That's so great you are getting improvement, Steve <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> What is IBS?

I too am "optimistic" about improvement. Tic-like symptoms often accompany OCD (which to me itself suggests a neuro-toxin) and for the past 20 years they have come and gone for me - this being compulsion to blink and move my head. Also I get like compulsions to count i.e. to count how many strokes I bush my hair with. I know it sounds crazy, but I have no real control over it and when I was getting the fillings put in on a regular basis as a child, it was my life 24/7. But for a long time it got a lot better, almost went in fact, only to resurface for me this past year, but I had work done on a filling last Christmas. It's the resurface that ultimately lead to me finding out about mercury poisoning. I also have a decaying filling and may well have swallowed some - as I did once as a child when a filling fell out.

But, I've noticed improvement since taking the alginate. Within an hour of taking it, the compulsions will be dramatically less, if not gone for a while. For example, I woke up with bad compulsions this morning, took an alginate as soon as possible, and by lunch time was ok. Now it is returning as I am due for another alginate in about an hour. At first I was using the alginate sparingly because of the cost ($18 for 60) but it's been such a help to me that now I take up to 3 a day depending how bad my symptoms are and what I've eaten.

Also, so long as I keep my B vits intake up, I am not waking up with pins and needles half as often. But definitely it's not just the alginate for that, but B12, as when I stopped taking the vitamin I had bad pins and needles every night all week. I'm also taking magnesium, vit c, vit e, and selenium and omega oil a couple of times a week. For some reason zinc seem to help aswell. I didn't take it yesterday and got pins and needles last night.

I read that mercury in children causes permanent brain damage, so I am doubtful of full recovery, but as I did get better once I stopped getting the fillings and seem to respond to alginate, I do believe that considerable improvement is possible. I just wish more people with OCD would believe that mercury may be responsible and research mercury toxicity instead of going on drugs for life that offer no cure (medicine says there is no cure, only treatment which includes medication and therapy). Some people respond well to the treatment, but I really think that if mercury is the root of the problem in a lot of people, phobia counselling isn't really going to work because once one phobia is dealt with, the mercury will just trigger another in people who are prone to phobias. I was always a nervous child, but I never ever had anything like OCD until I had a filling. Over the years I've often wondered what happened to me because my gut instinct was always brain damage of some kind, especially as I was getting migraines and legs very sensitive to the touch. The only thing I could think of was a general anaesthetic I had once, about 18 months before the OCD started, but that also didn't quite make sense because I figured it would have had to be pretty instant brain damage if something had gone wrong. I believe Mercury poisoning is the only real answer to what happened to me.