It is highly likely it could be mercury. a leaky/broken filling is even worse as you can imagine. Also symptoms do not always appear immediately on having amalgams, which is often why people do not associate problems being related to them. IT comes down to immune status also, overall toxic load, sensitiivty etc as to how you will handle the mercury coming off your amalgams. Mercury accummulates in the organs and tissues.

Some people can seem to handle amalgams ok, and I "seemed" to handle them until my teens and then I was hit with the typical symptoms and have never really recovered. Though I did at one point improve markedly from amalgam removal, diet, and mercury chelation. I later declined by other problems unrelated to mercury.

So there is definitely hope for those thinking about removing their amalgams. As far as I know, there is no real conclusive test for mercury because so many things come into it. Mercury does not always show up accurately on testing and you can show a very low levels and be highly toxic, or someone can show a high level and seem to show no real symptoms. This could mean the high levels in indicative of the ability to excrete mercury and move it out of the tissues and the low level may means it is heavily bound up (you're retaining it). It could also mean that the low level is enough to poison you (some have a much lower threshold).

So you can see many reasons for results. And your odd symptoms are very mercurial, I have had them all. Confusion, loss of concentration, loss of memory/recall, reading ability, all sorts of things can go wrong (lowering of IQ), depression, suicidal thoughts, fearfulness for no apparent reason, phobias, heart racing, insomnia or oversleeping, swollen tongue, dents in the sides of the tongue (caused by teeth pushing on a swollen tongue, puffy eyes, metal taste, metal smell on body after exercising, exercise intolerance, feelings of total rage, personality changes, burning sensations in throat/mouth or even parts of the body, headaches/migraines, dilated pupils, clammy sweating or almost NO sweating at all, flushing in the face, cold body temperature (cold intolerance). blurred vision/visual changes (difficult focussing), exhaustion, yeast infections, dark greyish discolouration in the gential areas (where it should be pink), uncontrollable crying spells, uncontrollable salivation, pale or even greyish looking complexion, drawn in the face, dull looking eyes, joint pains, muscle weakness, fading in the colour of the hair, brittle hair and lack of lustre, clenching/grinding the teeth, etc etc.

Those these symptoms could be related to many other disorders, mercury appears to have a way of producing many of them at once in a person and often no testing shows anything amiss.

It is a torturous toxicity and if this is what you have? I would seriously consider embarking on amalgam removal, but only do this very slowly, carefully and make sure you find a biologic dentist who is a reputable one. Do not rush in because the exposure to mercury during removal can be VERY risky and many a person has gotten far worse from that alone. So you would do well to have full protection and gradual removal and enough recovery time inbetween each removal of amalgams. Possibly doing 2-4 at one session, but I would be more inclined to do "2".

You may also find treating yeast may help you. Not aggressively treating it, but eliminating the things that feed it like sugar/gluten/yeast/wheat etc. This has helped a number of people on this forum cope better. It is already overgrown when a person is toxic and cannot control it, but to feed it beyond that point with these types of foods? can cause it to go right out of control and become an illness in itself. Treating yeast with diet can often allow the immune system to get stronger and more able to handle the mercury. It also helps the gut and liver (which are needed for detox).

I hope this is somewhat helpful to you. I'm sorry I could not answer your other questions, someone else hopefully will.