hi everyone. i'll try and briefly summarize my intro because my brain is fried. i'm 23 years old and my whole life i now realize i have suffered from copper toxicity and possibly mercury being in there too because of vaccines. also, there was high aluminum. my mother has high copper and the info i was given and through my own research, i realize that the copper was passed down through the placenta when i was in the womb.

every single day starting in the 4th or 5th grade i have felt severe anxiety, mind racing, depression, brain fog and cognitive difficulties, extreme emotional sensitivity, emotionally blunted, really bad ocd until a couple years ago, many obsessions which have made it really hard for relationshiops, feeling like i am crazy, profound exhaustion, candida, adrenal fatigue, disconnected from the world and God(like in a fantasy world or something), and many more.

a couple months ago i was hospitalized for depression and anxiety because of severe stress and being out of control of my life. i haven't been able to keep jobs despite trying 9-10 different very simplistic jobs. i just realized how i had no life and my relationships have never been good because of how sick i've always been. i just wanna be able to function and have healthy relationships and i'll be the happiest person in the world. just to feel whole for the first time would be really great.

i've stopped dreaming about my future. like i don't know if i can overcome this illness and i'm really scared. i used to dream about being an athlete and had scholarships to play baseball but the illness didn't allow me to get through college like i had hoped because of my brain malfunction and inability to deal with stress along with many other symptoms.

i don't mean to be negative but i really have suffered a lot i now realize. after learning about my family dynamics and some about my condition, my awareness is incredible but it makes me really sad realizing what i felt my whole life wasn't what normal people go through and i realize the severity of the anguish. but i know this isn't the real me and i've seen glimpses of the funny, positive, and loving person i am.

anyways, i do have hope and that is all i am living by right now. that's all i have. i was tested through hair mineral analysis because its cheap and effective way of screening body chemistry. my test showed i am very copper toxic and my metabolism is very slow. so slow that they called my copper toxicity "hidden." after learning and reading the info they gave me, its within normal range because my metabolism is so slow, no metals are being eliminated and if i can build energy, heavy metals and the copper will begin to go up on the hair tests showing they are coming out of deeply stored tissues.

there is just a lot of conlicting info and i can't handle all the info. nothing seems like the right choice. it was one of the reason i was sent to the hosptial because i can't cope. so i was wondering if the veterans could suggest some staple things i need to be doing. chelation is something i think i would probably need to do later down the road being i know the copper is stored deeply. i'm pretty sure the main thing is the copper for me but i probably wasn't able to detox the mercury in the vaccines i had when i was in 6th grade. i've never had mercury fillings and neither has my mom.

also, maybe people could write some encouraging posts of how they have seen improvements etc. is anyone else going through the copper toxicity too? from what i read, copper and mercury seem to be the biggies and symptoms are close to the same. is one worse than the other?

the exhaustion i have felt has been really bad but for the first time, i would really like to know what it is like to have mental peace. no more depression, mental racing, ocd, etc. that would be wonderful and i would be high on life literally. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

this seems like the place for me because people are going through similar experiences. i hope to get some guidance and figure out a good protocal i can feel good about. i hope everyone is making improvements and i hope to meet some good people that can support me, guide me, and i can hopefully do the same in return. God bless.

shawn

hi shawn : sorry to hear that this condition hit you at such a young age , an age when you should be having the time of your life , I found some info in andy cutlers book"amalgam illness " he mentions copper metabolism on page 53 ,66 and 99 and some suppliments that can help lower your already high copper levels if you would like me to mail a copy of the pages just let me know , there is more info than I can post , do you have any amalgam fillings ? the reason I ask is that he mentions alpha lipoic acid as one of the suppliments to lower copper , but if you still have amalgams It could make your situation worse , as it can mobilise mercury very easily
also in my natural healing guide it mentions wilsons disease or inherited copper toxicosis it is rare and affects 1 in 30,000 persons worldwide and the symtoms it mentions are exactly what you had mentioned before , what does your doctor say about your condition and yes copper toxicity and mercury poisoning are almost exact symtom wise , but at least you know what you are dealing with ,the good news is copper is much easier to lower than mercury , mercury can take years to reduce compared to copper which would be a few months with the right protocol

mike,

thanks man for responding. no, i have not had any mercury fillings. the other day i got my first filling ever actually and it was a composite one.

