In January I was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. I went to a biological dentist and had my amalgam fillings replaced with fillings that I was tested to be compatible with. I have been fighting fatigue and severe problems with my eyes for 2 1/2 years. I find it very hard to drive or even go shopping for groceries because of my eyesight. I really have problems with florescent lights. They really hurt my eyes and I can't stay in places that have them.

I no longer can afford to go to a doctor, and am looking for help in chelating the mercruy out. I am pretty much house-bound and really need direction in what I should do next.

Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks.

MIM44

Hello and Welcome!

You'll find some very helpful information to start with on the MercuryTalk website. You might want to read the whole article, but the link above points directly to the section for mercury detox starters.

I'd also recommend Dr. Andrew Cutler's book Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis & Treatment. You can order it from this website and I think you'll find it extremely helpful. It's the best book I've read on how mercury affects the body and what to do (and not do) about detoxing. Several people on this forum have followed Cutler's protocol and have had good results.

One thing to keep in mind is that whatever method(s) you use to start detoxing, be sure to not overdo it. This is a common mistake...people get anxious to get their health back and get the mercury out, but detoxing too quickly can actually make you feel worse. You also might need to experiment with different things to find out what works best for you...everyone is different and what works great for some people doesn't always work for others.

Hope this helps, at least to start with. I'm sure you'll get a lot of great input from others on the forum!

Hi MIM44,

I'm very sorry to hear of your situation! I've been there too. First of all I have to say that there are some things you can do right now that may help you and if they work, they may help dramatically. And that is (if you haven't already) changing your diet.

This is a big part of the healing process, as well as finding ways to get the mercury out of your body. Many people with mercury toxicity are suffering from multiple toxicity at once. Mercury lowers your immunity and allows all kinds of awful things to happen, so you will likely being multiple toxic, as well as mercury poisoned. Mercury is probably at the bottom of it, but you may get a relief of symptoms and improvement in your condition if you start reducing the overall toxcity and diet is a great place to begin the detox process.

This means giving up all sugar and wheat/gluten and yeast products completely, as well as seafood (due to mercury contamination). You would be wise to give up caffeine (coffee in particular) and milk too. Sugar lowers immunity and is a poison, it also feeds all the pathogens/yeast inside your body that is already likely flourishing in the presence of the metals, as well as the fact that a lowered challenged immunity cannot keep yeast at healthy normal levels.

Wheat apparently is treated with mercury fungicide and contains gluten. Both of these are often a poison as well when a mercury toxic person consumes them. I used to get direct mercury poisoning symptoms from consuming wheat! I was also a bit gluten intolerant, which also screwed me up. So I had to avoid ALL gluten grains. You maybe ok with non gluten grain, but you'd need to find some alternatives (healthfood shops stock them).

Caffeine and milk apparently interfere with detoxing mercury. Plus caffeine strains adrenals and coffee for me just feeds my yeast problems and for some reasons makes me more toxic!

These are some suggestions and something you can apply right away and see if it makes a difference to you. You may feel worse initially because toxins can start to come out of you and overgrowth of candida can start to die off. So the first few weeks may not be the easiest, but it maybe well worth it. If you start, stick to it. Cravings may increase as the yeast wants to be fed and it's starving to death, so you may find yourself cravings the very things that may have contributed to your toxicity in the first place (all the sugars, high carbs etc).

You may get away with limited fruit and limited non gluten grains etc, but be careful they too are natural forms of sugar for the body (high in carbs). So keep them at a minimum, or eliminate them. That goes for high carb vegetables like potatoes and corn and peas etc too. Try and keep even your carbohydrate intake low if you can. Some people get away with some higher carbs, some do not.

Liquid intake should be preferably herbal tea, water, lemon juice in water, etc. You may get away with some normal black tea, you may find it a bit of a problem. Coffee is the worst, I can't touch the stuff as I said.

You are free to eat free range eggs, meat, liver, chicken (preferably free range if you can, battery eggs and chicken may contain toxins and mercury can be one of those if they are fed fish food).

low carb vegetables, acidophilus yoghurt, raw seeds (sunflower/pumpkin) and raw nuts like brazil/almonds. Healthy fats are very important in mercury toxicity and butter is excellent. In fact, Hal Huggins believes that butter can help chelate mercury from your body. Not sure about that, but he's not stupid and has worked with mercury toxic people for many years!

