It is hard to know for sure although for myself I had a lot problems after my tooth with a mercury amalgam cracked. Rich and other people much more knowledgeable than myself agree that overmethylation is possible and perhaps even common among the people here, but I don't know enough to offer my own opinion. This is Rich's answer to someone asking about symptoms during methylation:
I have a fairly short experience of the methylation protocol. I tried it for a few weeks & got pretty ill. I assume it was working & I just got overloaded with stored toxins.
***That is one possibility for causing symptoms on this protocol. The biochemical theory associated with the treatment does support this explanation, some of the symptoms people report do seem to involve mobilization and excretion of stored toxins, and there are measurements that support toxin buildup and excretion on the treatment.
***Other causes of symptoms appear to be excitotoxicity and potassium deficiency. The excitotoxicity-related symptoms are insomnia, anxiety, nervousness, a "wired" feeling, and hypersensitivity of the senses. Low potassium affects the heartbeat as well as causing muscle spasms and other nervous system related effects.
I'd like to continue. I'll probably have to ramp it up slower.
***Quite a few others have taken this approach. It takes longer, but is more tolerable.
I'm just wondering if others have a big release of stored toxins & how to handle it....? Do we work this protocol up very slowly? How long does it take? (I suppose it's an individual thing.)
***Yes, it does seem to be an individual thing. Some people seem to have bigger body burdens of toxins than others. Probably depends on how long a person has been ill, and what they have been exposed to, before and during the illness.
What do you do to absord or excrete the toxins? What are the toxins exactly? Is it heavy metals, pesticides, chemicals? Do we need to find out what is being excreted so we can use the appropriate binder, chelator? Are there tests to find out what the toxins are - exactly?
***There are some tests available. Probably the most commonly used ones are the urine toxic elements test and the red blood cell or whole blood toxic elements tests. There are also the fecal minerals test and the hair minerals test. Doctors Data is one lab that offers these, and they can be obtained through some doctors, or from www.directlabs.com without a doctor's order. In addition, US BioTek offers an environmental pollutants panel. I think that there are toxicology labs that offer pesticide tests. Which toxins a person has again will depend on what they have been exposed to, and it varies a lot. Dr. John McLaren Howard at Acumen Lab in the UK has some very nice tests that look at chemical blockers on the mitochondrial translocator protein, at adducts on the DNA,and at volatile organics in the blood. I don't think these tests are offered now to people in the U.S., because of high demand, but I have seen quite a few reports from people who have had them, and Dr. Howard finds a wide variety of toxins in different people, including chemicals from permanent hair dye, benzene and other organic solvents, perhaps from gasoline fumes, various pesticides, antiseptic agents, cleaning agents, etc.
***All this testing costs money of course, so most of the people I have interacted with have not done much of it, though some have. It would be wonderful if everyone could afford to run all these tests before and after doing the protocol, and then we would have great data! Dream on, Rich! -)
***As to what can be done to help get rid of the toxins, there are four approaches that I know of, some easier to do, more available, and less costly than others. They boil down to ways of removing toxins via the urine, the stools, the sweat, and directly from the blood.
***Urine: The idea here is to make the urine more alkaline (higher pH). By doing this, one can cause those toxins that are in the chemical form of weak acids to ionize more, and thus be more likely to go out in the urine, rather than being reabsorbed into the blood by the kidneys. Lemon juice is one way to do that, but it's important to use a drinking straw and to flush the teeth afterward so that the citric acid will not damage the enamel. Paradoxically, lemon juice, which contains citric acid, will actually cause the urine to be more alkaline, because the citrate is metabolized in the body, leaving strong base-formers (sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium) to go out in the urine.
***Stools: The idea here is to take substances that will bind toxins that are excreted into the gut via the bile from the liver, and make sure that they go on out in the stools, and do not get reabsorbed via the enterohepatic circulation and go back to the liver. In this category are activated charcoal, modified citrus pectin, cholestryramine, zeolites and clays, such as bentonite. Activated charcoal will adsorb a variety of organic substances (including some vitamins, so it's important not to take them together). Modified citrus pectin and other indigestible fibers can bind some toxic elements. Cholestyramine takes out negatively charged toxins, such as biotoxins (as discovered by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker), zeolites are designed for certain atomic or molecular sized toxins, and clays will take out positively charged toxic elements. Beyond these are the chelators, which are designed to form two bonds to toxic element ions, such as mercury. The excretion can be via either the urine or the stools.
***Sweat: This is the sauna approach, usually the far infrared sauna. It's important to replace the water and minerals that are lost, and to remove sweat promptly, so that the toxins are not reabsorbed through the skin.
***Blood: This is much less commonly used, much more difficult to get access to, and more expensive. It's sort of like the dialysis that the kidney patients get, but the blood is passed over activated charcoal or another substance designed to bind a particular toxin, and then put back into the body. I think this would be lifesaving for more people if it were more widely used. Some people have high body burdens of particular toxins, and their detox system, perhaps for genetic reasons, is not able to take them out.
***Best regards,
***Rich