i'm not sure about the wilson's disease. the laboratory didn't mention anything about wilsons. they did inform me that the copper burden could be passed on from birth though. one practitioner who i talk to for free and had copper toxicity himself mentioned i'll have copper toxicity for a while but he never said anything about wilsons.

yea, if you wouldn't mind sending me that info, that would be great. i was thinking about buying the book you were talking about but i never had any fillings. i'll pm you my address.

Hi shawn, I relate to so much of this and I'm sure many others on here do as well. It's kind of like reading about myself in so many ways.. these toxic metals have such an impact on a person's brain and body that it's like being handicapped on the inside with nothing to show for it.

I remember how I was before I got this poisoned and I had motivation and dreams and wanted to be a teacher and suddenly after getting this? I had no idea what I wanted, all my senses were blunted, motivation gone and I just became depressed, anxious, weird, pale, withdrawn and like a puppet on a string going through the motions of life, but being manipulated into strange thoughts, behaviours by something I didn't understand.

Relationships or friendships became strained or non existant. Unable to make new friends as I once was able to do. Self sabbotage tendencies. Unable to hold down any jobs and was always the quiet shy one that never really got involved with others. I was unable to follow instructions properly, would blush so easily I was scared to talk or have anybody speak to me. I felt the most incredible sense of total stupidity too. Even simple tasks would not be comprehended by me.

The list is vast. And suicidal urges were part of my life, so often I've been that close that it's a marvel I'm still here. I guess the idea was frightening, yet the idea of living was also frightening, so I would be caught inbetween.

Sounds like with you, it's been a case of metal poisoning passed from your Mother to you in the womb (I've had the same). From there, vaccinations, and amalgams (though you don't have any which is great), and plenty of other things to add as you're growing up. I had braces in my teens which was the clincher, the final straw and tipped me into chronic illness, but I would have been toxic before that without realising it. I had obviously been battling "ok" before and it took one more knock and I was out.

So it is usually a case of multiple metal toxicities, all increasing the toxicity of eachother and blocking proper excretion. Then to add to that, are the opportunistic organisms, yeast/parasites. So a strict diet is usually an essential part of treatment, no matter what toxicity you're suffering from. Just to get some toxic load reduced at the very least.

I have gotten some more information here on copper and hope this might help you. Though your copper levels might be normal, as you said your metabolism isn't. But perhaps reducing obvious copper in your life might at least help a little.

Make sure you don't use copper or aluminium cooking implements/pans/cookware. Always use stainless steel!

Eliminate or reduce copper foods and supplements. Foods that contain high copper are - legumes (navy beans, black eyed peas, peanuts, tree nuts, and seeds) Oysters, liver, kidney, chocolate etc.

Reduce aluminium products like cheese, baking powder etc.

Take appropriate supplements to help your body handle the copper -
Vitamin C, iron, manganese, molybednum, sulfur, zinc, selenium, calcium, phosphorous, etc.

But again, it maybe a case of reducing yeast l and using chelation that maybe the way for your system to function properly and increase metabolism. So often people are multiple metal toxic, rather than just "mercury". But mercury has a way apparently of causing other metals to be able to take over and not be excreted properly...so it really is a case of so many things at once and having to find ways of reducing your overall toxic load bit by bit.

Diet is a good place to start. From there? You could actually use alpha lipoic acid. Unless you have had some recent exposure to mercury? ALA can be used. If you have been eating fish? I would then advise you stop and use DMSA to start. As you may have high blood levels of mercury which would need to be reduced first before bringing ALA onboard.

DMSA is available online! You could give that a trial run to see if you get reactions. If you try it and find you are getting detox symptoms? That is a pretty good bet you may still have high tissue/blood levels of mercury and would need to keep using this for a few months to reduce those.

