caledonia
Senior Member
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Thanks @Wishful I am having toxic tests at an independent lab I believe it has done damage to me as I have MTHFR compound heterozygous (677 +/- 1298 +/-) which means my methylation system doesn’t function properly and can’t get rid of toxin like other people, which means the mercury and metals have messed up my immune system and made me ill.
I see comments like this a lot, I guess because MTHFR is more well studied than some other SNPs and also mercury and other toxic metals.
Yes, an MTHFR C677T mutation will have some effect on methylation and eventually glutathione production (glutathione being the thing that actually handles detoxification). There are also mutations in glutathione itself (GSTP, GPX, G6PD).
The thing that everyone seems to miss is effect of epigenetics on detoxification. Mercury, lead, aluminum, and copper inhibit methylation at MTR (right next to MTHFR). Mercury, copper, iron, zinc, and arsenic inhibit the glutathione production cycle.
These epigenetic exposures inhibit the cycles more than genetic mutations. In other words, if you had the same genetic mutations, but were not exposed to mercury (or other toxic metals), your methylation cycle would operate well enough and you wouldn't get sick.
Even if you had no mutations in MTHFR, the mercury and other metals would inhibit MTHFR as if you had mutations there. However, having mutations would set you up to get sicker sooner with lower exposures compared to the next person, all other things being equal.
The more metals you have, the less you're able to detoxify. It becomes a vicious downward spiral and eventually you get sick.
So all those little daily exposures from mercury amalgams, which might not seem that bad, do add up over time. Your body can't detoxify them well, so it stores the mercury in your tissues and brain. Lead gets stored in your bones. The half life of them detoxifying back out is decades. You would be dead before you ever naturally detoxified it all back out.
So this is why I say, if you're sick enough to be on this forum and you have (or you used to have) mercury fillings, you're probably mercury toxic.