Who has ruled out Lyme disease and heavy metal toxicity?

[Swim15]

As far as mercury specifically, if someone has CFS then that would be one of the things my eye on is first.

It is a direct mitochondrial toxin and will replace copper/zinc in cells, bind to mitochondrial proteins, and create damage that is seen frequently in CFS patients by seriously interfering with cellular redox.


Clearly not to say that everyone here is dealing with mercury, other heavy metals, mold, or lyme exclusively but I wanted this post to be informative because I thought that I had already fleshed out most of these a year or two ago - come to find out later that the testing that had been done was drastically inadequate. Once I got the proper testing done, everything clicked into place and now I have already significantly improved more in the last couple months than in the last 2 years. I'm confident I will be fully well within the next 6-8 months and back to normal life. These weren't topics that I saw covered much on here so I just wanted to bring up these points for people who may be candidates for them to look into.

 

[Swim15]

There have been other members here who have had fillings removed and greatly regretted it, since their symptoms increased. From what I understand, the action of removing fillings releases way more mercury into the mouth than leaving them in place does. Add in the stress of going to appointments, and possible financial stress. Removing amalgam fillings is by no means a guarantee of improved health.

This is generally correct which is why the removal must be done by a dentist knowledgeable in safe removal procedures, ideally also combined with a chelator to immediately remove mercury that is displaced before it can redeposit. Then the person needs to be adequately chelated before symptoms will improve which takes some time depending on the degree of toxicity.

Amalgam removal alone will not improve anything - removal followed by chelation is the only way to reverse things. If symptoms increase after removal then that's another sign that initial symptoms were caused by mercury poisoning.

 

[Swim15]

BTW, I have plenty of amalgam fillings, and am not worried about mercury from them. I did have proper testing from a toxicologist, who found no significant elevations of toxins, except for slightly elevated selenium which he said was normal given my high whole-grains diet at the time. Note that there was no sign of elevated mercury despite the fillings or the several mercury spills I had in my various homes (those old mercury thermometers).

I don't mean this to be argumentative but this isn't possible. If you have a mouth full of amalgam fillings then you absolutely have mercury toxicity and would show positive on tissue biopsy or very high levels on a challenge which is contraindicated until you have them removed.


If you go to page 81 of this document this is where it starts to talk about the amount of mercury released from amalgam fillings
https://www.paracelsus.com/resources/haley_the-toxicity-of-oral-infections-and-amalgams.pdf

Newer studies where they had amalgam sitting stationary (with no grinding, chewing, or pH change with saliva) in distilled water showed they released massive amounts of mercury.

 

[GlassCannonLife]

As far as mercury specifically, if someone has CFS then that would be one of the things my eye on is first.

It is a direct mitochondrial toxin and will replace copper/zinc in cells, bind to mitochondrial proteins, and create damage that is seen frequently in CFS patients by seriously interfering with cellular redox.


Clearly not to say that everyone here is dealing with mercury, other heavy metals, mold, or lyme exclusively but I wanted this post to be informative because I thought that I had already fleshed out most of these a year or two ago - come to find out later that the testing that had been done was drastically inadequate. Once I got the proper testing done, everything clicked into place and now I have already significantly improved more in the last couple months than in the last 2 years. I'm confident I will be fully well within the next 6-8 months and back to normal life. These weren't topics that I saw covered much on here so I just wanted to bring up these points for people who may be candidates for them to look into.

How much have you improved in the past few months? Are you able to say using eg the Bell scale? Is it all from the emeramide chelation therapy? Thanks

 

[Swim15]

How much have you improved in the past few months? Are you able to say using eg the Bell scale? Is it all from the emeramide chelation therapy? Thanks

I don't like the Bell scale for a lot of reasons as I think it takes a few things into account while failing to account for many others...I wouldn't want to rate myself on the scale but if I had to give you number estimates then I would say I've gone from a 3 to a 6 in the last few months.

This is from treating lyme and chelation (the lyme I would say is 30% of the solution and the chelation 70% if I had to give numbers although they both are interdependent on each other due to immune function).