You can start by trying 12.5 mg of DMSA (or 25 mg if you feel you can handle it) and taking a capsule every 4 hours around the clock. This is the safest and most effective way of taking it for many people. andrew Cutler is the guy who created this protocol and it is succeeding very well with many people around the world.

You have to wake up at night to take the doses too which can be annoying. So you need to set an alarm clock day and night. This method is to keep blood levels of the chelating agent even, so that the movement of mercury is kept even as well. If you take sporadic doses, you risk moving the mercury all over the place and causing redistribution which can make matters worse. You need to take the every 4 hour doses for about 3 days (or longer if you wish). Then you stop and take a break for about the same amount of time or longer if you need to. E.g. 3 days on, 3 days off. Or 3 days on, 7 days off.... or one week on, one week off. There is no hard fast rule, so long as you are doing it for more than 2 days and the break is the same or longer.

alpha lipoic acid removes copper and mercury and can be used immediately with or without DMSA IF you have had no recent exposure to mercury. But normally it is used about 2-3 months after using DMSA when blood levels are reduced.

ALA is taken much the same as DMSA, but a little more often. Every 3 hours. It is the main chelator and the one that reduces brain/organ mercury (and copper). And can may need to be used for a long time to completely clear the body of these toxic metals.

I hope this helps.

bex,

i didn't even realize anyone replied to my thread so i wrote you a pm. but my copper is definitely at a toxic level. like the lab said and from what i have read, when it is in normal range but when the indications are there from ratios (expert hair analyzers) like adrenal fatigue etc, it means my copper is worse than if it was off the charts. it would be better to be off the charts because it would be excreting some. but my metabolism is so slow, nothing is being eliminated so its not showing up. basically, i have to start getting my metabolism going like you said i think.

i haven't had recent exposure to mercury. i've eaten fish maybe like 5 times in the past 6 months. i wouldn't think that would give me loads of mercury. lord i hope not.

so it seems the diet is a certainty along with some basic supplements. i've been taking a lot of cal/mag and zinc. also just implemented small doses of vitamin E and like chromium which im really low. molybdemum and manganese i haven't started yet. maybe later i was hoping to ask some people about some of these basic supps and getting good buys online.

i think the chelating is something ill have to do. but i don't know when or which one to use.

as far as mercury, i don't think i have had any exposure other than the vaccines i had and i don't know which ones i had. probably ones you get when you are born and also the ones everyone got in 6th grade. can mercury still be really bad with just that?

what you described about how you felt is exactly how i've felt my entire life. its unbelievable but i realize its not the real me. i thought it was normal because i had felt it my whole life. ive always felt so alienated.

Hi Shawn, no worries, just responded to the pm. I repeat a lot of it here because you never know who might benefit from all these discussions who might have similar to yourself.

I should not imagine "some" fish has had that much impact on you, but it would be wise to not continue eating it, but rather take a mercury free fish oil instead.

Yep, at some point if metals are the issue and it sounds like they are, you will definitely need to chelate them back out. From the book I have here, which talks about mercury and other metal toxicity (which I highly recommend, you may want to purchase it if you can). It is called "Amalgam Ilness, Diagnosis and Treatment" by Andrew Hall Cutler. It is available on this forum (herballure). Top left of screen, it's yellow. He talks about copper toxicity too.

It seems alpha lipoic acid is the way to go if one has copper (or mercury, or both). Thankfully it's not a drug, but a powerful antioxidant and readily available online, or pharmacies/healthfood shops as I mentioned. It also is very beneficial to the liver as well, so there are bonuses to taking it.

But there are some problems. Here in Andy's book it says this:
In copper intoxication it is important to perform a stool analysis for toxic and essential elements. In normal individuals, 96% of copper is excreted in the feces. If no copper is excreted in the feces then lipoic acid can be used therapeutically since it increases urinary copper excretion. However, ALA decreases fecal copper excretion and will make matters worse if it is given to someone who is excreting significant amounts of copper in the feces.

The traditonal treatment for copper poisoning is penicillamine, which many people do not tolerate well. DMPS does increase urinary copper excretion and decreses biliary copper excretion.

