It is not wise to start too early with ALA, if your blood mercury is still high from recent exposure (e.g. amalgam remoal within the last few months). You are ok to start ALA about 3 months post amalgam removal or exposure, but not beforehand. If you are 3 months or more away from mercury exposure, you are free to use ALA and will effectively chelate yourself from that alone. Some have cured themselves from ALA, so yes it is effective and yes even on a very low dose. Wise to start low until you tolerated larger doses.

ALA is the main chelator, and is essential according to Andy. DMSA is great, but does not chelate organs and brain like ALA. It is more effective for reducing the blood/tissue first, though the body will naturally attempt to do that by itself, it's slow and often intolerable and DMSA can speed that up and often help symptoms as you go. Though it can create them, at least you are chelating much more than if you did nothing and waited it out.

Not all doctors or health professionals have had success with chelation either, there are plenty stories of patient backfires from them. Some absolutely horrific. But sure, it is hoped that one comes across one of them who has the track record that gives evidence their protocol can be trusted. But that has not always been the case. I have a friend that went to a doctor who was supposedly up on chelation and made him much worse. He needed psychiatric help because of it, yet had been improving before it.

So yeah, you have to be careful and find someone with a tried and tested method who has treated many patients, mostly with success. Not wise to be a guinea pig, though to some degree, we are becuase there is never any complete perfect answer to this toxicity or magic bullet. There is always some element of risk involved.

I would say too that your mental symptoms might not necessarily mean brain mercury either. Some people get a surprise to improve their mental symptoms simply from body detox with DMSA alone or other body detox. Sometimes mental symptoms can be caused by mercury in the liver/gut etc. And some physical symptoms can be caused by brain mercury.

Here is what Andy says on this matter. Brain V body mercury.

"It is pretty clear from case reports (from patients, not MD's).

Endocrine problems, especially poor stress tolerance: brain.

Emotional volatility, difficulty teling what people are about: brain

Difficutly getting along with people, attention deficit: brain

Brain fog is about 70/30 body/brain. Mostly it does go away even without
brain detox.

Yeast is actually a brain related problem (it is controlled by inadequate
hormone levels, especially hydrocortisone) and while it improves with body
detox, it doesn't go away until the brain is cleared if it is a real bad
case.

Allergies, food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities do mostly go away
with body detox.

Fibromyalgia seems to be mostly body tox. Chronic fatigue seems to be about
70/30 body/brain.

Andy Cutler