Yes Bex, AI says you will never get well if you don't use ALA. I believe many get well without LA but many of the bad cases won't.

Here is a testimonial from the noamalgam.com website:

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had a history of depression and other health problems. Then my mouth started to come apart - bleeding gums and all kinds of problems that had an oral surgeon ready cut. I was on my way to losing my teeth just like my sister had.

Luckily I heard about amalgam (mercury) poisoning before the surgeon got to me. In 1993 I replaced my fillings and crowns with mercury free materials. My buccal pockets and gums healed immediately and the oral surgeon was forced to remove me from his list.

Over the next seven years despite having eliminated mercury exposure from my mouth, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome (CFIDS), candida overgrowth, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and was even diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) by brain MRI. Later, a spinal tap showed that I did not have multiple sclerosis, but I continued to suffer from symptoms of the disease, like numbness and tingling of the arms and legs, rapid heartbeat, and head tremors and twitches. I didn't know that those disorders were related to the mercury in my body that had leached from my teeth and into my body and brain.

In those seven years following my amalgam removal, mercury levels in my urine and blood dropped from "off the charts" to near zero. But the symptoms were worsening. Constant pressure in the brain, numbness and tingling in the extremities, rapid heart beat, complete constipation, high cholesterol, high H-Pylori titers, low thyroid, low blood pressure, chronic fatigue, brain fog, cognitive/memory problems documented by neuropsychological testing, and on and on. I was so sick that I could no longer work.

Then I finally learned about the metabolism of mercury. Dr. Cutler's book explains how once in my brain, the mercury just wasn't going to come out by itself. And mercury in the brain doesn't only cause neurological symptoms - but since the brain controls hormones and the immune system, everything in the body can be effected from having mercury in the brain. And everything WAS coming apart!

Dr. Cutler's book doesn't stop after telling you how terribly poisoned you could be by dental fillings; it actually tells you how to get the mercury out of your brain and get well. Dr. Cutler not only studied American medical journals to formulate this protocol, but overseas medical journals as well. He shows you how to safely remove mercury from your body and brain using alpha lipoic acid, an over-the-counter antioxidant.

The most important things to remember about chelating with lipoic acid are to (1) go slowly and (2) to take the doses (25 mg to 120 mg according to tolerance) every 3 to 4 hours around the clock. Dr. Cutler explains how this method keeps the blood levels of lipoic acid stable in order to move the Hg from the brain and eliminate it, not merely redistribute it to other places.

Most of the neurological symptoms I've suffered from are gone now. They don't come and go; they are just gone. The rapid heart beat stopped, along with the numbness and tingling of the extremities, and the tremor and twitches in my head. My blood pressure has come up from 70/40 to 120/80 - perfectly normal. My cholesterol has dropped from 305 to 240. My facial color is no longer ghastly white, but rather a normal and natural color. H-Pylori titers (a bacteria associated with peptic ulcers and cancer) have gone from 6 plus to 1.37 without medication.

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I believe an other reason why you did not heal is that you still had amalgam pieces hidden under your composites....