So it seems that it's not all cut and dry and I do not have experience with copper poisoning, so I don't want to mislead you. I know that taking ALA too high or too long can be risky due to copper, but at the sametime, if it can detox it? Perhaps less and for less time is the way to go. I'm not sure what part of ALA causes this and what part causes excretion.

But maybe diet, specific supplements mentioned is at least a first step and hopefully helpful. Maybe you could start a new post on here and have copper poisoning in the title, so that someone might be alerted to it and may have gone through it and can give some specific tips.

But it's a comfort to know that your symptoms are not "you" and you don't feel so alientated. Also, as you find improvements in your condition when you make changes in your lifestyle, that becomes even more evident.

I think that Wilson's disease can be ruled out with some specific tests. Often people who have it have this strange ring in their eye: http://www.wilsonsdisease.org/content_sub.asp?SUB_ID=56&CAT_ID=14

Also their serum ceruloplasmin and serum copper is low, 24h urine copper is high. Liver enzymes are usually elevated too.

As far as I know copper has not a very long half life in the body and does come out of brain on it's own. If you stop exposure the body should be able to detox it without problems. Most copper problems are because some people tend to accumulate more copper than they need. Some can't get rid of it because they have a mercury problem.

You should try to find out what your problem is. If there is no mercury and you don't have an unsually high copper intake it could be genetic. I am not sure what supplements you should take or if diet can help.

If you have mercury, i believe mercury detox can normalise copper levels.

that's the thing is i dont know how much mercury i have. i never had any mercury fillings ever and neither did my mom. i got my first composite the other day. but i'm sure mom got vaccines when she was a kid. also, i did too. can the vaccines alone outside of amalgam fillings really poison you with mercury? wouldn't everone in the US be mercury poisoned?

i just read up a little on wilsons disease. it seems to be a very accute condition although i feel i'm in a pretty accute condition. but it talks about having acute hepatitis and many other severe symptoms. not too long ago my liver enzymes were tested multiple times and found normal. also, it talks about a ring on the eye. but i might try and get tested just to be sure.

i got a book called "why am i always so tired." by ann louise gittleman. the entire book is on copper toxicity. she researched and wrote the book based on dr. paul eck and carl pfeiffer i think from pfeiffer institute. they are like experts on working with copper toxic people i guess and she didn't mention genetic problems.

one thing she did mention was using alpha lipoic acid to get deeply stored copper out along with low-copper diet and basic supps like most people take here. ALA has also been suggested by a couple people here so i really hope i can get to a point where i can use that.

the genetics thing worries me though. if you have a genetic abnormality, does that mean you can't get well?

Hi Shawn. I'm probably different from people here, I don't want to attribute many of your symptoms directly to metal toxicity. I have known for some time that there can be amalgam-like illnesses without any mercury involved. These cases tend to fall into the chronic fatigue syndrome cases (CFS). People with CFS have a big problem with parasites. Candida, lyme, viruses, mycoplasma bacterias etc. You may want to know that candida is the first that invades your body when your immune system is compromised. Candida in itself can cause any of the mental problems you mentioned, in addition to sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. Candida can also cause mineral derangement, and CFS sufferers in addition to mercury toxic people have usually high copper levels in hair. Mercury is a potent immune system supressor, but your exposure must be continuous to it, so that it will make a difference. Otherwise your immune system is back in business once the exposure stops (provided you haven't gotten other parasites meanwhile that weakens your immune system). With mercury in amalgam fillings you cant stop the continuous exposure, until you remove them all, so there you go.
But back to your problem: as you suggest yourself, you likely have a genetic deficiency. Sufferers of CFS may have a problem with glutathione transferase genes. You can also have hemochromatosis, a genetic deficiency that causes excess iron to store into your body, and this causes oxidative stress and leads to various organ damage in liver, joints and heart, and is relatively common (perhaps less than 0.5% of the US population have it in its active form).
There are of course many other genetic deficiencies than these, so you should consult an expert that can determine what your problem is. This can be tricky, but once you know exactly where your problem is, you can perhaps target it better.
What is good is that you can make up for some of your body's deficiency by supplements. Alpha lipoic acid, whey protein, various vitamins can boost your immunity enough to keep the parasites and candida away. But it is a very tedious and stressful thing to kill the pathogens that have already invaded your body. Candida are the easiest, but some of the nastier bugs like mycoplasma are hard. So hard that nobody knows yet how to deal with them efficiently. Antibiotics can be used, but they also destroy the good bacterias, and candida can again take over.
Hope this helps.