IMO the mercury is the root problem for me and once that is taken care of then everything else will fall into place as it is doing already.

 

[GlassCannonLife]

I don't like the Bell scale for a lot of reasons as I think it takes a few things into account while failing to account for many others...I wouldn't want to rate myself on the scale but if I had to give you number estimates then I would say I've gone from a 3 to a 6 in the last few months.

This is from treating lyme and chelation (the lyme I would say is 30% of the solution and the chelation 70% if I had to give numbers although they both are interdependent on each other due to immune function).

IMO the mercury is the root problem for me and once that is taken care of then everything else will fall into place as it is doing already.

Ah ok, wow that's great progress!

The chelation was all emeramide at a slowly increasing dose until you got to your maintenance? Did you do it at the same time as you treated the Lyme (was that abx? Sorry I can't recall if you mentioned already somewhere), or did you do them separately so you could assess how much each was contributing?

 

[Swim15]

Ah ok, wow that's great progress!

The chelation was all emeramide at a slowly increasing dose until you got to your maintenance? Did you do it at the same time as you treated the Lyme (was that abx? Sorry I can't recall if you mentioned already somewhere), or did you do them separately so you could assess how much each was contributing?

My lyme treatment has had zero abx - personally I don't think antibiotics have any place in chronic lyme treatment and will do more harm than good. It has been a lot of different things including herbals, ozone, and immunomodulators like thymosin alpha 1 and thymulin.

I just recently added the mercury chelation (October 27th) and have slowly titrated up to assess tolerance. Some very toxic people only tolerate a toothpick amount (couple milligrams) while others can jump to much higher doses quickly. A full clinical dose (dose used in trials) is 300mg per day. That said, I've talked to one individual that has gone as high as 7,500mg in a single day and regularly used 5,000mg as once weekly doses. I've spoken to a number that can tolerate up to 600mg twice daily.

I have been pretty tolerance but I would exercise caution if anyone uses it. It is a forgiving drug but I definitely think that doses in the gram ranges could cause damage in someone with a lot of heavy metals if tolerance isn't properly assessed.

I made it up to a 300mg dose once but was unpleasantly stimulated by it (all doses make my insomnia much more severe) so I've settled on 100-150mg per day with breaks as I feel I need them.

Sorry, probably too much info but if anyone decides to dabble I'd like them to have more info than less.

 

[Swim15]

As an aside, I purchased a 10-pass/hyperbaric ozone machine from Zotzmann & Hese KG in Germany that will be arriving this week or early next.

It has a multitude of health benefits and a local physician I have seen cured at least one case of ME/CFS with it so I'll be using that as an overall treatment to heal damage from mercury as well as knock the lyme down.

 

[Learner1]

Curious as to who here has ruled them out? After following more docs, meeting patients, seeing disease pathology, etc I’d be a large percentage of people on here would nail down their diagnosis between these two and mold. Once they are taken care of any viral components usually go into remission

Thank you for bringing this up. They definitely should be tested for, and I bet they are fairly common.

I had mercury, arsenic, platinum toxicity and multiple mold mycotoxins. No Lyme, but I lived in the Pacific Northwest, where Lyme is rare. It depends on one's environmental exposures.

Chelating heavy metals and treating mycotoxins did not cause viruses to go away. They need treating too, along with immune system support.

Be aware that a lot of heavy metal diagnoses may be invalid. There are businesses that make their profits by showing graphs that show elevated levels, and selling treatments for those, but a proper medical analysis might show just normal levels of metals. Provocative testing is controversial, since elevated levels from those are not proven to correlate to actual health issues. I'm not sure of the accuracy of hair testing either.

Some people do have health problems from heavy metals, but if you do for-profit testing of metals and get frightening results, get a second evaluation from a proper toxicologist.

BTW, I have plenty of amalgam fillings, and am not worried about mercury from them. I did have proper testing from a toxicologist, who found no significant elevations of toxins, except for slightly elevated selenium which he said was normal given my high whole-grains diet at the time. Note that there was no sign of elevated mercury despite the fillings or the several mercury spills I had in my various homes (those old mercury thermometers).

