Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment

Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment starts with a detailed explanation of why to consider amalgam illness to be something that some people must have by comparing the well known statistics for how much mercury people absorb from their fillings to the well known statistics of how sensitive different members of a population are to a given toxin. This is for people who really don’t know if they believe in amalgam illness or not (the other material available is rather sensational and I can’t blame anyone reading it for having questions) before going any further.

Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment discusses how to deal with physicians if you think you have a controversial disease – especially if you have the great “luck” to be covered by a managed care plan.

A key section is devoted to diagnosis – how to tell if you actually have amalgam illness instead of something else. It is also possible to be mercury poisoned from something other than amalgam, and the testing and examination described here is diagnostic regardless of the source.

How to get the dental work done safely if you have decided amalgam fillings are the problem is briefly described – there is a robust industry of amalgam free dentists if you know how to look for them. The use of drugs and nutritional supplements to get the mercury out of your system is carefully presented- there are some important factors here that are not well described in the previous books on the subject and not all physicians who claim they know what to do actually give good advice.

Then comes what turns out to be the major section of the book – how to treat all the related health conditions amalgam illness can cause so as to relieve them while mercury detoxification proceeds. Since amalgam illness is not widely recognized in the medical community, most people with it get pretty sick before they get motivated to bounce around between doctors and eventually end up in front of one who tells them about it. So most victims have pretty serious, unpleasant health problems (like fibromyalgia or severe allergies) and they really need to make these STOP for the year or two it can take to get fully detoxed and let your body heal.

There are extensive tables of what to use for different conditions, a description of all the drugs and nutritional supplements suggested in the book, and appendices covering things like what the assorted clinical laboratory tests you might get actually mean, what other helpful books are that you might use, and supporting information like what the chelating agents are and how they work.

It is common for two conflicting but legitimate segments of the medical community to be at odds as to the methods for diagnosing and treating certain conditions. Where there is more than one recommended method of diagnosis or therapy and none of them are used exclusively and uniformly by all physicians, a physician is acting ethically and in accordance with the law if he uses one of these approved methods, even if it later turns out to be the wrong one.

Thus, in controversial areas, the burden really is on the patient to decide whether to accept the physician’s diagnosis and proposed treatment plan, or to seek another. This is why patients’ rights exist and are strongly protected by law. So if you are getting diagnoses like “there is nothing wrong,” or “it’s all in your head” and proposed treatment plans like “try ignoring it and seeing if it goes away,” you have no obligation to accept these. If you want another diagnosis or treatment plan, you have to find another physician who follows different methods of diagnosis and treatment for this kind of condition.

In an overall lifestyle sense, the fact that symptoms come and go leads to the victim having periods of weeks to years of being highly functional and productive, interspersed with periods of being nonproductive and having a hard time getting anything done. Life seems to progress in fits and starts. Great progress is made on projects which later get shelved for long periods. As the disease continues, the productive periods become shorter, fewer, and farther between.

There are emotional changes in mercury poisoning. Depression slowly sets in. Victims feel fatigued and listless. They lack motivation – even for crucial tasks. They lose interest in their surroundings and in their own life. They do not enjoy life, or experience happiness or joy. They experience constant fear e. g. of losing their job. They may be very tense. They feel hopeless. They have a sense of impending doom. Every small problem is discouraging. Minor difficulties seem overwhelming and insurmountable.

The altered emotional state of a mercury intoxicated person leads to impaired interpersonal relationships. They become increasingly irritable and sensitive, reacting strongly to relatively innocent remarks. They may not be able to take orders, instructions, or suggestions without losing their temper. They resent criticism and may interpret innocent remarks critically. They may have an exaggerated response to stimulation and become fearful or anxious and nervous. They may project their fears and anxieties onto others, making inappropriate criticisms or attacks. They become shy and avoid dealing with strangers. While timid, they may unexpectedly lose self control with strangers. They may wish to visit with friends and family extensively, often wishing to engage in long, repetitive conversations, then withdraw for prolonged periods of time. They withdraw more and more from social contacts.

Intelligence gradually deteriorates. Previously bright persons become dull and slow in thinking. They suffer from a progressive decline specifically affecting short term memory as well as the faculties for logical reasoning. Thus their ability to do things like balance the checkbook, do math, or play chess suffers. They lose the ability to concentrate. Memory problems may be more from distractability and inability to concentrate and pay enough attention to get things INTO their memory than an actual failure to remember things (thus they may complain of memory problems but do well on memory tests). They cease being motivated towards their work or other tasks. Thoughts become heavy, repetitive and pedantic. Creative thinking becomes progressively more difficult, eventually becoming impossible. They become unable to select the right words to convey their meaning, and make stylistic and grammatical errors. Their ability to express themselves declines progressively.

There is a distinctive cognitive symptom of being unable to think clearly without great effort. The best description for people who have not experienced it is of a hangover without pain. People who have experienced it will recognize the term “brain fog” as entirely descriptive.

As the victim’s level of intoxication waxes and wanes they go through periods of life when they do or do not dream. Dreaming may be in black and white.

Early physical symptoms include dizziness, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), insomnia, daytime drowsiness, loss of appetite, a tendency towards diarrhea – often alternating with constipation, cold hands and feet, a tendency towards sweating (some people have the opposite symptom and do not sweat at all), flushing or reddening of the skin – particularly on the face and neck. Some people blush frequently, but others do not blush at all. Asthma is a symptom of chronic mercury poisoning. Digestive disturbances are also common.

