Snow, Chelation, Etc!

It has been very wintry. On top of what we already had, last night and today we probably got another 2-3" and they are calling for more tonight and tomorrow! We have to be up to a foot by now, but with how windy it's been it is impossible to get an accurate measurement.

We broke down today and bought a snow blower. My left arm couldn't take shoveling anymore. There's just too much snow now and our CRV almost got stuck in the driveway. We barely got out today. We won't be reaching freezing for at least a week, so the driveway was becoming a problem.

There have been some crazy accidents at the intersection near our house. The first one involed a truck with a horse trailer. It slammed into a house! You can imagine the sound it made. Thankfully though the truck hit the porch, so there was minimal damage done to the building. My husband and I laugh though and say if a truck were to hit our house, they would go right through it and keep on moving. haha Tonight, a tractor trailer jack-knifed (not completely sure at the moment) and brought the highway to 1 lane for a few hours. The roads were really snow covered, so it doesn't surprise me. Just moments ago, they got the truck straightened out and towed it away.

On the chelation front, I'm not going to do 25mg of ALA anymore. It's just too dangerous to start that high, so I will be ordering (tomorrow) the ALA from Dean in South Africa. If you are in need of small dose ALA, DMSA or combo ALA/DMSA he can hook you up for a relatively cheap price. He is an active member of the frequent dose chelation yahoo group, so he is reliable. I emailed him last week and the shelf life on the ALA is 1 year, so you can order multiple bottles at a time to save money on shipping. Since it is coming from South Africa expect to pay $20-30 for shipping depending upon your location.

I had a terrible headache, felt very tired today and was itchy. At this point, I have no idea what is causing it all. I added in milk thistle the other day, so maybe there is a connection or coincidence?

Getting Back Into the Chelating Mindset

I am having a difficult time getting back into chelating. Taking these few months off has made me incredibly lazy. I missed my doses last night, so I have to stop. I used to beat myself up over it, but I am OK with it. I just need to update my chelating calendar, so I know when to start up again.

If you are trying to chelate without a calendar, you will fail miserably. Everyone should have a calendar no matter how much you think you don't need one. You'll forget!

I have heard so many people say how terrible ALA is when they first start using it. I have to admit that before knowing about Dr. Cutler and his way, I have used ALA before WITH AMALGAMS IN. It was NOT deliberate, but recently I went through all the supplements we own and came across a detox formula I used for a few weeks. I was taking 6 capsules a day. 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 2 in the evening. There was 100mg of ALA in each capsule!

Now I can't remember what I felt like back then because every single day was a bad day. You know how that goes! My husband and I both think that DMSA with ALA must be very synergistic. If you are only taking ALA, you may not feel the extreme affects. But then I've heard some people say if you just take ALA, the effects are worse. I don't know about that for me. When I take DMSA, I instantly feel something is happening inside of me. With ALA the only thing I noticed was a slight headache just before my next pill was due. Even with me missing my dose last night, I feel totally fine!

I have heard that ALA takes about 3-6 months to "catch up" with you. You feel fine on a high dose and then suddenly it slams you. Perhaps this is the trend I am on.

I wanted to plug the frequent dose yahoo group today. There are some very intelligent people on this yahoo group and I recommend joining even if you don't plan on posting or asking questions. In order to join, make sure you put a good reason down or they will reject your membership. They have had problems with spammers in the past.

I recommend this group more so than the herballure website. I've practically stopped going to the other forum because no one wants to help themselves. It is hard for me to deal with people who don't want to help (but still complain).

Just be sure to read all the information on the yahoo group upon arrival and don't use an email address that you don't want spammed. It is almost guaranteed to get picked up by spammer eventually.

Surprise! I've Been Chelating

I didn't want to say anything too soon in case this went completely wrong. I started back up on chelating 2 days ago. I am not using DMSA, but rather ALA. I think I am done with DMSA for now. The fact that my neutrophils and white blood cells were low, scares me! For all I know, the severe skin itching may have been a complication from it lowering the neutrophils. Who knows? The itching has been a little better this week. If it was from the DMSA, it took a few weeks for my blood counts to recover. That makes me uneasy.

