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ALA in Freddd's protocol

bigmillz

Senior Member
Messages
219
Location
NYC
I'm looking into adding ALA in a couple of weeks, and I've heard Na-R-ALA can be more effective. Same thing? Dosage? Any notes on starting it or anything to be aware of? I haven't found a lot by searching unfortunately.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
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.
 

bigmillz

Senior Member
Messages
219
Location
NYC
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.
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
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.
 

bigmillz

Senior Member
Messages
219
Location
NYC
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.

Thanks as well Gary! This is definitely shaping up to be something I don't want to mess with anytime soon.
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
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.
 

Johnmac

Senior Member
Messages
756
Location
Cambodia
I've had experience of taking ALA episodically & paying the price too. In my case it was chelating lazily.

I've seen posts on vitamin forums where people report getting sick from taking supplements with ALA in them.

I've seen it said that B12 deficiency & mercury toxicity are two sides of the same coin. A survey of parents of autistic kids (17,000 people from memory) found the two therapies which helped most (just about everything allopathic & alternative was on the list) were B12 supplementation and mercury chelation. Both got around 72% (again from memory).

@bigmillz, the alternative to avoiding ALA is trying some proper Cutler-style chelation some time.
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
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.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
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.

Yes - B12 and mercury are like two sides of the same coin. Mercury (and lead) negatively impact methionine synthase (MTR on methylation diagrams).

So if you're having methylation issues, suspect that you may have mercury and/or lead.

You can compensate a little or a lot by taking B12, but getting the metals out is going to be the ultimate fix.
 

caledonia

Senior Member
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.

Hopefully your dentist will be using IAOMT removal procedures and you'll be taking Cutler's core four supplements?

Otherwise removal is another way to get worse.
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
Yup. I'm already on the Core Four. Still figuring out what IAOMT dentist to use for the removals.
 

Eastman

Senior Member
Messages
526
New here and looking for insights.

As far as I know, mb12 turns inorganic mercury into methylmercury, which crosses the blood brain barrier. This was one of the reasons richvank recommended hydroxocobalamin in his simplified methylation protocol. Therefore, wouldn't mb12 cause some of the same symptoms as ALA, at least in the short term?

@garyfritz, when you were having problems with the pure mb12 oil, may I ask what exactly were your symptoms?
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
There is indeed evidence that mB12 can methylate mercury. However, I also see papers (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7292517) saying mB12 inhibits the toxic effect of methylmercury, I've seen other papers & reliable sources saying mB12 has a protective effect against mercury.

On methyl-only, I didn't experience symptoms ANYthing like what I saw when I accidentally took ALA. When I first started taking mB12, I experienced gradual improvement of my symptoms. Once I figured out that mB12 was the cause and started using it more consistently, I started seeing more direct cause-and-effect results. With Readisorb liposomal spray mB12 and with Country Life sublingual mB12, I could feel almost immediate (within maybe 1-2 minutes) relief from symptoms. When I woke in the night, very agitated with twitching and tensed muscles, I could pop a CL sublingual and almost immediately feel the tension drain out of my body. Within a few minutes I was asleep.

When I was on methyl-only, I was still having some symptoms. Hard to describe, and it's been several years so my memory isn't fresh, but I remember feeling "not right," achy, fatigued, with trembly muscles. But that was still a BIG improvement over what I experienced before I started taking mB12. The methyl/adenosyl combination seems to work best for me, and keeps most of my symptoms almost entirely under control.

When I unknowingly took ALA for about 5 weeks, my cold-triggered urticaria got MUCH worse, worse than it's ever been. I also started waking in the night with the same old twitching/agitated symptoms I used to have, and B12 didn't help much. Then I started following the ACC group, discovered ALA with amalgams was a Bad Idea, and stopped taking the supplement that contained the ALA. WIthin 48 hours those symptoms vanished.

So FOR ME, as far as I can tell, mB12 and adB12 have been entirely beneficial. I don't experience anything like the symptoms (apparently caused by mercury redistribution??) caused by the ALA.
 

Eastman

Senior Member
Messages
526
Thanks for the response.

My mother and I both seem to have gotten brain fog from mb12, which I suspect was caused by mercury. Both of us have amalgams. The brain fog cleared after a few days for me but persisted for my mother (she was on much higher mb12 dose).

I am planning to switch to TMG instead for methylation support, remineralize, and then reintroduce mb12 later.
 

garyfritz

Senior Member
Messages
599
I'm not sure about that. If the brain fog was caused by mercury distribution, that would imply the mercury was redistributed to your brain. Once mercury is in the brain, it takes decades for your body to remove it. So if the fog was caused by mercury, you should not have seen immediate improvement when you stopped taking it. I suspect the brain fog came from another source.

By the same logic, the problems I'm having must not be caused by brain mercury. Or I wouldn't get such quick relief from B12.
 
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Eastman

Senior Member
Messages
526
I'm not sure either. It's just a hypothesis, but I need a hypothesis to base my action on.

My other hypothesis is that the mercury that is redistributed into the brain is not necessarily removed from the brain when the brain fog goes away. It may just be displaced or converted to less immediately-harmful forms as the body adjusts to its presence in the brain.
 

aquariusgirl

Senior Member
Messages
1,732
I wonder if taking the ALA depleted already low biotin?

Life Extension packages ALA w/biotin ...for this reason I would guess