia or Alzheimer’s diagnosis is correct].”
The 2021 Competition Plus article, Lofton said, already has helped. One reader told him, “We just put my mother in a nursing home because she had dementia. But she had a hip put in 10 years ago, and she’s been having a lot of trouble with that hip and we’re going to go have her tested.” That reader spoke again with Lofton and thanked him for sharing his story, saying his mother had tested positive for cobalt poisoning.
He said he learned the hard way (with lab technicians using the wrong equipment, delaying his breakthrough for more than three months) that the blood testing has particular procedures. The blood samples need to be in proper, specific vials: “Toxins and heavy metals are so thick that to extract it properly, you have to have the right vials. And it takes about 10 days for ’em to run that test.”
Lofton said, “See, nobody’s talking about it. They suppress [information]. They said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll give you a new hip. Hell, what about my brain?” The burden on his heart is that too often medical professionals are not making that connection.
Once he did, though, that didn’t solve all of his problems. His doctor said he could rid Lofton’s blood of the toxic levels of cobalt (which, curiously, is a natural element that actually is healthy in much smaller increments as a component of Vitamin B12) – but not his brain. At that time, Lofton had said, “I also am hoping someone out there can tell me how to get this out of my brain that I might have a full recovery.”
Help arrived. And he found it literally by walking down the street in his hometown of Roxboro, N.C.: The Harmonic Egg®. It’s an actual product, akin to a hyperbaric chamber that employs energy therapy, using music, light, and color frequencies, for healing the mind and body. To be transparent, The Harmonic Egg® uses a patented technology that it says blends ancient holistic healing with modern technology, and each center, such as the one at Roxboro, N.C., is independently owned and operated. However it is made available, Lofton said it has benefited him in his efforts to eliminate cobalt-overloaded toxins from his system.
“I was in my little town one day,” he said, “and I saw this decal on a window that I had never seen before. And it said ‘Harmonic Egg®.’ It sounds weird, but it looked like a hyperbaric chamber.”
Mike Ashley, Justin Ashley’s father and an accomplished former driver, had sessions in a hyperbaric chamber, as a health-and-wellness tool, when he competed. And an odd link to football players damaged by multiple concussions motivated Lofton.
“A lot of football players that had multiple concussions had problems in their lives with suicidal thoughts and many, many problems. And they found out that putting them in a hyperbaric chamber helped them,” he said. Lofton’s doctors made the comparison. Lofton said, “They say if you scan my brain and compare it to multiple concussions, my brain’s the same because of the cobalt – the same, the very same.”
He said he contemplated a hyperbaric-chamber experience but never went that route. However, The Harmonic Egg® intrigued him. He said, “It’s an acorn-shaped sphere. But what they used is frequencies and lights. And so I went in and I said, ‘Do you think this might help me?’ And she said, ‘Well, what is your problem?’ And I said, ‘I have cobalt poisoning.’ And she opened her book and there was a protocol for cobalt poisoning. So I said, ‘Well, we got to try this.’
“I did a one hour every week at about the same time. And I noticed the next day after doing that, all these things on my arm the rash, would pop. It would really get pronounced. So I knew it was affecting – it was making this stuff come out of my brain and my body.” So it manifested itself in a rash.
The light therapy, he said, “forces your parts of your brain to refocus. It flashes a certain amount of flashes and it’ll help you with your memory and stuff.”
The Harmonic Egg® offers oxygen therapy, as well, infusing oxygen into every cell in the body and, in Lofton’s words, “forces things that aren’t right to get out, to expel. And that’s what we were hoping to do with the toxins in my brain.” He has concluded that it “can help people with migraine headaches, people with autism. It’s helping people with autism.”
He completed 10 sessions in 10 weeks, and he said, “it got rid of my vertigo, which impressed me. I had lost my peripheral vision. I could see straight ahead, like I had blinders on. It just makes you more cautious. And so I got my peripheral vision back. That was huge for me, because I was always so good at telling you exactly what was on that wall right there [to the side] while looking at you. And so that led me to believe that this was working, because [beforehand] I went two and a half years and still had all this stuff, and nothing was really helping me.”
While Lofton said he’s making progress on that front, he has other issues stemming from the hip surgery. “Probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to deal with besides the cobalt is when they made that one and five-eighths difference in my height, left side to right side, with a hip replacement and a knee replacement. I really need to wear a built-up shoe or get my other hip replaced and jacked up. And we talked about having two more surgeries. What I’m trying to do, just because I’d rather not get cut on again and because they had so many lockdowns in hospitals and some doctors came back and some didn’t and all that, trying to do a lot of physical therapy and work on my feet problems.” He has been plagued by plantar fasciitis and bone spurs in both feet.
“I’ve been making some progress there, but it’s slow. And so I haven’t slept in a bed in three-plus years. I have to sleep in a chair because my lower back is out of whack,” Lofton said. He said he’ll “keep doing my physical therapy and trying to figure out if I’m going to schedule surgery. I think if I can wear a built-up shoe, I can get in my lower back to correct. And I think that’ll allow me to start sleeping in a bed if I can get all that together.
“I’ve come a long way and am thankful to people that tried to help me,” he said. “So life is good. My wife and grandkids and son and daughters they’re doing good. And we’re just happy I see every day as a blessing.”
And he knows he’s blessed to be a blessing to others.
“I’m a voice in the desert, maybe. Maybe it’s a small voice, but all I can do is all I can do,” Lofton said.
Just like he has helped racers on the financial front, Lofton is helping untold others on the medical side of life.
