Re: What is DMSA really doing to me? LONG POST

[Guest guest]

" I'm surprised at how hammered I'm feeling now

from stressing my adrenals so much. I tried taking 6mg of DMSA but I

just feel lousy. I'm stumped. "

Perhaps you could try DMPS.

" It's the DMSA. Which

again doesn't make much sense if mercury is in my brain (as it would

be according to my symptoms being mostly mental/emotional). "

Actually it makes perfect sense to me. Like you, I have Hg stored in

soft tissue (fat and muscle) and bone and in the brain. Like you when

I first started chelating the initial benefit was much, much better

mental state.

1) Why do we have mercury in soft tissue and in the brain? 2) Why

doesn't everyone in the world get very sick from mercury? 3)Why do we

feel one way while chelating and another way when we are not? These

questions are all related.

1 and 2) You and I and many others who post here do not efficiently

filter mercury from the blood and eliminate it in the bile (feces). I

believe many people DO eliminate HG much more efficiently than I (we)

do. I call them EME's (efficient mercury eliminators). In EME's,

mercury does not circulate in the blood much beyond 24 hours, instead

it is in the septic tank or the local municipal sewer system, because

their hepatic systems work way better eliminating HG and they poop

most of it down the toilet.

But for you and I after 24 hours our body is looking for a place to

dump the mercury where it will do the least amount of harm, and

usually that is in our soft tissue (vital organs, muscles, connective

tissue etc...). Over time the soft tissue levels of HG rises in

people who are inefficient eliminators of mercury and health problems

begin; immune problems and other. Another " safe place " for the body

to stash mercury is the brain. The good thing about stashing mercury

in the brain is that it's normally kind of a one way trip. Once

mercury crosses the blood brain barrier it's slow to leave the brain

and this is good up to a point because it can't get into heart muscles

and other places and do mischief. But, mercury competes with other

substances that cross the blood brain barrier, like hormones, and as

brain levels of mercury rise and hormone levels decline (with age and

stress) other types of problems occur. When we most notice mental

symptoms it is when mercury is moving across the blood brain barrier

into the brain.

3) Before and for a year or two after my amalgams were removed my

physical and psychological symptoms were very bad. In my experience,

psychological symptoms were the worst. I believe some of this is

directly attributable to mercury crossing the blood brain barrier and

some of it to symptoms of adrenal exhaustion (blood sugar swings and

cortisol spikes leading to panic attacks ). My belief is that beyond

a certain point in my mercury toxic state, virtually all free

circulating mercury was being deposited in my brain - all the other

places to put HG already were pretty full up. Anytime that happened,

I went nuts. When did this happen and why? Well, all those soft

tissue stores of mercury are affected by certain chemical compounds

found in everyday food items. The sulfur contained in foods and

substances (raw onions and garlic, cruciferous vegetables, green

beans, lots of stuff really) can free mercury from storage sites but

does not form stable compounds with HG that are eliminated from our

bodies. When that happens HG hits the bloodstream and dumps to the

brain. And, I go crazy. Cilantro and coriander (never seen a salsa

or curry that was not loaded with the stuff) is VERY effective at

liberating HG from soft tissues and dumping it in the bloodstream,

when that happens, HG goes up to my brain and .....I go crazy.

COFFEE! Tons of sulphur in coffee, right? YUP! What happens

after you have your morning coffee and you are not chelating? Well,

if you just had your amalgams out and your body has been soaking up HG

for years and your soft tissue is like a big poorly guarded vault full

of mercury... you guessed it - HG is dumped in your bloodstream, ends

up in your brain and you go nutty!

Mercury crossing the blood brain barrier (on the way into the brain)

makes me nuts. You too, IMHO. When you chelate, alot of that mercury

that makes it way into your bloodstream gets bound up in a thiol

compound (did I get that right TK?) and out it goes in your pee! And

you feel a whole lot better. Because mercury is not crossing the blood

brain barrier. The reason you do not feel alot better when you are

not chelating? You are LOADED with mercury! It moves from your soft

tissues to your brain alot of the time until your dramatically reduce

the amount of mercury on the body side of the blood brain barrier. I

tried to let that happen naturally, without chelating, for almost

three years after my amalgams were removed. And I did feel generally

better at the end of year three compared to the beginning of year one,

but..... the dramatic improvement came when I started chelating about

6-9 months ago. The first round of DMPS was the clearest week of my

adult life to that point. Very little mercury getting from my blood

to my brain.

Quiz in next week's class.

Hope this helps . Hello to all.

Doug

[Guest guest]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for your very informative post. I knew quite a few of these

things but not in so much detail, and of course what you say about

feeling better during chelation is new to me. I spent a lot of time

on the Herb Allure forum (my source of Algin LOL) last year when I

started chelating, and had these kinds of discussions, though not in

the technical detail that people know here. It was actually there

that I was given a link to this list. And someone from there decided

to send me AI in the post as a surprise because he had a spare one.

I've been touched by people's kindness many times on help lists.

It's been suggested several times here that I try DMPS. I've read in

various places that it is a riskier substance to take though. I know

that apart from the adrenal strain, DMSA works for me. And I smuggled

a large amount of it out of the US last Christmas, so I've got a lot

I can dip into and use. Finally, looking at ALA down the road, I'll

be dosing 3-hourly anyway, whether I'm taking DMSA or DMPS along with

it, so the extra time between DMPS doses will no longer be relevant.

