Hi everybody. I had to register in order to ask your advice. The members of this board are so knowledgeable. My story:

It started with Grave's Disease (overactive thyroid). Before doctors figured out what was wrong with me, but during the most severe hyperthyroid symptoms, I coincidentally has 2 mercury fillings removed from my molars without any protection whatsoever. I cringe at the memory, now. I spit some out with a normal rinse during the procedure, but all the powder was swallowed and/or inhaled during the drilling. Of course, the hypermetabolism I was dealing with at the time pushed it through my body even faster. That was 2003. In 2005 I added further poison to my body by having Radioactive Iodine Ablation of my thyroid... completely destroying it. Within 3 months I lost 75% of my thick, curly hair.

I am on complete replacement of thyroid hormones (210 mg Armour Thyroid) but haven't ever recovered my hair. In the meantime, over the past 3 years I have developed gluten intolerance that causes increased hair loss when I ingest and a candida problem that I have only addressed with coconut oil (has been a quick fix, but not really a cure).

I had a reaction to Iodide, also, but was able to build up a tolerance starting with very low doses of Iodoral and slowly increasing (as I had poor Iodine saturation, too). I don't know where I stand now, and can't tell if Iodine is helping or not.

I know I must have mercury in my system as I swallowed it for an hour! It's the only thing I can think of that might be preventing me from regrowing my hair. I'm afraid to chelate as I am a novice to this topic, and after reading many posts on this board I see that I can expect issues with mercury release if I detox candida. Am I correct that I would also expect issues with candida detox while I chelate mercury?

The thyroid, mercury, candida, food/intestinal wall/leaky gut (gluten) sensitivity all seem to be connected, but how? And finally, how do I start to heal myself from here? I am currently eating gluten-free.

Thank you for all opinions and suggestions.

Tracy

Hi Tracy, welcome and congratulations on figuring out you got a mercury problem. You should consider yourself very lucky to have discovered it and now you can take steps to cure yourself. 100,000,000 amalgams are placed in people teeths every year. scary. Millions of people will never figure it out. Only the toughest and braves people make it this far<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twothumbsup.gif" alt="" />


The mercury goes into your body from the amalgams and wherever it sits it screws up whatever it is on. It is important to understand that the mercury does not target one organ…its targets them all. It is not selective; it goes everywhere and buggers everything up to a certain degree, some more than other. The things it damages the most are the detoxing organs…that’s the liver and the kidneys. The job of those organs is to detox you and when they detox you from mercury, which is mega toxic, it damages those organs….so that they do not work properly…if they don’t work properly they cannot do their job properly…so you start struggling…the body is damaged and can’t detox itself and that causes everything to get backed up and even more congested.

Digestion: mercury is excreted via the bowels. Mercury damages the bowels when its in there. Some people think candida is the bodies natural method to protect itself. The mercury is lodged in the candida and not in your body, hereby protecting you. unfort a side effect of this candida protecting also hurts you and causes your digestive troubles, but if the candida was not there the mercury would recirculate into the body and hence damage you more than the candida does. Sometimes there is an overgrowth and there is too much candida and then your troubles multiple. With the detoxing organs all compromised, all working over time, toxins start building up, congestion starts and because your body is constantly fighting the mercury 24 hours a day it does not have the energy to keep everything ship shape…causing even more congestion. Vicious circle kinda thing. Nasty really.

Adrenals and thyroids control your bodies metabolism, when you are mercury poisoned these have to work really hard to keep you functioning. The longer they work at full capacity the quicker they get fatigued, the quicker they fail. I think they also directly get damaged by mercury too, with mercury damaging them (not sure about that). I have my thyroid so I have no idea about what to do about no thyroid, but you seem to know a lot about that anyway. Adrenal and thyroid are extremely common in mercury toxic people, many people are now recommending that adrenal and thyroid support are in place prior to amalgam removal. Adrenals need support before thyroid support. How are your adrenals? Do you support them? it is very important and can make a huge difference to your life.

