Hi Scarlet. Yeh, my face now has sunken hollow cheeks - maybe this is from not laughing enough for so long. But I decided in 2002 to have all of my teeth yanked out that had ever been touched by a dentist. I only have the 6 lower front teeth left. I had spent a fortune on my teeth - 7 root canals with crowns, many huge amalgam fillings - but I had also lost a molar with each pregnancy due to nerve death and extraction. My teeth kept moving due to the missing teeth. The space between my two front teeth just kept getting bigger and bigger. I'm allergic to metal touching my skin - can't wear jewelry, watches, or metal eyeglass frames. I had read all of the mercury poisoning horrors on the internet and decided I wanted all of the poison and metal out of my mouth. A tooth is an organ - when it is dead, it should be removed! Once a tooth has a root canal - it is dead. I don't care if my face is sunken and my beautiful full lips are now much smaller on top. I couldn't wait to have them all yanked out. I have never regretted it - I just feel liberated! No bad breath anymore either. It comes from bacteria around the teeth. My husband has peridontal disease. His gums have been devoured by bacteria - all of his teeth are longer now since gums have receded so much, and his breath smells just like a BM! He doesn't have any fillings, but he got his first root canal a couple of years ago. I told him - big mistake. Just get them all yanked out. All of the bacteria in his mouth is really tough on his immune system. He has many allergies now too. I have the most perfect, white teeth now - with a total top denture and a bottom partial denture. I told the dentist that I did not want any metal bands for my partial - I just glue them it place. I had my dentures made by a special dentist that only makes protheses - so they fit great and I've never had a sore spot in my mouth since I got them in July of 2003! However, I've never done any chelation yet. I'm still very sick. My horrible, persistant vertigo stopped after I had my teeth pulled, but I still have CFS, FMS, Sjogren's (autoimmune syndrome), and then I got DX's with Lyme in April 2005. Could it all be mercury poisoning? Or can having mercury poisoning make one suspectible to microbe invasion and infection. Many have gotten well from chronic Lyme, but I don't know if they ever had any amalgams or if did - had them removed. I don't know whether to attack the Lyme first or the chelation project. I ended up in the hospital on July 4th. I thought I was having a heart attack. I passed out for a few moments and when I came to - I was sweating, dizzy, eyes wouldn't focus right and was nauseous. I felt my chest and my hurt was jumping all over. I mean it moved my hand. I had my husband race me to the ER and they kept me in the hospital for 2 days. I have a conduction block and Atrial Fibrillation. This scared me. I never took the antibiotics for the Lyme that the LLMD wanted me to take because they made me so sick. All meds either make me sick or I have an adverse reaction to them in some way. Two drugs I've been given by doctors nearly killed me. I got a rash all over, shortness of breath and had to rush to hospital for a cortisone shot. I'm even allergic to epinephrine - which is what they have to put in Novocaine injections to do dental work. When you don't have it in the injection - you never get completely dead and you have to have so many injections. I had my teeth pulled in this manner. I thought I'd never find a dentist that would be willing to pull the 1,000's of $$ I had in my mouth. My dentist thought I was certifiable. My husband thought I should be locked up. But I finally found one in Indiana. He wrote the book, Tooth Truth. Last year, I spent about $800 in St. Louis to have a dentist recommended by my Lyme Doctor - check me for cavitations. He didn't find any - but my lower right jaw hurts when I touch it and has a bump under the skin I can feel. I not certain this dentist knew what he was doing. He had all of this new equipment and was like a big kid about it. he had his assistant use the machine on me - but she didn't act like she knew what she was doing. I asked her to go and get the dentist. I told him that I was paying him a fortune, and would only accept him performing the exam on me with his new machine. I don't think the girl had barely been trained on how to use it yet. She had no confidence. I told them both that I was sorry to be a real [censored] about it - but I really wanted to be certain I didn't have any pockets of rot and bugs left in my jaw bone. I told them how sick I had been and still was. He even used some other type of machine (his old one, I guess) that he would touch each area and it registered some voltage or something. He told me I was clear. anyway, since I had my amalgams removed by extraction in 2002, I began using ALA last Saturday. I only had 250 mg capsules that I had gotten over a year ago from some Hulda Clark site. I opened the capsules and took only a fraction of the powder in water with a little juice. Nothing happened. I then kept working up to the full capsule. Part of yesterday and part of today, I took the entire capsule every 4 hours. I don't seem to have any symptoms happening except today - emotionally and very wired and my neck got red. However, my BP went sky high. It is already high, and my doc put me on BP med after hospital scare, and a heart med. I hate taking any meds - but these two don't seem to be bothering me. SInce the heart scare, I've been taking mega vitamin c, amino acids, b's - everything I can for my heart - even 300 mg COQ-10 daily. The pain and chest pressure were gone after about 3 days. I ordered a product called Heart Technology by Lineus Pauling. It has many of the supplements that Andy Cutler recommends in it - but it is expensive and I have to take 4 teaspoons daily in water with a little juice. It is very sour because of all the ascorbic acid in it. I take magnesium - and between it and the C - I live on the toilet. I didn't know I would ever poop this much. I've always been constipated. This is great! After the hospital, I began taking some old Doxycycline that I had from Lyme doctor. I could only keep them down with pepto-bismol. I know it has aluminum in it - but I was desparate. I kept the pills down. But my stomach burned for days. I used charcoal tablets several hours after antibiotic and supplements and it helped a great deal. Then I stopped the antibiotics because I could feel the candida growing. I then began taking 4 grams of salt a day plus extra vitamin c. This is suppose to kill microbes. I had several bad herxs - but were they from killing the Lyme bacteria in my heart or from killing candida? Who knows. Someone on my Lyme group told me that the BP med I'm taking is really bad for someone with chronic fatigue. So I'm not going to take it starting tomorrow - it hasn't helped anyway cause my BP was 166/105 today. It was 148/85 at my doctor's last Tuesday. Does anyone know what I could use for high BP. I've also been taking apple cider vinegar in water with a little raw honey. I read this is supposed to help hi BP. By the way, I'm a newbie her. My name is Doris. I'm 55 yo, and sick and tired of being sick and tired. BTW, I stopped the chelation this afternoon because I know I'm taking too much and maybe it is making my BP go up. I don't have any symptoms from stopping the chelation. Maybe I don't have mercury toxicity - maybe it is just lyme. Who the heck knows.