Unfortunately, you seem to be quite misinformed on this topic. And, given what you've said about your mercury fillings and exposures to mercury spills, I agree with @Swim15 that it's highly likely you're mercury toxic. It would probably be prudent to do the Doctors Data urine tests provoked with DMSA or DMPS, followed by glutathione under expert supervision.

IMO, Mold and heavy metals get talked about alot only because they are low hanging fruit in the world of alternative testing

And many people are toxic with them, causing a cascade of significant health problems, including ME/CFS. Unfortunately, many also have other issues, like herpesviruses that complicate the picture which is why treating them may not result in a cure.

Thank you for saying this. It's a relief to me, as I don't want unnecessary worrying. A friend had amalgam fillings removed and didn't notice a positive difference in health. It's not something I want to do. It would be too stressful and expensive.

There have been other members here who have had fillings removed and greatly regretted it, since their symptoms increased. From what I understand, the action of removing fillings releases way more mercury into the mouth than leaving them in place does. Add in the stress of going to appointments, and possible financial stress. Removing amalgam fillings is by no means a guarantee of improved health.

Again, @Swim15 made valid points. I had my mercury fillings removed because they'd been leaching mercury into my bloodstream, and even though it was done carefully, it did release more mercury, which was removed with chelators and detox nutrients like B vitamins and glutathione, while replenishing "good minerals" - chelation can rid the body of minerals that are necessary cofactors for many biochemical processes. I'm very glad I did it, which did improve brain fog, fatigue, candida, etc.

 

[GlassCannonLife]

My lyme treatment has had zero abx - personally I don't think antibiotics have any place in chronic lyme treatment and will do more harm than good. It has been a lot of different things including herbals, ozone, and immunomodulators like thymosin alpha 1 and thymulin.

I just recently added the mercury chelation (October 27th) and have slowly titrated up to assess tolerance. Some very toxic people only tolerate a toothpick amount (couple milligrams) while others can jump to much higher doses quickly. A full clinical dose (dose used in trials) is 300mg per day. That said, I've talked to one individual that has gone as high as 7,500mg in a single day and regularly used 5,000mg as once weekly doses. I've spoken to a number that can tolerate up to 600mg twice daily.

I have been pretty tolerance but I would exercise caution if anyone uses it. It is a forgiving drug but I definitely think that doses in the gram ranges could cause damage in someone with a lot of heavy metals if tolerance isn't properly assessed.

I made it up to a 300mg dose once but was unpleasantly stimulated by it (all doses make my insomnia much more severe) so I've settled on 100-150mg per day with breaks as I feel I need them.

Sorry, probably too much info but if anyone decides to dabble I'd like them to have more info than less.

The detail is much appreciated. Could you in fact specify the herbs and dosages of herbs/peptides you used?

I don't understand the timeline at all though, sorry. You said that you had a major improvement (essentially from severe to moderate ME) in the last 2 months, which you attribute 30 % to treating potential Lyme (without using abx, so perhaps other viruses or immune dysfunction was addressed), and 70 % to chelation.

You then said that you only started emeramide in late October. So did you have a dramatic improvement since late October (the 70 %?), or was there other chelation therapy involved prior to this? Over what time frame did you do the Lyme treatments? Did the Lyme treatments overlap with any of the chelation therapy?

Thanks

 

[Learner1]

@Swim15 How are you getting emeramide?

"Early Access Program for Emeramide : EmeraMed" https://emeramed.com/early-access/

"Controversial supplement to come off shelves - Chicago Tribune" https://web.archive.org/web/2010073...warning-letter-expert-in-environmental-health

 

[Swim15]

The detail is much appreciated. Could you in fact specify the herbs and dosages of herbs/peptides you used?

I don't understand the timeline at all though, sorry. You said that you had a major improvement (essentially from severe to moderate ME) in the last 2 months, which you attribute 30 % to treating potential Lyme (without using abx, so perhaps other viruses or immune dysfunction was addressed), and 70 % to chelation.

