My Naturopath either believes that the good outweighs the bad with ALA and redistribution or does not believe that ALA causes redistribution. Are there any studies/articles on the subject?
Thanks, Mark

Well, your naturopath is wrong.

Many many people on this forum alone will be able to tell you the ALA is a big problem and does cause redistribution if taken incorrectly or taken at too higher dosage.

I am lucky I never got stung with that one.

Low dosage Culter style frequent doses seems to cause the least problems. (note: least problems, not no problems.)

If you wish to trust you naturopath fine, but he obviously has limited experience with mercury toxic people. Obviously normal people will be able to handle ala fine, which is who he treats most of the time����. and as long as they are not mercury toxic.

Have a good rummage around here, there are plenty of references.

http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/ANDY_INDEX.html#dose_and_sched

i'm sure someone will tell you how it screwed them up. It happened to this week to �Turmoiler� check out his thread http://herballure.com/ubbthreads/sh...=5&o=&fpart=1#Post250176

http://herballure.com/ubbthreads/sh...&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Hi Mark,

I did a quick Google search so I haven't spent much time looking into this. Personally, I reacted badly to ALA when I tried it. It made me feel manic, panicked and my brain felt so bizarre. I've been afraid to try it again. Some people do ok with it, others don't.

Anyway, this blurb is from "Alternative Medicine Review." I'd never heard of this publication so I looked it up and here is background on the publication itself:

"Alternative Medicine Review, published since 1996 by Thorne Research, is indexed in Medline, Embase (the premier European medical database), Cinahl (a U.S. database for nurses and other allied health professionals), Index Medicus, Current Contents / Clinical Medicine, and Science Citation Index Expanded.Alternative Medicine Review publishes literature reviews, original research, editorial comment, monographs, and book reviews on subjects interesting to, and clinically valuable for our customers. The feedback we receive from readers is consistently positive and appreciative. We continue to receive unsolicited manuscripts from talented researchers and authors worldwide, which serve to sustain the excellent quality of information we strive to provide. This peer-reviewed publication is another service Thorne Research continues to make available to its customers at no charge." http://www.thorne.com/alternative_medicine_review.wss

Listed below is a portion of an Alternative Medicine Review article on the role of ALA in the treatment of Mercury Toxicity:

Conclusion
Many unanswered questions remain regarding
ALA and heavy metal detoxification, especially
pertaining to mercury. The amount of
ALA supplemented versus the amount of toxic
metal stored in the tissues is important, and has
been clearly detailed in animal trials. A molar ratio
of 6-8:1 (ALA:mercury) is necessary for protection
and viability in mercury studies; a ratio of
2:3 has been seen in arsenic studies.66 The ability
of ALA to assist or prevent movement of heavy
metals from the liver appears to be element-specific.
In a previously mentioned study, the biliary
release of methylmercury, cadmium, zinc, and copper
was inhibited by ALA.69
The evidence that ALA may mobilize
heavy metals to other tissues from tissues where
the metals are most concentrated, specifically the
brain, is troublesome. An explanation for this finding
may lie in the complexing of heavy metals
with glutathione and lipoic acid. Inorganic mercury
forms stable complexes with ALA or DHLA
and could be excreted with DHLA independent of available glutathione.67 As Gregus et al67 hypothesize,
injected lipoic acid could complex with glutathione
as it passes through the liver, preventing
glutathione from carrying other heavy metals such
as cadmium, or transition metals such as zinc and
copper, into bile. Speculation aside, there is clear
evidence ALA and its reduced form DHLA have
the ability to act as both intra- and extracellular
heavy metal-complexing agents, with little known
toxicity and patterns of heavy metal mobilization
and transport not yet understood in humans. In
the absence of data from human trials, however, it
can only be suggested that ALA be used as an adjunct
to chelation with the standard dithiols, DMPS
and DMSA.
Mercury toxicity is a significant clinical
entity, as it is ubiquitous in the environment and
poses serious risk to human health. The pathology
of mercury toxicity in humans is diverse and
encompasses direct damage to tissues and enzyme
function as well as indirect damage as a result of
oxidant stress.
Glutathione has been shown to be a significant
factor in heavy metal mobilization and
excretion, specifically with application to mercury,
cadmium, and arsenic. Glutathione depletion and
glutathione supplementation have specific effects
on mercury toxicity, both by altering antioxidant
status in the body and by directly affecting excretion
of mercury and other heavy metals in the bile.


Alternative Medicine Review �� Volume 7, Number 6 �� 2002


Here is a link to back issue Volume 7, Number 6 of Alternative Medicine Review. It has a link to the PDF file that contains the above info and the entire article.

http://www.thorne.com/_Vol_7_No_6_-_December_2002.wss

Hope this helps.

Sharon