Pgm, just responding to your comments:
"Mercury is a potent immune system supressor, but your exposure must be continuous to it, so that it will make a difference. Otherwise your immune system is back in business once the exposure stops (provided you haven't gotten other parasites meanwhile that weakens your immune system). With mercury in amalgam fillings you cant stop the continuous exposure, until you remove them all, so there you go".

I don't agree. Many children who have had a one off vaccination have become seriously poisoned by mercury long term. It does not have to be a continuous exposure to cause long term serious effects. Andy works with autistic children around the world who are responding to chelation. Candida treatment helps them too, but chelating the mercury has been most helpful in many cases. This also goes for someone who has had a massive acute exposure in one go. Unfortunately the effects are not always short lived. It would be great if removing the source was the cure.

Even if one removes the amalgams, nobody knows how much mercury they have in them and how long it will take to remove. Mercury is not just a potent poison in itself, it is an accummulative poison building up in blood/tissues/organs/brain. It is not just about it's direct effect on the immune system, but the fact it can poison every area of the body and build up.

So if Shawn has had a one off dose, it does not mean it has not caused a long term problem. Just as a child can become poisoned by a Mother's amalgams in the womb. Mercury does not come out of the brain by itself enough and takes an entire lifetime just to remove a small amount.

ALA is the chelating agent that can cross over the blood brain barrier and chelate mercury from the brain as it can other organs, it is not just about candida. ALA can apparently feed and flare up yeast rather than act as any kind of antifungal. It is not an antifungal, it does not kill yeast. Indirectly it increases glutathione which may help, but many people have to increase their candida control treatement during it's use which indicates it can be problematic, rather than a help in treating yeast. But the fact it removes metals is the ultimate goal, which then allows the body to better handle yeast in the long run. I'd prefer short term flare ups of yeast to gain the long term benefits of less metals.

You say DMSA lowers immune response which accounts for improvements? DMSA is also a potent chelator of mercury and lead, again it is not just about "yeast" or immune response. Plenty of people have had increased detox symptoms from using DMSA, as I did. So far from creating any kind of placebo response, it is an effective chelator and symptoms correspond with that. I did sometimes gain control of some metal symptoms during DMSA chelation when it would grab enough mercury in an even manner to allow for that to occur, but often I had a slight increase in symptoms. No way was this the immune lowering response because everytime I took DMSA, I never knew what to expect. It was always a roller coaster ride, but certainly more tolerable than other chelating protocols i had used.

The proof is when over time you start to notice permanent improvements, even after stopping DMSA, which happens in plenty of cases, which again proves it is not about the lowered immune response giving temporary suppression of symptoms, but rather the chelating of metals allowing for healing to take place.

Even if DMSA does act on the immune system in this way, it still chelates metals which is the reason to use it and the reason why people gain ultimate benefits from it.

i spoke to two experts today asking about the genetics association with heavy metals. one being dr l. wilson who has used hair mineral analysis to screen people for metals and body chemistry for close to 30 years. he had copper toxicity himself. also, i talked to the son of Dr. Paul Eck who was one of the pioneers of hair mineral analysis. he's done years of research and helped people overcome metal toxicity for lord knows how long. he founded analytical research labs.

anyways, they both told me that mineral patterns and body chemistry can be changed. that you don't have to be stuck with something because of genetics. dr. wilson who i talk to on occasion told me that through his experience if you do the things a lot of people talk about on here, that copper etc should come out. he said there is a rare genetic condition and i asked him about wilsons disease and he said yea, that's what he was talking about.

i'm not a doctor but i know they have worked with thousands of patients so i'm gonna try and trust what they say. it's easy for me to worry but i assume that with all the patients they've worked with, when those people followed basically the same protocals people are talking about on here and the metals came out despite possible gene problems, hopefully the same will happen with me.