Virtually every organ I investigate in my body is compromised to a certain extent. Damaged by the mercury or damaged by some part of me not working properly.

I was intolerant to wheat/gluten/dairy/soya/nightshades/tobacco/sulphur foods/all refined foods/all processed foods/all sugars…when I say all refined and processed foods…I really do mean ALL…including white rice. That doesn’t leave very much to eat and for 8 months I could only eat salad, anything else made me extra sick for another 7-10 days. i was extremely ill and malnourished.

But the good news is that my food intolerances are falling away now that I know what is required of me to get better and after the actions I have taken. Gluten is fine, dairy is fine, nightshades fine, tobacco fine, refined and process foods are ok, but I choose not to eat that gunk. Only intolerances remaining is wheat, but other grains are fine, carrots which is still a mystery (maybe because of the sugar?) and I must be careful not to over eat sulphur foods, which is a common mercury problem.


Start? Diet is ultra important and if you have a poor diet healing will be more difficult and take longer.

Ummmm but start from here? Best place to start is the root cause. If you understand the root cause of your troubles you will know what you have to do. You have figured out mercury is a problem, although I assume you are not sure it is the root cause problem. Everything we read says this or that is the root cause….maybe mercury is just like all the other root causes out there? You don’t know and you won’t know until you learn a bit.

I’m gonna borrow a quote from my friend Sunflower (who is another forum member):



If you been reading the forum you will see plenty of references to “Andrew Cutler’s” Book “Amalgam Illness.” It is really really good, I cannot say more strongly how important the book is to your health. You can self diagnose mercury poisoning, you will learn that all your troubles and problems are real and caused by mercury and not imagined, it will tell you how to safely chelate the mercury out and it will give you multiple options for you to investigate and support your body. The cutler protocol is simple and can be written on 2 sides of A4 paper, but the reason the book is long and so good is because it explains everything and gives you lots of thing to do to help yourself support the compromised organs. Everything in that book is specifically related to mercury and mercury compromised bodies. Almost all the other research out there only focus’s on one individual problem at a time. The Cutler book is the best place to start because you will then have a plan of action you can follow. If you think he is wrong, then you are free to chelate in any way you choose…but having that choice is oh so important.

One thing I would not recommend you do is talk with doctors about this too much. They will divert you from what is really wrong with you. If they have zero (or limited) mercury knowledge how on earth can they be expected to help you with mercury?…..no…doctors will divert you away from the real cause of your troubles.

There is only one person in the whole world that really and truly gives a toss about your health…and that’s you. reading the book will enable you to give your body the respect it is due.

Buy the book, will be the best $35 you ever spend on your health. Cheap too considering what doctors want us to pay.

p.s. there are loads and loads of other things to try, all the cleanses will make a big difference to you…liver, kidney, bowel,..but that’s enough for now……Cutler book is where I think you should start investigations.

Good luck, welcome, ask lots of questions....someone somewhere will know what to do.

Thank you so much, I will start there. And, unfortunately (or fortunately now) I have lots of experience with Docs steering me away from root causes. My quest for health with my thyroid alone has taught me to only trust myself. I will read the book, which I'm sure talks about adrenal support. I was looking into Isocort vs. hydrocortisone last year, even tried them but got very shaky and sick so it scared me away. Turned out I had high cortisol at the time. Now it's normal via saliva testing.

I'm really looking for the hair connection. I know it's in here, somewhere. My thyroid is regulated at the high end of normal ranges and I feel great on that front. Not sure about adrenals. I'll read up about that one.

Thanks a bunch.

Tracy

Hi Tracy, I can only really echoe (once again) Sunshine's statements, but I'd like to go further regarding the swallowing of the mercury and candida and diet. And hopefully maybe some of this might help you as it did me.

I too had unprotected removal when first removing amalgams, but at that time, didn't notice the impact....I still don't know if it did anything or not. The last lot of my amalgams were removed with full protection. However, evenso, the rubber dam that was on my mouth during amalgam removal was removed and the grains of amalgam still sitting in my mouth were swallowed by me. The reason was, the assistant was doing something else at the time and had her back turned.

