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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 25 of 26. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by markwell on June 27, 2011, at 18:55:17
I am seeing a naturopathic dr and she thinks I have heavy metal toxicity. She wants me to start a regiment of dmsa and supporting nutrients. Has anyone ever used dmsa and what should I expect?
Mark
Posted by torrid on June 27, 2011, at 19:55:39
In reply to mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on June 27, 2011, at 18:55:17
I'm curious, how did she deturmin the mercury toxicity?
Posted by markwell on June 28, 2011, at 4:33:57
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » markwell, posted by torrid on June 27, 2011, at 19:55:39
Symptoms and the fact that I had 17 or 18 cavities filled with amalgams. As a naturo pathic practitioner in ny she's not allowed to do testing. Nothing else is working for me.
Mark
Posted by Lamdage on June 28, 2011, at 5:11:58
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on June 28, 2011, at 4:33:57
> Symptoms and the fact that I had 17 or 18 cavities filled with amalgams
That aint too far fetched.. !
i have no experience with this whatsoever but id like to do a similar thing just for the heck of it. I want to check every imaginable underlying physiological cause there could be.
My doctor declined at the time though (and he was right to do so) because i was experiencing alot of distress as it was. I have heard that around the dmsa day there can be additional distress due to the released heavy metals.Id like some knowledge input here, too!
Posted by torrid on June 28, 2011, at 11:27:10
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by Lamdage on June 28, 2011, at 5:11:58
I am not a skepic, mercury is dangerious.
Posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 14:09:02
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on June 28, 2011, at 4:33:57
A hair analysis suggested I had heavy metal toxicity, and this was confirmed by a 24 hour urine DMSO challenge.
I had been eating lots of fish. Not sword fish. Mainly mahi mahi. And I had some mercury fillings
They had never seen levels that high.
So I did courses of DMSA.
Posted by torrid on June 28, 2011, at 15:14:49
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 14:09:02
I stopped eating big game fish due to the mercury. Due to the long life span of big game fish they have potential to collect large amounts of mercury. I avoid farm raised because the they get mercury from the mercury contaminated feed.
Posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 15:30:02
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by torrid on June 28, 2011, at 15:14:49
You don't always know what is farm raised.
I heard some figure....maybe half is farm raised?
There was a report here of fish being fed the sh*t from chicken farms, needing therefore, and for other reasons, huge quantities of antibiotics.
It's choice, isn't it.....feeding them on sh*t and antibiotics. Like dried ground up cow to cows.
Posted by torrid on June 28, 2011, at 16:46:11
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » torrid, posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 15:30:02
farmed
wild
wild caughtWhat are they selling me when I buy salmon "wild caught", I'd really like to know?
farmed salmon has higher amounts of EPA's
Posted by markwell on June 28, 2011, at 18:09:39
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 14:09:02
How was the dmsa treatment? What were the side effects and did you receive any benefits? I'm a little nervous about doing this.
Posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 19:40:18
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » sigismund, posted by torrid on June 28, 2011, at 16:46:11
Do we need to think carefully about 'wild caught'?
It's not an issue here. All ours is farmed, hopefully with minimal chook sh*t if not antibiotics.
Posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 19:45:07
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on June 28, 2011, at 18:09:39
I had both DMSO injections and DMSA capsules.
I didn't notice the capsules of DMSA, but after every occasion with the DMSO injections I found myself feeling better and a little chatty.
I wouldn't worry about the toxicity of DMSA. The important thing is to take it in the right dose and in the right number of doses.
There is argument about this.
One point of view available here is contained in Blueberry's posts, for which you can search.
Posted by markwell on June 29, 2011, at 6:35:49
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » markwell, posted by sigismund on June 28, 2011, at 19:45:07
You felt better after dmsa, that gives me hope. I'm just concerned about the mercury recirculating. I'm a little unstable now to begin with. If I wait until I'm stable I'll never do anything.
Mark
Posted by sigismund on June 29, 2011, at 12:57:53
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » sigismund, posted by markwell on June 29, 2011, at 6:35:49
>I'm just concerned about the mercury recirculating.
Yeah, that was what Blueberry was on about.
Lots of small doses to begin with?