Hi Bex. I know that stopping the mercury exposure doesn't cure right away your problem. This has been discussed before , and this is with a much higher probability because of the pathogens your body has accumulated during the exposure, than the stored mercury itself. It would be incredible if the pathogens also vanished in a short time.

It also explains why some people need to be exposed to much smaller amounts of mercury than others, to achieve the same rock bottom health. Some people just have an immune system that can tolerate better a greater mercury load without compromising their immune system activity.

The exposure to mercury and lead is much more harmful to children than to adults, because the nervous system is still developing, and an interference in that process is very harmful. The organic mercury used in vaccines is, however, much different (and more dangerous) from elemental mercury used in fillings. Some species of organic mercury stays in the bloodstream much longer than elemental mercury after exposure. Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, but it's half-life in bloodstream is short, but it may accumulate in brains. There has indeed been demonstrated some trouble with the APOE-genes that transport mercury out of brain in autistic children.
But DMSA doesn't chelate deep organ mercury, so why would it help autistic children if mercury accumulated in the brains? Wouldn't ALA be the preferred agent in this case?

Regarding the bad symptoms from DMSA: I have gotten bad reactions from nearly everything, and that is not a proof tha t mercury is chelated.

i worry a lot so i wanted to post about something i was thinking about. i just read this article http://www.arltma.com/HiddenToxMetalsNews.htm.

my concern is if someone is really toxic like the article talks about and if it does take many years for metals to be excreted, does that mean you are gonna be sick and disabled that whole time?

my mom has smoked around me my whole life and i'm sure before i was born. i am pretty certain i am very very toxic but can i make progress and be able to function within a year or something maybe? it's very depressing and discouraging thinking i am gonna be sick and miserable until all the metals are out?

Shawn

this is my experience. Obviously everyone is different. I had 13 amalgams for a good thirty years before becoming sick age 37 after a dentist removed a filling without taking any precautions and did a root canal on the remaining tooth. I instantly felt wrong, and after my stomach fell apart a few weeks later, blood tests showed that I had Gilberts syndrome - slow phase 2 liver function - and that I was badly hypothyroid. It took me another good 18 months to get seriously ill (bedridden with fatigue and crashed adrenals, very hypoglycemic, underweight, suicidally depressed, unable to function at all with 3 children), get a hair test and get my amalgams removed. These have been out for 18 months now. Miracles have not happened ...

Immediately on getting my amalgams out, all my symptoms got much worse - blood sugar control was a disaster, I was up 2/3 times a night for the bathroom, fluey head, very fatigued. Any chelation (Cutler protocol, 6mg DMSA every 4 hours) left me seriously weak and feeling horrid generally, so I didn't do much - maybe half a dozen rounds in 9 months.

In May of this year I started chelating in earnest - 12 mg every 3 hours (much better) four days on, four days off. I have gradually improved. I now feel better on round, and worse off. I can last about 3-4 days inbetween rounds before my recurring symptoms tell me to start again. I would like a break, but my body has other ideas! It's like my body has got used to a certain pace of detoxing, and wants to continue. I taste metal all the time and have done for 6 months - this gets better on round, worse off.

I am thinking about adding in ALA in the New Year, to shift the intracellular mercury. Although I feel my strength gaining, I know I won't get seriously better until I get it out of my brain. It has taken me 7 months to do 31 rounds - they say you need to do at least 100 rounds of DMSA / ALA to get better. So I have a ways to go. Another two years chelating at least, I think.

It's possible you won't get better until all the metal is gone. I don't think I will - I think my body is now so sensitive to it, it will react to the slightest amount. But people are different - some get better just with amalgam removal - some, like Russ, get better almost overnight. For others, it is a long, painstaking, hardwon crawl back to health, if 100% health is still possible. I don't believe it is in my case, but even a 50% improvement would be good.

Eighteen months after amalgam removal and 31 rounds of DMSA, I still feel sick. I am still very fatigued, and have to pace myself carefully. But I can do more than I could, and my mood is better. I put my heart and soul into getting well. I eat very carefully (even over Christmas), take all the recommended supplements, support thyroid and adrenals, and chelate regularly.