You then said that you only started emeramide in late October. So did you have a dramatic improvement since late October (the 70 %?), or was there other chelation therapy involved prior to this? Over what time frame did you do the Lyme treatments? Did the Lyme treatments overlap with any of the chelation therapy?

Thanks

You're right I should have clarified some. I will post a brief back history since some people here have followed things

I become active here about a year and a half ago give or take. My very brief history is...
Ulcerative colitis (complicated at first with C diff.)
Wilson's disease (only a carrier but with labs that potentially warranted treatment)

I ruled out most of the roadmap diagnosis here and began seeing a new doctor in June 2021 after ditching my CFS doc, Jon Kaiser. Did not have a good experience with him.

Between June and July 2021 we diagnosed moderate mold toxicity, lyme + coinfectoins, and the mercury just last month.


I moved to get out of my house that had had water damage previously. Since then my lyme treatment has consisted of anti-lyme herbs, peptides, ozone, etc. I'll list my rough protocol below.

FMT - I did an FMT at the beginning of treatment to hopefully help optimize microbiome. I did about 6 or 8 last year and stool tests along with subjective evaluation showed they normalized my flora levels quite a bit.

Extracts (worked up to these doses over ~1 month)
Cats Claw 45 drops BID
Banderol 45 drops BID
Japense Knotweed 45 drops BID
Houtyinna 45 drops BID
CSA 45 drops BID

Powder/Capsules (worked up to these over ~1 month)
Andrographis (AP Bio) 2 capsules BID
Samsara Tick Immune 4 caps BID
Cat's Claw 6 caps BID
Samsara Tick Recovery (powder) 3g BID
Samsara Sida Acuta 20:1 3g BID
AHCC/Reishi/Cordyceps: multiple servings of each daily

Liposomal artemisinin 600mg QD 4 days on/8 days off (this was added later

Peptides/Other
Thymosin Alpha 1: did 1.5-2mg daily for 10 days and then switched over to thymulin
Thymulin: 10mg (one vial) QD
HGH: have used on and off for collagen and tissue protection/healing
Methylene blue: have used this some as it is potent against most lyme and coinfections

Ozone - rectal insufflation 2-5x per week PRN
Hyperbaric ozone - only a few treatments so far, starting 2x weekly soon. These were a massive immune system boost



SO, what I meant by 30% lyme and 70% mercury. I feel that in most cases, after looking at a lot of clinical data and patient reports, lyme is a condition of immune dysfunction. In this case, immune dysfunction caused by mercury and mold. I have now been treating lyme for ~3 solid months (started 2nd week of August) and did see some changes during that time (along with a lot of inflammation). Things began to change last month after some 10-pass but after almost 3 weeks with OSR/Emeramide, I now am starting to see the road path to real health as I am now pretty convinced that my overall immune dysfunction was caused by the mercury and led to opportunity for lyme and potentially virus reactivation given some of the pain/inflammation I have experienced. Once the mercury is out, immune function will restore, and the lyme and anything else will get checked by my immune system as it should.

So, kind of a hard answer as the treatments have overlapped and will continue to but I finally found like I've hit on the things that I've been looking for for several years now. My verbal fluency is coming back, mind is functioning more clearly, the constant adrenal issues slowly subsiding, appetite is coming back, digestion is improving significantly.

If nothing else I will put in a plug for OSR given that it is a very forgiving drug and potent antioxidant - I think everyone would benefit from this as it will reduce general toxic burdens in everyone that accumulates over a lifetime of exposure and improve mitochondrial function along with the body's detox systems. Getting heavy metals out safely won't be bad for anyone long term.