The skin becomes dry, athlete’s foot and toenail fungus progress, and the insides of the ankles, particularly behind the ankle bone and a bit above it become dry, itchy, flaky and peel. This often becomes painful and annoying enough to keep the victim up at night. Even after fungus and yeast infection has been eliminated hyperkeratosis, often with papular erythema and itching are common.

The hair becomes thinner, dryer, duller, less strongly colored, slower growing, and more brittle.

The biological clock is disturbed. Waking up late and staying up late is more common than being an “early bird.” Try as they might, the mercury poisoned person simply cannot control their circadian rhythm.

Victims may become photophobic and find bright light uncomfortable and unpleasant. There may be visual disturbances, including alterations in color perception leading to reduced sensitivity to the color red, or color blindness. The ability to focus on distant objects may be sporadically impaired. Peripheral vision may be reduced in the most severe cases.

The hands and feet often become distinctly cold. This can occur suddenly and is most distinctive when combined with sweating. Later in more severe poisoning they may also tingle or lose feeling.

The effects of mercury on the mouth are receding, sometimes spongy gums that bleed easily and teeth that are ‘loose’ in their sockets and can be wiggled very slightly. It also causes excessive salivation and unusually bad breath.

Mercury interferes with the sense of smell which becomes less acute, and later with hearing, in which perception of sounds does not diminish as notably as the patient’s ability to understand and interpret them – e. g. to understand speech directed at them even though they hear it clearly.

Victims often experience discomfort that feels like a “tight band around their head.” They may also experience sharp points of discomfort in their ear canals at bedtime.

Mercury also interferes with the body’s ability to regulate temperature. Victims may alternate between being hot and cold when the temperature isn’t changing, or have to wear more clothes than other people, or have more difficulty than other people in staying comfortable while the temperature changes. Temperature disregulation also leads to ‘night sweats.’

Amalgam illness is analogous to a war. Your enemy, mercury, captured a beachhead in your teeth and fortified it with amalgam. Then it launched an attack. House to house. Organ to organ. Cell to cell. Slowly capturing your body. You win the war with a surgical strike. Dental surgery. Drill out those fillings. Removing your amalgam declares an armistice. Fighting stops, but the mercury atoms are still dug in wherever they reached. Chelation sends clean up squads off to round up the enemy and escort them out. Meanwhile the surviving cells in your body get to work and to repair the war damage. Supplementation is like disaster relief – it makes the process go a lot faster.

There are two goals to treatment. First, get rid of the mercury. Second, control symptoms so you can be comfortable and productive during the prolonged period when mercury is removed and healing takes place. In order to control your symptoms it is necessary to identify the metabolic defects mercury is causing for you.

In your ongoing battle to control symptoms while the mercury comes out and your body repairs all the damage, you need to take a straightforward, common sense approach.

Know yourself. If you react to everything, go slow, start with small doses of things, be patient. Don’t be any more aggressive than your body and your psyche can tolerate.

Start with the problems that are causing other problems.

If your digestion is not working, get your guts fixed up since this will take a load off your liver and let you get helpful supplements and medicines into you.

Make sure your hormones are working right. Treat your body, not numbers on a lab report.

Solve the other troublesome problems, and find solutions that work for you.

It is very common for mercury poisoned people to have been treated for depression, and for most MD’s to diagnose them as “just depressed.” While depression is often present it is not the cause of the problem. It should be treated to reduce suffering. The underlying problems causing it must be identified and treated too – just treating depression is like continuing to give painkillers day after day for a broken arm instead of setting it and putting it in a cast.

Both you and your doctor need to know how long it takes before you get well, and what do you expect along the way.

Using a proper protocol, e. g. DMSA every 3-4 hours on alternate weeks: 2-6 months to feel better. Then DMSA + LA every 3-4 hours 3 or 4 days every week or two to clear the brain and internal organs, 2-6 months to feel better. Continue supplements and diet control with continuing DMSA + LA chelation while healing takes place, another 4-30 months to good physical and mental health. Total time: 1 to 4 years if you stick with the program.

The big determiner of how long it takes is the DMSA+LA phase. That depends on how seriously poisoned you got.

You feel depressed, tired, icky. You are moderately poisoned. 6-11 months of DMSA+LA treatment will be required. You will FEEL cured immediately if you take the right supplements and medicines, but you have to chelate to get rid of the mercury.

You are starting to get stuff like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, environmental sensitivities, severe allergies or asthma, emotional disturbances. 14-25 months of DMSA-LA will be required. You will feel MUCH better with the proper supplements and medicines and be able to get on with life pretty quickly.

You have multiple chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue syndrome, serious emotional disturbances. You really are not able to participate in life. You are very seriously poisoned. You will need 20-36 months of DMSA+LA to get well. You will need proper supplements and medications to be at all functional and will need to pay careful attention to continuing them and adjusting them for 2-3 years until you are detoxed enough that your health isn’t coming out of a pill bottle.

If you continue to chelate with DMSA+LA for 6 months to a year after you are sure you are well you will remove more mercury from your brain and greatly reduce the chances of future problems, neurological disease, or premature aging.

If you follow a standard “alternative medicine” or “witch doctor” protocol, e. g. DMSA every other day or DMPS injections monthly: you will get worse for 6 months to one year, then slowly get better for another several years – but behavioral and coordination problems are exacerbated by this therapy and emotional symptoms are not alleviated. There is also a substantial risk of psychiatric illness. Total time: a year of misery, 5 years to feel better, but you never will be completely well.

If you drill out your fillings then do nothing: about the same thing will happen as with the “witch doctor” protocol, but without the side effects, expense, or risk of insanity.