I think mercury toxicity is such an individual thing - it's difficult to tell how long you will be sick. You may be one of the lucky ones that gets better really quickly. I am hindered by the slow phase 2 liver function, and seriously weak adrenals. I hope you have better luck. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Best
Nicola

hi nicola: I am glad that the chelation is helping you , it sounds like you may have to include ala in the future to get back to normal , i am going to start my 6th round of low dose ala and dmsa 10 mg each , if I keep it at that dose how long do you think it would take me to get back to normal , since starting chelation I have slid back to about 60% from 80% just a few weeks ago,, I guess it is just part of the process

also I share the same problem with slow phase 2 liver ,are you taking any thing that may help with that and speed it up ,I have read up on NAC it may help speed it up but have not heard much about it on this forum .

hi mikey

I think you have to remember that mobilizing mercury with DMSA /ALA is going to make you feel worse, but you need to do it in order to get well. This may explain your slipping back since starting chelation. Chelation is stressful to the body, which is why antioxidants are important, as is support for the adrenals and thyroid. I think these glands are particularly hit by chelation - I have read of people starting chelation feeling OK-ish, and then gradually going downhill throughout chelation because they have not supported their adrenals.

Another slow phase 2 sufferer!! I tried NAC and it was a disaster. It fed the candida a treat, and set me back big time. It is sulfury, and candida loves it. Cutler does not recommend it, and I trust him. I have also tried the TMG, folic acid and B12 mix to boost the methylation pathway within phase 2 (a la Yasko), and this worked after a few weeks - I woke up one morning feeling terrible, with definite mercury symptoms. I stopped doing this as well - I think it was too powerful for my liver, which has been upset ever since. I may come back to it in time, as I get stronger. For now, I take milk thistle every day, although I am not really convinced it does anything. I have tried numerous other liver things - Liv 52, Livatone - nothing really seems to improve the sluggish phase 2, so I am concentrating on chelating for now. Thyroid hormone is important for liver function though - a lot of my problems resolved on T3.

For me, I think the priority is ALA - which is also a liver detoxifier. I shall start low and slow in the New Year, and see where it takes me.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/byebye.gif" alt="" />

all the best Mikey. Let us know how you go.

Nicola

HI Shawn, the link you gave didn't work. But in answer to your question? You do not need to get all metals out in order to improve. that is not possible anyway.

Your body will improve once the toxic load has been reduced enough for it to do so and everybody's threshold is different. So it is not known how much a person can handle before they start to show symptoms and how much needs to be reduced before improvement is noted.

Even from diet alone, the body can begin to start addressing other toxicities inside of you. But it can only do this if it's strong enough to do so. Like with myself, without the diet, my body would not let go of toxins and they continued to circulate and keep me sick 24/7. Once I got serious and got onto the diet without cheating, I started to notice my body addressing other problems and started to detox.

Of course, you may require chelation as well and it is not known what exact metal toxicity you're suffering from? I'd assume it was both copper and mercury, as it's a little unusual to just have "copper". Most people do have multiple metal toxicity because mercury tends to allow other metals to accummulate.

Some of us have been poisoned in the womb. There is a name for that, but I forget what it is. But there is no reason why a person cannot start to feel improved long before they rid themselves of most of their metals. Again it is not just about metals, it is about overall toxic load and this includes yeast levels and the toxins constantly released from them.

I cannot emphasise enough how important your diet is in this entire healing process. Without it, you'll be fully relying on chelation and unfortunatley its not always that easy. Chelation without diet can cause problems, because an overloaded gut and liver from candida toxins (and other garbage) can block it's ability to process and eliminate what is being pulled out and circulated by the chelating agents and you can really get very ill. And in order for your body to heal up, as it's ridding itself of toxins and metals, it requires the right foods to do so. High yeast levels will likely hinder any progress. This is what I have experienced anyway.

Sorry to repeat this, but I really don't know what else to advise, aside from the supplements already recommended.