sela
Senior Member
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- marin co, ca
would anyone like to post their experience with this? it is so frequently recommended. i am sure there have been posts already but the search function doesn't seem to work for me.
Hi Rich,
do you know how to get mercury from brain? I am on 2400mg of NAC daily for many years and suffer from permanent depression. I use many detox moppers, but I do not know if any of them are efficient for detoxing mercury from brain. I take NAC with selenium and molybdenum, high dose C, DE and charcoal. My mouth is full of amalgam fillings, but I can not imagine getting them all out, no to speak about fact there is not any satisfactory substitute for them.
Hi, Lala.
The Institute of Medicine in the U.S. has recommended an upper limit daily dosage of 400 mcg of selenium.
I don't know what dosage schedule you are using for ALA. Cutler has emphasized the importance of keeping the concentration in the blood up by frequent dosing (every 3 hours around the clock during the treatment periods). Otherwise, the use of ALA can be counterproductive, according to him, because it can redistribute mercury. He also suggests using DMSA together with ALA, I believe.
I don't know what "DE" stands for.
Probably mercury diffuses slowly out of the brain if the level in the body in general is lowered. However, it is thought that the mercury in the brain is mostly bound to selenium and sulfur as inorganic mercury, and to diffuse back across the blood-brain barrier it would need to revert back to methylmercury, which is lipid-soluble and more readily diffusible through the barrier. I have considered the possibility that methyl B12 might promote this conversion, since it is chemically able to methylate inorganic mercury, but I don't know if this would work, so I can't recommend it. If there is inorganic mercury in the body in general, I think there is a possibility that methyl B12 would methylate some of it, which could cause it to move into the brain, which of course would be counterproductive.
I wish I had a more definite solution to the problem of mercury in the brain, but I think this is about all that is known.
Best regards,
Rich
Hi Rich,
A question for you Rich; Why would methylmercury decide to just "settle" down in the brain once it is mobilized, especially since we are hoping to mobilize it out of the brain.
Life is a bunch of fuzzy logic choices because there is no way to know with certainty. Sometimes you just have to play it as if the cards lay in a certain way because you go down for sure otherwise. That's where I was at when I decided to try mb12, going down fast and hard. My background is in the insurance business which plays the odds with a very high house percentage.
This is a choice only you can make if you want to try it. I'm wondrously glad I did. It gave me a life again. I would be dead otherwise or at very best in a wheelchair with diapers and a totally screwed neurology, not able to see well enough to read and unable to track through an entire movie.
Hi, Freddd.
My concern is not that "methylmercury will decide to settle down in the brain." My concern is that it will react with enyzmes in the brain that contain selenium or sulfur, and the mercury will revert to inorganic (mercuric) mercury, bound to these enzymes and inactivating them, producing neurological damage.
Chemical substances don't "decide" to do anything, and they really don't "care" how we are hoping to mobilize them. They follow the laws of chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, which involve the binding energies of various chemical compounds and the energy barriers over which substances must go to react with each other. These in turn are determined by quantum mechanics as applied to the particular electron orbitals of the various molecules.
As I see it, the problem is that mercury has a much greater affinity for selenium than it does for a methyl group. Therefore, if methylmercury encounters selenium in the brain, it is very likely that it will react and deposit mercury on the selenium. I would expect that the equilibrium in this reaction will be shifted strongly toward this result.
To overcome that, I think it might require a much higher concentration of methylcobalamin than could be achieved under physiological conditions in the brain. Perhaps this could be done slowly, as you suggest, but it might be extremely slow.
I understand what you mean about an individual having to make difficult choices sometimes, and I'm glad that the choices you made paid off for you. However, I feel that I need to be very careful not to recommend actions the consequences of which are not well understood and have the potential to be harmful to people who might not be in a position to understand the risks. There is a wide range of understanding and expertise on the internet forums. Some people are very able to understand the risks, and others are not. I think it's true that individuals are responsible for their own choices, but it makes a big difference whether they are informed choices or not. This is the basis for the requirement for "informed consent" in clinical studies, such as the one Dr. Nathan and I carried out.
Also, the possible consequences of new treatments are not completely understood. If you want to understand better why I seem overly cautious, read the end of the article I wrote on July 18, 2007, at http://www.aboutmecfs.org/Trt/TrtMethylPlan.aspx I was very chagrined to learn then that even seemingly innocuous nutritional supplements can produce serious adverse effects in some people, depending on their individual situations.
I continue to emphasize that anyone doing methylation cycle treatments needs to be under the care of a licensed physician. The goal here is to help people, while avoiding pitfalls that can cause them harm.