There are some people who find that garlic helps them chelate mercury, but bear in mind that it is a high sulfur food and may instead cause too many symptoms. High sulfur foods can mobilise mercury and some people do great on them, some do not. If you find too many symptoms with them that are out of control, you may find benefits from limiting sulfur in your diet and avoid sulfur supplements.

This is personally where I would begin! Diet and supplements that may help you are vitamin C, vitamin E, zinc, selenium, magnesium/calcium (equal ratios) and even some iodine if you are low in iodine. Mercury can block/displace the action of iodine in the thyroid gland and some people find they need to supplement this essential element. Selenium is also helpful and a powerful antioxidants which mercury displaces too. EVen these alone may cause "some" sense of detox symptoms in you. You may also want to get a good basic multi vitamin and mineral supplement as well (as a foundation).

These are only suggestions, I do not know what is best for you personally. But these are things you hopefully can do in the meantime and hopefully will not stretch your wallet too much. Hot baths are another way to encourage the release of toxins via the pores and adding epsom salts, or baking soda and sea salt are excellent aids to helping with this skin detox process. Making the bath as hot as you can stand it (within reason, do not let yourself become woozy/faint). Lie in there up to your chin if you can and stay there for as long as tolerated. But again, if you feel funny, STOP.

Moderate exercise is wonderful to help stimulate circulation and some metal elimination also. Walking (treadmill or outdoors) and/or rebounding on a mini trampoline!

As for the rest? Laura has said it all! One of the best mercury chelation protocols I ever used with by Andrew Hall Cutler!

Thank you Laura for your help. I found the website very helpful, and I ordered the algin. It sounds like something I could really use now. Thanks again.

Bex, after reading your post I realized that the majority of my diet was really doing more harm to my body than helping. I was eating a lot of fruit, high carb vegetables, and bread. I was also drinking coffee with sugar in it, so I believe a complete change in my diet should be very helpful. I will immediately change my diet and get ready for the cravings to come. I'm sure my body won't like the changes at first, but I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Thank you very much for your help. I will also look into the Andrew Cutler protocol as well.

Hi MIM44,

You're very welcome. If it can help me? I reckon it could help almost anybody. But yes those are things you are having are harmful. I know fruit should be healthy and it is, but it is still recognised as sugar by any candida you may have and it will feed on that almost as well as actual sugar. Unless you have only a mild case of it and can handle "some" fruit. I would never go overboard.

You can consume tomatoes and lemons on this diet by the way and tomatoes are classified as fruit anyway....apparently.

Make sure you include plenty of protein and healthy fats too. Believe it or not, they are very healing and you would do well to read the studies of Dr Weston Price. The healthiest cultures he studied around the world consumed these types of foods (wonderful specimens these people are). I have also been in touch with some biologic dentists who have specific diets for patients and part of that is also getting them off the no fat/low fat diets which are NOT good (but are proposed by the new age diet gurus). And get them back on normal healthy fat and protein diets and they start healing better.

The best fats/oils you can consume are butter (great one for mercury, Dr Huggins specifically mentions this one), extra virgin olive oil, extra virgin coconut oil, lard, and mercury free fish oil (if you can find a brand that is molecularly distilled). And even fat on the meat is ok, I eat both meat and fat. If it were not for this? I'd have been even worse off than I am now, I believe they help. Dr Hal Huggins recommends proteins like eggs and meat and plenty of butter for mercury toxicity. He also recommends having enough salt in your diet.

I got heart symptoms when I was consuming hardened vegetable oil type fats, yet I am fine on all the oils and animal fats I mentioned above!

And yes coffee and sugar and wheat/gluten/yeast are dreadful. All those did me so much damage, that I cringe at the thought of what may have happened if I had not eliminated them. The thought scares me, and I am so thankful and glad that a good doctor who also believed in alternative medicine pointed me in the right direction and treated my candida. THough it was amalgam toxicity I had, this diet still saved my life ( I really believe that).