aaron_c
Senior Member
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@Star-Anise
If you aren't sure whether you still have mercury in your system, I would advise against taking any NAC until you get this cleared up. Cheney describes two patients who went on high-dose NAC which, he believes, caused them to commit suicide when it moved mercury from elsewhere in the body into their brains. High doses of methylcobalamin (but not other kinds of cobalamin) may also cause similar problems with mercury.
To test for mercury, I prefer to use a hair mineral analysis (HMA) rather than a urine sample following IV chelation. I prefer this only because it is cheaper and doesn't cause side effects. If you use a HMA, I would suggest making sure that the lab you use works with Andrew Hall Cutler's "counting rules," because you cannot measure body mercury burden simply by looking at the mercury level in hair. You can, however, determine whether one has mercury poisoning by looking for evidence of "deranged mineral transport" in a HMA. You do this with his counting rules, which you can get by buying his book or PMing me.
The counting rules are things like "Are more than 14 values above the 50th percentile?" or "Are more than six values above the 95th and/or below the 5th percentiles?" (I don't think those are actual rules, but they should be similar). Not all labs provide percentiles as yardsticks, so it is easiest if you use Doctor's Data, which is the lab Cutler used.
If you aren't sure whether you still have mercury in your system, I would advise against taking any NAC until you get this cleared up. Cheney describes two patients who went on high-dose NAC which, he believes, caused them to commit suicide when it moved mercury from elsewhere in the body into their brains. High doses of methylcobalamin (but not other kinds of cobalamin) may also cause similar problems with mercury.
To test for mercury, I prefer to use a hair mineral analysis (HMA) rather than a urine sample following IV chelation. I prefer this only because it is cheaper and doesn't cause side effects. If you use a HMA, I would suggest making sure that the lab you use works with Andrew Hall Cutler's "counting rules," because you cannot measure body mercury burden simply by looking at the mercury level in hair. You can, however, determine whether one has mercury poisoning by looking for evidence of "deranged mineral transport" in a HMA. You do this with his counting rules, which you can get by buying his book or PMing me.
The counting rules are things like "Are more than 14 values above the 50th percentile?" or "Are more than six values above the 95th and/or below the 5th percentiles?" (I don't think those are actual rules, but they should be similar). Not all labs provide percentiles as yardsticks, so it is easiest if you use Doctor's Data, which is the lab Cutler used.