Best regards,
Rich
Hi Freddd.
Rich: "I continue to emphasize that anyone doing methylation cycle treatments needs to be under the care of a licensed physician. The goal here is to help people, while avoiding pitfalls that can cause them harm."
Freddd: "I agree that is a good idea if possible. I spent $200,000 out of pocket over 20 years for testing and "treatment", not including pharmacy costs, with all sorts of licensed physicians and ended up with a $1500/month pharmacy bill and no healing at all because not one of them had a clue even when I told them the problem of needing "real b12". I did that for the first time in 1980. It just got me kicked out of practices and called names. Only a few were honest enough to tell me to go find somebody who understood what the problem was rather than calling me names and playing blame the patient. I was being treated to death by the standards of practice. I had a colleague who was a member of the Joint Commission - ambulatory care standards committee. I was in far more danger of serious injury and death from following the standards of practice than I ever was from taking these supplements. Even the glutathione just put me back in the boat I had been in for decades. I finally have an internist who works with me now and has for 8 years but only because I offered a ringside seat to "miraculous" healing. He said "I've never seen anybody come back like this from being so far gone". So he does testing and monitors me and tries to keep me out of trouble. A female neurologist back in 2000 told me "I could diagnose you with FMS but it won't do you any good. It will only get you treated badly because you have an imaginary woman's disease." I had already been so diagnosed and treated badly so her warning was rather late. This is after an hour long neurological exam that included an EMG. I know attitudes about CFS/FMS are changing but to find a knowledgeable physician is very difficult. Most just want to prescribe Cymbalta or whatever which is not a treatment and heals nothing. The symptoms it relieves respond better to mb12/adb12/Metafolin etc. without all the side effects of the medication that doesn't heal but just adds to problems while quieting the pain a pit at great expense. I was taking Dilantin for 15 years or so for the same reason."
I fully understand what you're saying here, Freddd. It IS very difficult to find a physician who can and will really help with these disorders. I'm continuing to try to interest more physicians in methylation treatment, and it's a slow process. (Incidentally, if anyone knows of physicians who are doing methylation treatment or who are interested in finding out more about it, I would appreciate it if you would send me their names and locations at richvank@aol.com) But I think we have to try to work with physicians, for a lot of reasons. One is that every person is unique, and they don't all respond to treatments in the same way. People really need a knowledgeable physician monitoring them so that if serious adverse effects arise, they can be recognized and properly dealt with. Another reason is that if a physician can be won over to this treatment, there is a big multiplier effect, because they interact with so many patients. I had a phone conversation with one of the physicians I know who has become a "believer" in this treatment. I asked him if he was treating very many patients with methylation, and his reply was,"I treat ALL of them with methyation!" He went on to add that depending on their response, he might continue it, or drop back and do some other treatments first, and then resume methylation treatment. Well, he is able to reach a lot more people than I can, and I would like to "recruit" many more like him! I also learn a great deal from interactions with physicians, because of their practical, "hands-on" experience with treating patients. The other issue, of course, is liability. I am a researcher, not a licensed physician. I am not legally authorized to practice medicine, and I do not want to be accused of doing so without a license. So, for all these reasons and probably some others, my position is that we do need to be working through the physicians. I realize the barriers they face in adopting non-drug treatments, and I sympathize with them. They have a difficult system in which they must work. Insight on this can be gained from the recent interview with Burt Berkson:
http://www.honestmedicine.com/2009/...k-and-our-medical-system-the-interview-t.html
Best regards,
Rich
Hi, Freddd.
"Right at the top of this page I am writing this on is an ad for "Nutrient for FM & ME/CFS Relief". It's a pathetic assortment of vitamins and other things. It's not terrible except that it has only 30mcg of oral hycbl, folic acid, the wrong carnitine, no active b12s, no active folate and isn't likely to do much of anything when compared to either of our favored protocols and costs as much as a similarly cost limited program of effective supplements per month."
That's Marty Pall's protocol. On the CureTogether.com site, it ranks pretty low in the average effectiveness ratings that people have given it there. Marty is in the process of modifying it, and he wrote me that his revised protocol will include a higher dosage of liposomal hydroxocobalamin, as well as some L5-methyl tetrahydrofolate. I expect that this will give it a boost in effectiveness, though I know you are not big on hydroxocobalamin. His rationale for adding these is different from mine, and we will no doubt continue to debate that, but I think the good news is that more people are likely to be helped by his new protocol.
Best regards,
Rich