Chelating and foods

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Note: Andy Cutler has a PhD in Chemistry.Cutler: Things like NAC, glutathione, cysteine, and "sulfur" foods are not

helpful since they are not chelating agents and are not able to successfully

grab the mercury away from all the sulfur atoms that are a natural part of

the biomolecules in the human body. They simply mobilize the mercury and

stir it around so it does more damage than it would if left to sit quietly

until chelated out. >>

Q: What is your source for this info?

Cutler: Legitimate chemistry textbooks and an understanding of chemistry and

biochemistry somewhat beyond the freshman level.

Q: This contradicts just about everything I've read on the subject.

Cutler: I really have to apologize on behalf of all chemists for the premeds we

should have failed in freshman chem and didn't.

Q: I'd be interested to learn more about this.

Cutler: In a nutshell it runs like this.

As is always discussed, mercury binds to the thiol groups in enzymes that

are a natural part of your body.

Which does imply thiol groups are a natural part of your body. in fact,

your body has quite a large number of these. A few percent of the amino

acids inside you are in fact cysteine/cystine and contain sulfur that binds

mercury quite strongly. So you contain a few hundred grams of cysteine and

related things, which is much more of it than you eat in a day even on a

"high sulfur" diet.

So you have proteins that have one or more thiol groups sticking out that

grab onto mercury.

You have things like cysteine, glutathione, etc. that you eat that have a

single thiol group sticking out that grab onto mercury.

The thiol groups in your body and the thiol groups in this food (much of

which ends up incorporated into your body and thus contributes to the thiol

groups there) pass the mercury back and forth because the food doesn't hold

onto it any more strongly than your body does. The mercury atoms bounce back

and forth a lot.

Since your body has a lot of thiol groups in it, eating more doesn't provide

a large excess of thiol groups to grab the mercury and carry it out - it just

provides some extra ones to stir the mercury up.

If you want the mercury out of there you need to eat something that holds

onto it more tightly than your body and that is excreted or accellerates

mercury excretion indirectly.

Since proper chelating agents have 2 thiol groups per molecule they do hold

onto the mercury more tightly than most of the biomolecules inside you, so

it doesn't bounce around as much on its way out.

Andy Cutler

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