I am using a pretty high dose of ALA (25 mg) right now until I can find something smaller. Quite honestly I'm not noticing any symptoms. I was feeling really hot with red hands right before the 3 hour mark, so I am now taking it every 2 hours 45 minutes. Things are going well and I'm only doing 3 day rounds right now. There is no reason to push things especially when we know my pituitary is in crisis. Hopefully it can get some of the mercury out of my brain.

Naturopath Irked Me A Little

Well I had another appointment with my naturopath. When I first got there I was a little excited to hear what he had to say about my new lab results, but quickly realized this was a waste of my time. I've had so much blood work done at this place it isn't even funny. I give the doctor credit for figuring out that I have Diabetes Insipidus because it is a very rare condition that most doctors will NEVER see in their entire careers.

My problem comes from the fact, that I always go into these visits with high expectations. Typically when I go to a normal doctor I figure they will tell me to take some pill or hand me a cream and slap me with a $100 office visit. Well I have much higher expectations with Dr. Goldstein because he talks to you for 45 minutes at each follow up. It is nice to be able to chat with your doctor without feeling like you are rushed.

I know that I have mercury poisoning and the only thing on my mind is getting these darn amalgams out of my mouth so I can begin detoxing. I purposely bumped my appointment up, so that I could talk to him about taking oral DMSA. All of my amalgams will be out of my mouth on September 9th and I wanted to begin my detox on September 13. I figured this way I had time to plan everything out and be ready to start this wicked detoxing journey.

Well Dr. Cutler's mercury detox protocol didn't go over very well with him. He wanted me to do a detox program which says to take oral DMSA every other day. This type of mercury detox is specifically discussed in Dr. Cutler's book and it is dangerous. You can actually damage yourself more because mercury is redistributed in between doses. Taking DMSA less often is more dangerous than more often. He just has no idea what you are supposed to do with mercury and when he immediately discredited Dr. Cutler's protocol it really irked me.

He didn't discredit it because he thought it was dangerous or that it was ineffective. He simply discredited it because he didn't know what it was. Well I insisted on doing Dr. Cutler's protocol and that's my plan. Every other protocol is poorly thought out or planned. It doesn't even take into account what happens to the mercury that is stirred up when the DMSA begins to run out in 4 hours. I suspect that not many patients have become any better on an every other day DMSA protocol.

DMSA does not cross the blood brain barrier. There is no evidence to prove that it does, which is why you MUST add ALA about 3 months into the detox. Some people may need to wait longer if they are severely poisoned. Unfortunately my doctor thinks DMSA crosses the blood brain barrier, but it is not lipid soluable and does not have a special transport protein. Typically you need this for something to cross the blood brain barrier, so I can't understand where people are getting that it does. Dr. Cutler discusses this specific subject on the Yahoo Group. The website, Onibasu.com has archived the interesting and informative posts from Dr. Cutler concerning whether DMSA crosses the blood brain barrier.

This first link made me laugh. At least Dr. Cutler has a sense of humor.
http://onibasu.com/archives/am/84471.html

More info about DMSA, which does not cross the BBB.
http://onibasu.com/archives/am/2411.html

Info on why ALA crosses the BBB (lipid soluable)
http://onibasu.com/archives/am/50161.html

There just seems to be a lot of conflicting information about HOW to detox mercury. One doctor says one thing. Another doctor says another. Yet another doctor says those doctors are wrong. It is very hard to sort through all the information to find one that is good. Most natural doctors insist on taking cilantro, chlorella, IV DMPS and high sulfur diets. Meanwhile Dr. Cutler says these protocols will severely increase symptoms with no guarantee that you are excreting mercury. That doesn't really sound like a good detox protocol.

Well the only doctor that has science to back up his protocol is Dr. Cutler. At this point and time, that's what is important to me. Not what some doctor feels is best.