Posted by torrid on June 29, 2011, at 13:05:23
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » markwell, posted by sigismund on June 29, 2011, at 12:57:53
> >I'm just concerned about the mercury recirculating.
>
> Yeah, that was what Blueberry was on about.
>
> Lots of small doses to begin with?Larry said something about binding mercury, I think it was zinc but not sure. I'll see if I can find it in an old post
Posted by sigismund on June 29, 2011, at 13:18:12
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » sigismund, posted by torrid on June 29, 2011, at 13:05:23
Selenium?
Posted by torrid on June 29, 2011, at 15:56:38
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by sigismund on June 29, 2011, at 13:18:12
yes thanks
I just swiched from olive oil to grape seed oil check it out it gas tons of linolitic acid, I can't spell it, omega 6. tell me what you think
Posted by Lamdage on June 30, 2011, at 4:10:04
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity » sigismund, posted by torrid on June 29, 2011, at 15:56:38
I wanna do this type of thing.. and i will once i am stable on the phenelzine.
My mom had amalgam fillings so i might have caught some of that.
Posted by bleauberry on July 10, 2011, at 20:17:18
In reply to mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on June 27, 2011, at 18:55:17
Well, why does she think you have mercury toxicity? Do you have, or ever had, silver fillings in your teeth? Any other known exposure to mercury? (broken flourescent light bulbs?)
We live in a toxic world so if someone had weak detox genes and slowly accumulated natural low level environmental mercury over time, that is understandable. Maybe happens more than we know.
Did she confirm the toxicity? It's easy to do. She has a test. You pee in a container. Then you take a large dose....for me it was 1200mg....of DMSA and you collect your pee for the next 6 hours. Then the lab compares the pre- and post-DMSA urine samples. In my post sample, I had very high mercury, lead, and cadmium. My hair a few years earlier showed high mercury. But I didn't yet believe it. A couple years later, there was no mercury in my hair....but no other metals either, or in bizarre random patterns that were not normal....mercury displaces other metals including itself. So on the surface the hair test looked good, it was actually ominous. The urine test confirmed how bad.
I wouldn't do the detox personally without the urine test first. If nothing else, you need to document your starting point, so months later you can do the test again and see what progress has been made.
If you are going to do dmsa, the only safe way is the Andrew Cutler method. That is, low dose frequent dose....doses ranging from 12.5mg to 25mg to start with, later increasing to 50mg, but the important part is to dose it every 4 hours. That's the half life of dmsa. If you don't take the 4 hour dose and the last dose wears off, then all the mercury it was holding gets redumped somewhere in you causing a new toxicity you didn't have previously. They call that redistribution. Bad.
I've done close to 25 rounds of dmsa myself, lowest dose 6mg, highest 25mg, length of round ranging from 3 days to 2 weeks. If you don't pay attention to the 4 hour rule, I guarantee you it will not be pleasant.
DMSA happens to be one of the most reliable antidepressants I've ever tried. It's weird I feel a little worse the first 2 days, then amazingly better day 3 through 5, and then get worse after that. I've never figured out that pattern. DMSA also dislodges stealth hidden infections, so it could be related to that.
> I am seeing a naturopathic dr and she thinks I have heavy metal toxicity. She wants me to start a regiment of dmsa and supporting nutrients. Has anyone ever used dmsa and what should I expect?
> Mark
Posted by markwell on July 11, 2011, at 8:47:30
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by bleauberry on July 10, 2011, at 20:17:18
Bb, because of ny state law my naturo pathic is unable to test so I guess we will do a round and see what happens. She's using 250mg dmsa 2 tablets 3x per day for 5 days and rest for 9. Sounds kind of intense?
Mark
Posted by torrid on July 11, 2011, at 12:39:34
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by bleauberry on July 10, 2011, at 20:17:18
I remember breaking mercury thermomwters as a kid and playing with the liquid metel. I let it roll around in my palm and even stuck my tough out and touched it with the tip of my toungh. I'm bhave no reason to think I have toxic levels of mercury but I wouldn't doubt the possibility.
Posted by bleauberry on July 12, 2011, at 21:27:19
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by markwell on July 11, 2011, at 8:47:30
> Bb, because of ny state law my naturo pathic is unable to test so I guess we will do a round and see what happens. She's using 250mg dmsa 2 tablets 3x per day for 5 days and rest for 9. Sounds kind of intense?