Do people really find that DMPS doesn't tax their adrenals as much?

Regarding sulphur foods, coriander, etc. This was where I started to

question whether mercury was a problem. I can eat a lot of coriander

and garlic. I did a candida treatment for a while and was having raw

garlic. None of these things bother me. And then, that 200mg cap of

ALA I took a few days ago . . . I see now how stupid that was;

luckily I didn't addle my brain. But the point is, I didn't, though I

did get mild symptoms of fear and anxiety. I've always thought my

body burden of mercury wasn't too high, and I'm still surprised that

all those months of chelation don't appear to have given me much

benefit if any.

I got four amalgams put into my teeth after previously having had

none. Two months later is when I suddenly became ill. It wasn't a

gradual thing. But a connection is still feasible. For sure I had

symptoms after amalgam removal, though the acute ones disappeared in

about a month when I started using DMSA.

I'm taking heart from what you said about improving yourself while

chelating, and feeling worse when you are not. I will do my next

round properly, with a smaller dose, and see how I feel. You got

through 3 years of illness before you chelated?? Yikes. It must be a

relief that you are improving now.

Do you know what happens when someone chelates without any breaks?

Just curious. I spoke on another forum about this and was told that

some people do it because they feel so bad when they are not

chelating; they just chelate all the time. " That's me, " I thought, so

I started chelating all the time. Could this somehow explain why I

wasn't making progress? What benefit does " time off " give, apart from

resting the body?

Thanks again Doug

.

[Guest guest]

I chelate 24/7 but only with dmps, I think it would be too hard on

your neutrophils (see the files/links on dmsa problems) if you did

continous chelation with DMSA

right from day one on chelation, i have always felt better when

chelating, even when startin at 3-4 mgs of dmsa...however after about

3 weeks of dmsa i got this terrible bronchial/bacterial infection I

belive due to dmsa's tendencies.

Problems were in going up incrementally, I went up too fast with dmps

(was doing 80 mgs every 3-4 hours)

I actually end up taking a day or two off a month

I only dose 20 mgs of dmps every 3-4 hours and i can tell if i go to

4-5 hours I get aches and burning right away...but again this is very

individualistic and is not recommended, but i have been doing it for

the past almost 8.50 months and am getting better..but who knows

maybe i would be even better if i wasn't continously chelating

>

> Hi Doug,

> It's been suggested several times here that I try DMPS. I've read

> in various places that it is a riskier substance to take though. I

> know that apart from the adrenal strain, DMSA works for me. And I

> smuggled a large amount of it out of the US last Christmas, so

> I've got a lot I can dip into and use.

> Do people really find that DMPS doesn't tax their adrenals as much?

> Do you know what happens when someone chelates without any breaks?

> Just curious. I spoke on another forum about this and was told that

> some people do it because they feel so bad when they are not

> chelating; they just chelate all the time. " That's me, " I thought,

> so I started chelating all the time. Could this somehow explain

> why I wasn't making progress?

> What benefit does " time off " give, apart from resting the body?

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

You say " I can eat alot of coriander and garlic " but you also note

that when you are not chelating you do not feel any better, and when

you chelate you feel great. That says to me that in fact the raw

garlic, cilantro, coriander and high sulfur foods ARE affecting you.

They are liberating mercury, which circulates around and redeposits

and you feel crummy or crummier when you are not chelating. When you

are chelating some of the free circulating HG that those foods help

mobilize is being mopped up by DMSA.

I too ate a ton those foods when I was still exposed to mercury (9

very large fillings - three new ones about 7 years ago really brought

my lifelong problems to a head). During most of the time I was

exposed to HG from the leachate coming off my amalgams, I did not

specifically notice a problem with those foods. As my problems grew

more acute, as my immune system weakened and my mercury body burden

grew heavier, then the problems with those foods started. Finally as

I began to have the amalgams removed and during the first 18-24 months

afterwards these foods really hammered me (made me more symptomatic).

The only way you could convince me that those foods are not

mobilizing mercury and affecting the way you feel is to stop chelating

and then eliminate all coriander, cilantro and heavy sulfur foods from

your diet for several weeks. Then go on a binge. Really you probably

shouldn't do that because I'm pretty sure the results would be pretty

unpleasant.

> I've always thought my

> body burden of mercury wasn't too high, and I'm still surprised that

> all those months of chelation don't appear to have given me much

> benefit if any.

My Doctor has said that toxicity requires exposure and susceptibility.

In other words, many people are exposed but our genetic differences

mean that for some people a relatively modest exposure can have quite

profound effects and vice versa.

Doug

[Guest guest]

Hi Doug,

Your post raises some interesting issues. I was comparing my response

to high-sulphur foods to that of others who say that even small amounts

make them sick. I don't tend to eat large amounts myself. Should I

actually try to avoid these foods, or is a little OK if I'm chelating?

I'm not taking any more risks and I'm not going to try eating loads of

those foods as an experiment, LOL. I took enough of a risk with the

200mg ALA cap I had last weekend, and I didn't realise how much of a

risk it was at the time.

Thanks for your insights,

.