The side effects of taking alpha lipoic acid(for those who are mercury toxic) without DMSA are so much greater than when taking ALA with DMSA.When I first started chelating I used ALA only and crashed hard after a few weeks. I tried chelating again with just ALA a few weeks later, and crashed again. A few months later I tried chelating again using ALA plus DMSA, and have been chelating since then, and have been able to increase the dosages. I started with 25 mg ALA + 25 mg DMSA. My advice for those starting out is to have their amalgams replaced first, then start with DMSA only, perhaps 25 mg every 4 hours. You could start this a few weeks after amalgam replacement. After a month or so you could add ALA at 12 and half mg, taking the ALA plus DMSA every 3 hours for 3 days(2 nights) around the clock, then take 4 days off and keep repeating the cycle.Some people can tolerate longer rounds, however for me the sleep disruption limits my rounds to 3 days(2 nights). I start a round in the morning, as soon as I wake up.

Some people get a very strong reaction to ALA, although this will be much less if DMSA is taken with it. Starting the ALA at a relatively low dosage seems like a good idea, especially if one uses ALA without DMSA.


You will know its time to increase the dosages when the side effects are very slight. If the side effects are too great though, then stop the round, and next round go back to the lower dosage you were able to tolerate. If you want to make progress, you need to keep raising the dosages(not too quickly though, perhaps every few weeks) until you eventually get to a high dosage(perhaps for some that might mean 200-300 mg ALA plus up to 250 mg? DMSA(some advise using up to 30 mg/kg per day of DMSA, which might be 250 mg per dose or higher for some, although others advise a target of 10 mg/kg/day. Imo 30mg/kg/day sounds like too much, and 15-20 mg/kg/day might be a more reasonable dosage maximum for DMSA. Some people get stuck at low dosages(25 mg or less of each) for many months and don't see that much progress.

After 5 months of almost steady chelation(I did take a few weeks off inbetween), I have gone from 25mg ALA + 25 mg DMSA
to 150 mg ALA + 50 mg DMSA every 3 hours during each 3 day round. Generally it is advised to stay somewhere between 1 to and 2 to 1 ratios of ALA to DMSA, and I have just recently gone beyond that to 3 to 1. I don't plan to exceed 3 to 1 though, so my next increase will probably be to my DMSA dosage. Since DMSA is around 10 times the price of ALA, I have beeen trying to keep the ALA to DMSA ratio on the higher side, although I don't want it too high, as the side effects may bee too great then.