JK98, chelating safely is hard. Even if you take proper chelating agents, you will have a hard time dosing them correctly. Moreover, not everyone respond in the same way to the same substances. E.g. those with CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) doesn't apparently respond to many things at all.

Just listen to your body, and be good at it. Having lots of brain fog, stiff joints, joint pain, and reacting badly to nearly everything (increase of heart rate etc.) is a cardinal sign that you have too much acetaldehyde around, and that your body is unable to detox it efficiently. Then you focus on getting that out, before anything else.

If you do not have these problems, it is probably safe to continue to chelate, but monitor your health to see that you're not getting more acetaldehyde mobilized than your body can handle.

The best chelating protocol is the Cutler one, ALA+DMSA, because it is tested and found to work for many. Would be nice to see someone doing a trial on succinic acid + ALA instead, with similar dosing. Then add to that pantothenic acid (B5), 100 mg+ per day (if you can tolerate, you can up it 500 mg if it works for you), and molybdenum 150-300 mcg. The very minimal protocol is to use ALA alone (same dosing as Cutler suggests) with B5 + molybdenum (my finding), it may work too.

Start using immediately a high dose of pantothenic acid (B5) (100 mg+ per day) if you can tolerate, it is good for adrenals. Don't let your adrenals rot away by not supporting them properly. I did this mistake, but they were not damaged beyond repair. It is important to use a high dose of B5 (if you can tolerate it), smaller ones are less efficient. B5 has so many benefits that I won't repeat them all, but one other is that it supports aldehyde detox, so it's doubly useful to use it the whole time. Pantethine can also be used (in similar amounts), it may be even more efficient for some purposes, but B5 and pantethine are not the same thing, so you can use both for even more benefits.

I don't know how NAC and MSM can be used safely.. They are known to cause quite horrible symptoms for some. I also found that things change completely when you take out your fillings, you get all the crap raining in your neck soon after the removal, and you may need to slow down whatever you're doing for several months. I don't know about the 3 months advice, it's probably some average that has been found to be good, but you know yourself when you're not in shape to chelate, at least I knew. For some chelation can become a distant dream in the beginning after the removal, because you're in such a poor shape that you simply can't chelate.

For the minerals, I only found magnesium to be essential (helps with heart problems, take at least 300 mg per day), but calcium and zinc are useful too in some ways (zinc being the more useful). My advice is to take RDA for things which you don't find so useful, but some things can be happily overdosed, like vit C, if it works for you. But DMSA indeed depletes some minerals, if you use it.

I found that the chelation appears to be much about getting out acetaldehyde, the conventional view is different, and focused on getting mercury out. My findings do not support the mercury point of view though. Good to get out the mercury, but there are other problems too that are more important to address.