> MarkNot only intense, but insane. The ND has obviously never read the book Amalgam Illness by Phd Andrew Cutler.
If you have mercury and/or lead, those doses are going to stir up so much from storage, and then redump it fresh inside of you causing new damage and new symptoms. The half life is 4 hours. Any chelated metals that don't make it to the urine before 4 hours just get redeposited somewhere. Not cool. Feels like crap and you can get sicker than you were previously by doing that.
Safe and as effective, or more so, than what the ND said: 12.5mg every 4 hours, 4 days on, 6 days off. After a couple months of that, go to 25mg same pattern.
The amount of mercury dmsa pulls out does not increase at the same rate as the dose. if you double the dose, you pick up a little more mercury but the amount is not double. The dose doubled, but not the effectiveness. Long story short, low dose frequent dose chelation is the only safe way to chelate. Other dosing patterns may or may not work, it's kind of like a crap shoot doing it that way, but for sure is very risky. People end up worse than they were to start by chelating improperly.
It really doesn't matter what dose size you take....12.5mg or 250mg, whatever....the important thing is to take it every four hours and do not miss a dose.
Posted by larryhoover on July 13, 2011, at 20:35:32
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by sigismund on June 29, 2011, at 13:18:12
Oh, boy. Mercury is a complex issue, with little deep science that comforts me as "fact".
I'm not 100% behind every statement made in this article, but it's a pretty good summary of why mercury is a health issue: http://tuberose.com/Sulphur_and_Mercury.html
I'm just trying to write less, when something is already out there that serves as a primer.
The main target of mercury in your body is the sulfhydryl group, the sulphur analog of an alcohol. Another name for the same chemical group is a thiol. And yet another name for it is a mercaptan. It's a mer(cury)-cap(ture)-an (group).
That's both the function of chelators like DMSA, and the problem in your body. Anything with a sulfhydryl group is going to get the attention of mercury.
DMSA has paired sulfhydryls, something analogous to chemical tweezers, which can grip mercury from two directions simultaneously. But I have a problem with the concept, and it's an either/or kind of problem.
If you have amalgam (mercury/silver) fillings, then taking DMSA is probably the stupidest thing you can do. You will mobilize mercury in your mouth, and where is it going to go? Deeper into your digestive tract, and in a fully mobilized form? Although I understand that heavy metals may lie behind the symptoms identified by the naturopath whose "diagnosis" started this thread, I cannot support chelation therapy unless the mercury exposures have been reduced to an absolute minimum. That would entail removal of all amalgam fillings (using special methods to minimize mercury ingestion), along with concurrent chelation (to minimize the consequences of the amalgam removal procedures), prior to initiating a whole body chelation regime.
Chelation chemicals such as DMSA or EDTA do not only bind heavy metals. They are going to draw essential minerals out of your body (especially zinc, selenium, copper, and iron). Chelation therapy is not to be thought of as an innocent "toxin removal" process. It carries very clear risks to health, all on its own.
Another concern is that most mercury exposure is elemental mercury. I see in this thread anecdotal commentary about exposure to liquid mercury, which is probably benign, (or nearly so). Elemental mercury is not ionized (it has a nominal charge of zero), so it is largely unreactive.
Now, I must acknowledge that gut bacteria can ionize mercury (creating methyl or ethyl mercury), which are both of concern, but the biggest concerns are really due to methyl mercury from fish (in my opinion). But even that is not of any significant concern if the fish-eater's diet contains sufficient selenium. And in particular, I'm referring to selenium in a chemical structure analagous to the sulfhydryl/thiol/mercaptan structure, i.e. -SeH. That structure is found in selenium yeast, primarily as seleno-methionine or seleno-cysteine. And these each have substantially higher affinity for mercury than do the analogous sulphur structures.
Those specific structures can be thought of as sacrificial to methyl-mercury. The selenium and mercury react to form such a stable (i.e. non-reactive/ non-toxic) chemical compound, that it doesn't matter one bit that you have that specific mercury atom in your body. It's been neutralized, and rendered inert.
I could write a further essay from this point onwards, but I'm not wanting to be overwhelming in what I understand to be the truth. Rather, I would welcome questions, in hopes that I might cover the subject progressively.