Lastly - not to go on a religious tirade but I do want to give some glory to God genuinely here. I will also preface this with saying there was a time in my life where I had no faith and would otherwise label myself agnostic so I have not always had this viewpoint. I may at some point post my entire store so that it would make more sense but the long and short of it is that I have been navigating these waters of major illness while also studying for, applying for, getting accepted to, and starting medical school. Literally every single door that needed to be shut has been shut and every door that needed to be opened, opened - all at exactly the right time over the last ~8 years and more specifically the last 4 years of major illness. I fully believe that Jesus Christ has been active in my life at exactly the right times to see me through this so that I could go on to help others after becoming a physician. My story isn't done and it hasn't happened yet but I believe that is the path I am now on.

 

[Swim15]

@Swim15 How are you getting emeramide?

"Early Access Program for Emeramide : EmeraMed" https://emeramed.com/early-access/

"Controversial supplement to come off shelves - Chicago Tribune" https://web.archive.org/web/2010073...warning-letter-expert-in-environmental-health

Ah the question of the day! So it took me some digging to answer this and I have to give credit to someone that came well before me to make this possible. A woman who's name is Amber went through painstaking work to source and synthesize OSR from a Chinese company 3 years ago and because of her work it is now available with multiple synthesis agent choices and in good purity.

There are two companies that supply OSR reliably and have been tested and used by many in another group I am a part of. Its a private facebook group called mercury chelation that any of you guys can request access to if you would like. Lots of good info.



On second thought - I am going to keep these private to help protect the suppliers. I will PM you and hopefully we can spread the contact info around to anyone interested

 

[GlassCannonLife]

Thank you very much for sharing all of that @Swim15! Quite a long and complex journey.

I wonder how much the FMT contributed to your recovery, it's a shame it's quite a difficult treatment to access.

I haven't learnt much about ozone treatments so I'll have to look into that as well. Overall, very interesting!

I hope you continue to see success

 

[Swim15]

Thank you very much for sharing all of that @Swim15! Quite a long and complex journey.

I wonder how much the FMT contributed to your recovery, it's a shame it's quite a difficult treatment to access.

I haven't learnt much about ozone treatments so I'll have to look into that as well. Overall, very interesting!

I hope you continue to see success

No problem man. I would love it if I could help a lot of people here one day once I’m done with school.

FMTs are definitely hard - I was lucky to know two people I could ask that I trusted as donors. It’s a very imperfect science but it has a ton of tremendous potential

 

[Learner1]

Ah the question of the day! So it took me some digging to answer this and I have to give credit to someone that came well before me to make this possible. A woman who's name is Amber went through painstaking work to source and synthesize OSR from a Chinese company 3 years ago and because of her work it is now available with multiple synthesis agent choices and in good purity.

There are two companies that supply OSR reliably and have been tested and used by many in another group I am a part of. Its a private facebook group called mercury chelation that any of you guys can request access to if you would like. Lots of good info.



On second thought - I am going to keep these private to help protect the suppliers. I will PM you and hopefully we can spread the contact info around to anyone interested

Thanks so much!

 

[Wayne]

Newer studies where they had amalgam sitting stationary (with no grinding, chewing, or pH change with saliva) in distilled water showed they released massive amounts of mercury.

IMO the mercury is the root problem for me and once that is taken care of then everything else will fall into place as it is doing already.

Hi @Swim15 -- You will likely find the following story interesting. I sure did! I still feel pretty amazed every time I go back and read it.

My Mercury Story

In the mid 90s, despite being athletic and energetic, I began experiencing various health ailments. These ailments worsened and grew in number year-by-year. By 2000, I had acquired 17 specific physical ailments ranging from fatigue to immune weakness to constant ringing in my ears. I could only work about 4 hours per day and had to take daily naps. I knew that something was seriously wrong.​

​

I finally stumbled upon the cause of my problems while speaking to a friend about her health issues. She told me she had Chronic Fatigue and had healed herself after 5 years of visiting doctors and getting nowhere. She told me that she had her amalgam ("silver") dental fillings removed one-by-one, as she could afford it, and it had changed her from a bed-ridden state to a normal, working person. She told me something no dentist ever had:​

​

Amalgam dental fillings contain mercury, the world's most toxic, non-radioactive metal.​

