I'm in the process of taking a hair test threw the mail but it's going to take a couple of weeks. Here are some of my symptoms. I'm hoping some of you might be able to decide whether mercury poisoning is my problem or not. I currently only have one Amalgam filling but 2 other amalgam fillings broke in my sleep (I think from grinding my teeth) and I'm worried I might have swallowed them? Possible? This was a while ago.

Anyways, here are the symptoms:

-Very angry, hyperactive moods that can last for hours. Some of these moods can be so bad that I feel like I have a serous mental condition. Calming down is literally impossible. This is the biggest problem for me.

-Strong irritability over nothing, daily. It?s so bad that it?s almost an uncomfortable feeling.

-Random fit so anger on a daily basis.

-Inability to control facial expressions (always have an irritable, disgusted facial expression). This may sound weird but this is actually a significant problem.

-Very bad reaction to alcohol. Even half a drink can completely destabilize my mood. My eyelids swell, muscles tense, and I become irritable and angry (as usual).

-Difficulty focusing of schoolwork because of my mood. Brain fog while trying to learn new concepts. Reading comprehension problems.

-Easily becoming irritable and angry if I can't understand one simple thing while studying.

-When taking tests and other things at school I become a total scatterbrain. Irritability and anger as usual. Panicking over trivial things. I become very confused over simplistic things while in lab, it takes me 5 times as long as a normal person to follow simple instructions for a lab.

Your symptoms are all common with mercury poisoning. Even a single filling can cause symptoms and often only after decades. This is because the body harbors mercury (it builds up in body tissue over lone periods of time). When the body tissue becomes "saturated", it "spills over" into the blood and causes what we call "stage 3 mercury poisoning".

Your symptoms are typical. If you haven't already, take a moment to read my story and see if you can relate:

http://herballure.com/mms

Thanks and please let us know what you decide to do.

Hi, I can't see what else could be causing your symptoms other than mercury because of the typical volatility that mercury can cause and the irritability, the panic/fear, unable to follow instructions or take far long to do something, trouble thinking/concentrating. All of that is very mercurial to me. Especially considering it affects the brain and nervous system to such a massive degree.

Not only that, but the symptoms can chop and change and you can go through different feelings and stages. I reckon it's because mercury is known as quick silver and moves and alters the moods and condition really easily.

I recommend you get a book that to my mind, is as good as it gets as far as mercury toxicity and what it does, what to do about it and if you cannot get help, how to help yourself. It also has questions in it that you can ask yourself to pretty much confirm whether your problem is mercury or not. I have tried many other forms of detox and the one mentioned in this book is probably the ONLY one I can actually tolerate and begin to improve on. But, for me? I had to lessen the dosage even lower than what the author mentioned.

The book is called "Amalgam illness, Diagnosis and Treatment" by Andrew Hall Cutler. It will take you through the stages of what to do and the safest way to do it. There are many risks involved with removing mercury and detoxing it because it's such a dangerous poison. This book has enabled people to lessen or even avoid those dangers, or sometimes even fix themselves or improve themselves after they've messed up on doing something wrong. It will tell you what to do once the amalgams have been removed (safely) and when to do it.

Hope this helps a bit. Hang in there, what you're experiencing is not you, it's the poison.

It could well be the mercury. I started getting fillings at about 9 or 10 and I strongly believe that by the age of 12 I was chonically poisoned, and that would have been after only a few fillings as I had them up to about 17. You might have got mercury from fish and vaccines also.

If you have bad reaction to alcohol, maybe you have a low resistance to toxins, and this would mean mercury would affect you more than it would someone with a high resistance to toxins i.e. it takes more alcohol to make some people drunk than others. I believe the same applies with mercury. Some people can have fillings and not display any particular symptoms, where as others only have one or two and get bad symptoms.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, anger, irritability and all your other psychological/emotional symptoms are signs of trouble in the Liver. ("Liver" is capitalized to indicate that in Chinese medicine, it means more than just the physical liver; it also refers to a set of functions.)

I have a problem with irritability for no real reason and easily angered if I don't keep my magnesium levels up. I started taking magnesium after researching the symptoms of a deficiency and later learned that it not only is very important for detox, but also that mercury blocks your magnesium making you need more. Magnesium has been the greatest help of all for me. It also eliminated the grinding of the teeth that I had.

Magnesium is also involved with ATP production so a lack of it can cause fatigue that will often manifest as irritablilty or anger.

Thanks for all the help. I think I'm just going to wait for the hair test before I do anything. If it's positive I have no clue where to get stated. I might buy the book recommend.

I had a question, would it be safe to start taking selenium? I read it's effective at neutralizing mercury.

Hi, yeah it's safe to take selenium and a good idea, as mercury depeltes selenium in the body. Selenium also competes with mercury for binding sites, and can also neutralise some of the effects of mercury and as far as I know, selenium helps the body produce glutathione, which helps with detoxification. Although it does not directly chelate mercury.

Just a note on the hair analysis. Testing for mercury is notoriously confusing. The hair analysis test has to be read correctly because the level of mercury might appear low to very low, yet you may have a LOAD of it in you, but you are not excreting it. You may show a high level of mercury, which would mean you may be poisoned, but your body is able to eliminate it. Sometimes the way to find out if you are poisoned with a hair analysis test, is to look at the minerals etc that mercury has the ability to deplete in the body.

I would suggest that you could go to a site called frequent dose chelation and even put up your hair analysis results and people there can also help with interpreting whether mercury is playing a role in your health problems by what minerals are depleted etc.

Many doctors assume a low/to very low level of mercury automatically means you are not poisoned by it, they do not take into consideration retention toxicity, or the fact that the mercury is hidden or mainly in the brain etc. They do not look at the mineral status and find out which minerals mercury intefers with. So it's really hard to find a doctor or health professional that understands the way to read the hair testing and the way mercury works.

Not that I know much, but I have learned a bit over the years from having low hair results and understanding that it can actually be a very bad sign if you're retaining mercury and not excreting it properly.

But if I were you, I'd take Vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium (don't take Vitamin C with selenium, take it 2 hours away from it, as it can interfere) and probably a multvitamin/mineral, and algin to help cope easier, and i'd eliminate sugar, yeast and gluten out of my diet, which helps rid you of excess candida and strengthens your immune system.

Just a suggestion though.

One more question, is it a bad idea to do chelation without a physician? This would be a after doing plenty of research on how to do it properly.

I have no clue where to find a physician that specializes in this.