I swallowed the grains of amalgam and was shocked. I told the dentist and she tried very hard to act like it was no problem, they'd just pass through my system. She was wrong. They did not pass through my system, but instead poisoned me at that moment so severely that my mouth/lips were shaking all the way home. From there, I had crying and headaches and was extremely pale. I was obviously very poisoned. Not just from the stored mercury I had anyway in my tissues/organs, but from direct poisoning from swallowing this file poison.

There is a reason they are usually so vigilant about suction and a reason why mercury is dealt with carefully by them in regards to the environment. One dentist even admitted to me that mercury is extremely toxic to the environment and then he paused and said "but it's safe in the mouth" (what do you think of that? Amazing eh?). lol.

Anyway, I was not quite the same after that incident and had to have some form of chelation, which was too expensive to continue but must have helped (DMSA it was). Over time, i seemed to improve to some extent, until I hit the mercury dump stage (which occured about a year or more following last amalgam removal). Where stored mercury starts to erupt out and you can feel repoisoned. Then of course I embarked on chelation to speed this up and make it easier.

At any rate, I must tell you that diet, as Sunshine said, is very important (essential). Whether I had amalgams, or not, the diet probably saved my life. Candida can be a big part of the mercury syndrome and may even cause many or most of the symptoms. THough mercury maybe the cause and allowing for pathogens to flourish, not treating them can result in excessive toxic load. Toxins like that can poison your gut and liver and also affect the brain. Yeast can do that! Combine that with the mercury and you can have a real serious problem. I was suicidal I was so toxic.

Reducing yeast takes a load of the immune system and allows for the body to deal better with other problems (mercury included). Even with amalgams, I found diet was a life saver for me and I felt much better after being on it for a few weeks. The diet is the most important and can be helped by antifungals, or done alone. I would personally just address the diet, because that is what keeps the yeast feeding and growing. Not doing the diet, but taking antifungals is a bad move. You're only killing what you keep feeding by the diet, increasing both ongoing die off toxins and ongoing toxins from feeding them at the sametime.

The diet consists of eliminating COMPLETELY, all forms of sugar (you may even need to reduce or eliminate all fruit), honey, wheat/gluten grains etc. If you have a bad case of it, you would also need to eliminate high carb foods - potatoes, corn, carrots, beets, peas, beans, all grains (even non gluten) and all fruit, milk, etc.

You can freely eat meat (which is good, you require protein and Dr Hal Huggins said he's not yet been able to cure a vegetarian from mercury toxicity. Something in meat protein is necessary, as well as the iron and other nutrients). You can freely eat eggs for the same reason (free range). And freely eat low carb vegetables (which are plenty). You can eat butter (animal fats are very good and very healing and butter is recommended by Huggins also for mercury, he believes it even chelates it....not sure about that one, but it's great stuff). You maybe able to consume raw nuts like almonds and brazil and raw seeds like sunflower and pumpkin etc.

Oils and fats should be extra virgin olive oil, organic virgin coconut oil (be careful if it makes you sick by killing too much yeast and more than your body can handle), fish oil (mercury free brand), butter, lard etc.

Outside of that, it's up to you if you want to include any higher carb foods. I cannot do so, they make my condition FAR worse. And it takes me awhile to get back on track again. You might get away with it more, depends how serious it is. But definitely steer clear of sugar, wheat/gluten and coffee too.

Caffeine and milk apparently (according to Huggins) interfere with the detox of mercury, they also seem to increase candida too.

Detoxing candida (or die off) isn't pleasant, but doing it by diet is much safer than antifungal use. Diet simply denies them what they need to thrive and they begin to slowly get sick and die. When that happens, temporarily you can feel a bit worse for wear until the dead yeast is flushed out of your system. You may not notice improvements for a few weeks (maybe 2-3 weeks or longer). It depends how toxic you are. In the process of doing this, you may also gain a bit of metal elimination too. Some metals do come out naturally and if the body is helped by a healthy diet and elimination of all the stuff I mentioned, it can increase it's ability to detox anything. The gut and liver (needed for detox) will improve as well.