​

I started conducting research on the Internet and found that I was not alone. Many other people were suffering just as I was and they had determined the problem was their dental fillings as well.​

​

After spending numerous hours researching this issue, I had my amalgam fillings removed in couple weeks and my life changed forever, and it happened virtually overnight. A few years later, I realized that not only had my physical symptoms gone away, but a number of phobias vanished as well. My relationships improved, I became more social, my memory improved dramatically, and I realized how life is supposed to be lived.​

​

Now, looking back, I realize that I lived most of my life with a number of negative personality traits and emotional ailments that were actually caused by mercury. My bad memory, extreme shyness, very low self esteem, fear of commitments (especially in relationships), history of suicidal thoughts and fear of confrontations is now gone, not to mention horrible depression, and all of these changes have dramatically improved the quality of my life.​

 

[Swim15]

@Wayne that is an awesome story, thanks for sharing!

This is one rabbit hole I hadn't been down in my journey so its been interesting to see how many people have mercury issues and how overlooked it is by general medicine - no surprise there I guess.

Mostly glad there is a safe option for treatment now

 

[Wishful]

If you go to page 81 of this document this is where it starts to talk about the amount of mercury released from amalgam fillings

The fact that the presentation used a lot of red text, numerical ratios without proper reference and exclamation points does not make me feel confident that it isn't just a scare paper. For numerical ratios, I'm referring to things like "People with amalgam filling have 100x the level of mercury in their mouths than people without them!!!" without pointing out that people without those fillings maybe have levels of mercury 10,000 below the amount considered dangerous, and so 100x more still doesn't mean a health hazard.

I had a toxin test, and despite my fillings and other exposures to mercury, I still didn't show elevated levels in my blood. I'm sure I could find some lab that would do some sort of test that results in a report (with lots of scary red numbers or graphs) showing elevated levels, but that doesn't mean that they are the one true source of testing for actual health hazards. At this point, I trust the standard blood test by a regular toxicologist, which showed that I don't have elevated levels of mercury.

Now that I think about it, my extra mercury exposure (broken mercury thermometers) came after developing ME. I bought the thermometers to check for correlations between temperature and symptoms and foods and other factors.

I recently (couple of months ago) had a filling ground for a crown, so I probably have slightly elevated serum mercury. No dramatic increase in symptoms from that.

 

[Swim15]

The fact that the presentation used a lot of red text, numerical ratios without proper reference and exclamation points does not make me feel confident that it isn't just a scare paper. For numerical ratios, I'm referring to things like "People with amalgam filling have 100x the level of mercury in their mouths than people without them!!!" without pointing out that people without those fillings maybe have levels of mercury 10,000 below the amount considered dangerous, and so 100x more still doesn't mean a health hazard.

I had a toxin test, and despite my fillings and other exposures to mercury, I still didn't show elevated levels in my blood. I'm sure I could find some lab that would do some sort of test that results in a report (with lots of scary red numbers or graphs) showing elevated levels, but that doesn't mean that they are the one true source of testing for actual health hazards. At this point, I trust the standard blood test by a regular toxicologist, which showed that I don't have elevated levels of mercury.

Now that I think about it, my extra mercury exposure (broken mercury thermometers) came after developing ME. I bought the thermometers to check for correlations between temperature and symptoms and foods and other factors.

I recently (couple of months ago) had a filling ground for a crown, so I probably have slightly elevated serum mercury. No dramatic increase in symptoms from that.

Its not the best format of information but it comes from some very knowledgeable researchers that spent their lives on mercury research, one of whom was originally disabled from it and treated himself with Emeramide. Its a document that was meant to be lectured off of.

The point still stands, mercury is the most toxic non-radioactive element in existence and toxicity won't show up on a blood test unless you get it drawn immediately after an acute exposure. That's relatively common knowledge so if that's all a toxicologist ordered then he really doesn't know what he is doing.

If I were looking at ME/CFS causes, I'd look at a known highly toxic element that was placed in my body (to the tune of half a GRAM per filling) well before a lot of the advanced viral testing I've seen people here do.