Lar
P.S. I'm travelling in Europe for seven weeks beginning shortly, so if I disappear, it is temporary.
Posted by markwell on July 15, 2011, at 16:27:03
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by larryhoover on July 13, 2011, at 20:35:32
I am so stuck in this depression that I'm going to try the chelation. The nd has me taking a heavy metal detox support, heavy dose of multi mins, whey protein and psyllium. She claims that should take care of dumping any chelated metals. I asked her about the 4hrs and she said if I wanted to go every 4hrs that would be good. Will I feel any different after one round? If I pull metals and dump them in the toilet as I'm supposed to how long before I'll notice a difference in my symptoms?
Mark
Posted by larryhoover on July 24, 2011, at 20:17:50
In reply to Re: mercury toxicity, posted by larryhoover on July 13, 2011, at 20:35:32
We were talking about the protective effects of selenium, with respect to mercury exposure from fish in our diets. Since I last posted here, I've done some further research, and I discovered that selenium supplementation is not only protective against mercury exposure, it is also restorative against past exposure. And, many fish with high mercury content actually have so much selenium in them, that they are of net benefit against other mercury exposures. Ive got links to three documents that were the main sources of those arguments.
In a nutshell, if selenium intake is high enough, then mercury exposure is of no consequence. Moreover, in selected fish species, the selenium content is high enough to not only make the mercury it contains of no consequence, there is sufficient selenium in excess so as to confer additional health benefits.
The first two have the same author, and are both powerpoint slide presentations.
http://fshn.ifas.ufl.edu/seafood/sst/30thAnn/Ralston%20SST%20November%20San%20Antonio.5.pdfThe key slides are: #23) shows the effect of selenium supplementation on body weight when simultaneously exposed to mercury; #26) summary statements clearly express the relationship between mercury and selenium.
https://www.signup4.net/UPLOAD/USTR10A/QUIC28E/8%20Ralston.pdf
The key slides are: #10) the ratio of Hg:Se in various fish. All ratios below 1 are protective. #13) nice presentation of the fish with the greatest health benefit, based on the Hg:Se ratio. I would say that any fish with a score of 50 or better would be good picks to include in the diet.
This last reference is a paper, also in .pdf format. Youll note that the guy who did the above two presentations co-authored the paper, also. Ive pulled some selected quotes out of the text, for emphasis.
http://www.wfoa-tuna.org/health/ralstonraymond.pdf
"Since then, numerous studies have shown selenium supplementation counteracts the negative impacts of exposure to mercury, particularly in regard to neurotoxicity, fetotoxicity, and developmental toxicity. The ability of selenium compounds to decrease the toxic action of mercury has been established in all investigated species of mammals, birds, and fish."
"Accordingly, if a toxin can enter the brain and disrupt selenoprotein synthesis, detrimental effects would be expected. Methyl mercury not only has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, but its exceptionally high affinity for selenium may enable it to specifically sequester the brains selenium and diminish selenoprotein synthesis. The affinity constant for selenocysteines selenium and mercury is ~10 ^-22, and the free selenides that form during each cycle of selenocysteine synthesis have an exceptionally high affinity constant for mercury: 10 ^-45 (29). Mercury selenide precipitates have extremely low solubility, ranging from 10 ^-58 to 10 ^-65;thus they are thought to be metabolically inert (30). It is reasonable then to assume that not only does selenium have an effect on mercurys bioavailability, but mercury may also have an effect on selenium bioavailability. Therefore, the understanding of the protective effect of selenium against mercury exposure may actually be backwards. Mercurys propensity for selenium sequestration in brain and endocrine tissues may inhibit formation of essential Se-dependent proteins (selenoproteins). Hence, seleniums protective effect against mercury toxicity may simply reflect the importance of maintaining sufficient free selenium to support normal selenium-dependent enzyme synthesis and activity (see figure)."
"...the upper limit of the estimated safe and adequate dietary intake is currently set at 200 microg per day."
So, I feel quite comfortable with the idea that most fish is of net benefit to health, notwithstanding the mercury it might contain. But, to be totally safe, a small supplemental amount of selenium might provide protection against past exposure, as well as future potential exposures.
Best,
Lar
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