Your immunity should improve from this and your whole system should be aided by it. It may not be a cure for mercury, but it is a help. Outside of doing that, the book that Sunshine recommended is fantastic (Amalgam Illness, Diagnosis and Treatment by Andrew Hall Cutler), as well as Hal Huggins (It's all in your head).

when I was mercury toxic, I detoxed mostly in the end with DMSA according to the Cutler protocol and started to come right. Before that, I did all manner of detoxes which often made me feel intolerably worse due to moving mercury all over the place. Cutler's works by controlling the movement of mercury more, allowing for safer and more tolerable detox and symptoms. The diet is essential before, during and after and for some they need it just to control some of their symptoms and make life more bearable.

I was lucky that once, even with amalgams, I did not need to eliminate fruit or potatoes or non gluten grain. I could still eat those. However, these days (due to chronic viral infection), I need to stick to the stricter diet to gain any control. Either way, all sugar and wheat/gluten was a nightmare me for me, then and now. You will be the best judge on whether you can still handle "some" higher natural carb foods or not.

Tracy, there are many things to discover, learn, understand and then do about your health….but we only have one head, we can only learn one new thing at a time. You seem to have figured mercury so may as well get your head into that now. Anyway it is the root cause and everything else will(should) click into place once that knowledge is inside you. Kinda like the missing link…everything fits snugly around it too. It is deep and reading that book will answer a thousand questions and give you a thousand options depending on where it leads you. The self diagnosing part is fairly near the beginning so you will know pretty quickly if its your root cause or not (it is if you had amalgams replaced without protection.) Reading the symptoms and problems in that book is like reading my life out loud….was shocking to discover I was mercury poisoned………. but nevertheless wonderful to know for sure what was wrong and to have a plan of action to get better. The good news it is curable, takes a couple of years, but lots of people are getting better now.

Re thyoids: Adrenals always need treating before the thyroids…..always. I hear that advice repeatedly on my travels from a whole variety people (although you don’t have thyroids so no idea what to do…I guess thyroid supports are essential in that case?) If you don’t support the adrenals and you support the thyroids the body cannot handle the additional hormones….the two work in tandem……which is why so many people with thyroid problems struggle so much even with thyroid support. Adrenals need treating first. Again….our useless doctor don’t know this…where not taught this….refuse to think about it……so again no point in asking them….only way is to read up ourselves. There are loads of books about it that explain it pretty well.
Diagnosing adrenal fatigue is easy too. I guess if diagnosing adrenal fatigue was real expensive….i guess those doctors would know all about it…………….

Most people who make it this far have been through the mill and have been let down by their doctors….they are the inquisitive ones…the desperate ones…I certainly was.

If you have lost your trust of doctors and only trust yourself…..then half the battle is already won……... Congrats and happy reading<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/byebye.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/byebye.gif" alt="" />

Hi Tracy,

My hair has grown back in if that gives you encouragement on the hair front. I thought I just naturally had a hairline that started really far back (when the no bangs look was in - I had to just stick with the bangs - fringe for you Europeans). Well I guess that was not my natural hairline because I grew a bunch of new hair in the front. And - when I was a girl I cut the end of my eyebrow and the hair never grew back on the very end - well guess what - 25 years later the hair grew back. All of this happened after getting my fillings out and chelating. There were many more serious issues, but the hair thing was a nice bonus.

I agree about the candida diet, it saved me long before I knew I had mercury. But getting the fillings out and chelating for a few months did for me what several years on the strict diet could not do. So I would try to get the candida under control and then get rid of the mercury since that is the root cause. Probiotics are very helpful to me.

Kara

Bex, Sunshine and Kara,

Thank you so much for your knowledge. I ordered the book and am on the journey. I forgot to mention the saddest part in my whole story...

