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According to Andrew Cutler, it's a bad idea to take ALA on a non-frequent dose schedule if you have mercury. Once or twice a day is not often enough. The amount in the typical ALA pill (100mg) is way too much for starting out. R-ALA is not a good form of ALA to take.
ALA is a mercury chelator. If you take it at intervals longer that it's half life, it will pull out some mercury, but then it will get redistributed again, causing various symptoms.
Basically, if you try this, and you have mercury, you may get worse.
I have personal experience with this happening.
See my signature link for info on Andrew Cutler frequent dose chelation and how to test for mercury.
I didn't realize it could become that serious - might be better to hold off on this one, especially as I've been on a pretty good track lately. Thanks for pointing this out.
Thanks for bringing this up. I didn't realize this was in Freddd's protocol. I'm going to put a note in my signature link.
FYI a few months ago I started having symptoms that I associate with B12 deficiency, but more B12 didn't help. It kept getting worse and nothing helped. I was really worried – was my B12 solution not working anymore?
Then I realized I had recently started taking the Life Extension two per day vitamins. I had just started learning about the Cutler protocol, and I realized the LE supplements contained ALA! I stopped taking the LE supplement and the new symptoms vanished within 48 hours. I would NOT take ALA except as described in the Cutler protocol.
It also suggests that my B12 "deficiency" symptoms may very well be signs of mercury toxicity. Greg has never been able to figure out why I have such a voracious need for B12. The symptoms I have that are helped by B12, I now realize, are very similar to minor mercury-poisoning symptoms. I also discovered mercury causes B12-deficiency symptoms (see e.g. point #12 here), and I believe your body uses B12 to protect itself against mercury, though I can't find a cite on that now. Hmmm.
Along related lines, your body also uses cholesterol to flush out mercury, which may explain my very high cholesterol levels (280 range) even though sonograms show my carotids to be whistle-clean.
Interesting, @Johnmac. I'm planning to get my amalgams removed this winter and then I'm going into chelation. I'm hoping my large doses of B12 will help the process be as quick and painless as possible.