My dad is my dentist, the one who removed the amalgams. I remember him playing with mercury "beads" when I was a child hanging around his office. He'd roll them around on the table or his fingers or wherever. Yikes.

Now he has horrible M.S. No shock there, but if you ever mention a connection to mercury he goes nuts. Again, no shock there. I have several dentists/hygienists in my family that scoff at my cutting fluoride from my daily intake as well as my kids'. How backwards is our society?

Just a tidbit.

And Kara, re: the hair, I've been hopeful for 3 years since the massive shedding... thanks for your words of encouragement. I thought it was thyroid, after all it happened 3 months after radiating my thyroid. Since it didn't come back once thyroid levels were normalized (as my docs all stated it would all come back then), I pursued cortisol/adrenal issues, found a zinc deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency and low ferritin. So frustrating. And now gluten intolerance. The drama unfolds month by month.

Sincerely,

Tracy

Hi Tracy, <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hello.gif" alt="" />

The advice from all who have responded is very true! I can vouch for myself that Cutler's "Amalgam Illness" book is a great help. It truly help put things in perspective for me! I thought I was imagining symptoms or going crazy until I realized my symptoms were mercury poisoning related. I had a flu shot that set everything in to motion and was suffering terribly several months ago.

I am now 4 months past amalgam removal and since then I have come a long way. I have to say that candida diet, taking supplements defined in the book, all natural chelation, bowel cleansing and parasite cleanse have really help me feel so much better. I know I have a long way to go but this forum has been truly helpful to me to learn from other's experiences and compare them to my own. Best of luck! Angelbaby

Hi Tracy, you're welcome!

I'm sorry to hear of your past exposures with your dad being a dentist (ouch) and the rest! Whoa, what a pity that he cannot handle mention of mercury being such a dreadful neurotoxin. I find a similar response sometimes too. It's almost as though it's impinging on the deluded beliefs they have clung onto, due to what they have been taught and studied and put their life into. As though it's a threat to them to consider they have not only been poisoned themselves, but have been involved in the poisoning of many many people in their work in dentistry. I really think they work at justifying it in their mind and poo pooing anything else.

E.g. the one dentist I spoke with who is metal free told me that the only reason he's gone metal free is that mercury is so lethal to the environment. Fearing that he would make an unconcious admission, he turned and said "but it's safe in the mouth". Do they even realise the stupidity of such a statement? Do they consider us all ignorant morons? I believe he knew full well, but this was part of the cover up, not only for himself, but his fellow dentists. How can it be safe in the mouth?????? Saliva, erosion, hot fluids, chewing, on a daily basis. mercury vaporises rapidly, easily and it's been measured also. It most definitely does happen and it's an insidious slow way of poisoning the body systems and often without a person being aware of connecting the two.

These dentists are in total denial, but I'm not convinced they are quite that ignorant anymore. There is far too much documentation now about this, far too many suffering patients and testimonies and the fact it's been banned in some areas and/or requires a warning notice in certain places too about the risks!

So there is no excuse for them to pretend it doesn't exist. I lost total respect for that "metal free" dentist after that and considered him either self deluded/decieved, or at least trying to the same to me and other patients.

Also Tracy, just to let you know something. In my amalgam toxic days, when I still had fillings, I went through a terrible stage of losing alot of my once very thick hair. It became thinner and noticeably so to where comments were made. The candida diet helped my thick hair return, but it took sometime. Though I was mercury toxic, my hair thickness and health returned from the diet alone, even without the full amalgam removal! Obviously the removal of all sugar, all wheat/gluten products etc and intake of good unadulterated foods, allowed nutrients once again to be absorbed into my system, aiding both proper healthy hair growht, skin condition and nails also. It's about nutrient intake, nutrient absorption/assimilation.

I hope you will gain the same back for yourself with increased health too. It happens subtly and at the time, you don't realise it's growing back until it's noticeable again.

Take care

Tracy,

I sent you a private message. As I've not before sent or received one, I wasn't sure how it would show up and I didn't want you to miss it!