Supplements to support metal detox?

[Wombat140]

Hi everyone, haven't been here for a while but I could do with a bit of advice again.

 

The homoeopath I'm seeing is convinced that I have mercury poisoning - the symptoms fit and it comes up high on a hair test. (I know hair tests aren't 100% reliable but I'm bad with needles.) He's prescribed me a remedy to try and get rid of it, but adds:

"Taking antioxidants during this time can be very helpful.... Vitamin C powder for example."

 

I've been trying to order Vitamin C but have got bewildered by the number of types available - powder or tablets, ascorbic acid, calcium ascorbate or Ester-C, and so on. I'd forgotten there were so many. Does it matter which, and are there any other supplements that you'd recommend, especially with keeping any initial aggravation to a minimum? (My symptoms are so bad that there's very little room for any further aggravation!)

 

Besides prescribed homoeopathic remedies, all I'm taking at the moment is calcium and magnesium citrate.

 

Many thanks,

Wombat140

[fuelforall]

I'm sorry for your struggles, people here know all about them.

This is really not a whacky suggestion. Please go out, buy a bottle of bleach, pour a cup in your bath and sit there for 20 minutes. The bleach leeches out the toxins from your body.

You should feel a little better after, though perhaps you will not have a very pleasant smell to you.....

[fuelforall]

Also, you might want to get ahold of some high quality pterostilbene, supposed to be very anti inflammatory.

[rowingmom]

I would recommend a metal binder. As metals are released from where they have been sequestered, they will enter circulation and hopefully be shunted to the intestine. Taking a metal binder (we use food grade diatomaceous earth) will ensure that they are not reabsorbed again through the intestinal lining.

 

Others use bentonite or zeolite.

[Wombat140]

Thanks both of you. From looking around the forum a little, charcoal is another one used as a metal binder in the same way, isn't it? I've ordered that, since that's what our usual supplement supplier happened to have, and some Vitamin C too.

 

Found a giant list of many common supplements, posted by LLM a while ago ( http://latitudes.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=15076 ), which seems to suggest that it doesn't matter for this purpose which type of Vitamin C you use, so I just got the cheapest non-chewable they had which was slow-release tablets with a bit of zinc thrown in. (I avoid the chewables partly because additives aren't good for you, but mostly because I can't stand the taste of the "great tasting orange flavour"!)

 

Here's the really bizarre thing, though. I finished my chemistry BSc last October, and the last thing I had to do was a kind of thesis, researching and writing up a review paper on a subject. Know what I chose for my subject? The use of charcoal to absorb heavy metals! This was before I had any idea that I might have metal poisoning myself. So I'm finding that slightly spooky, the universe is having a bit of a joke with me, I think!

 

Anyone know what amount of activated charcoal? None of the postings I've found seem to say what dose they're using. Or if they do, they only say how many capsules, but don't actually say what size of capsules.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Wombat140

[Mayzoo]

Our kiddo takes 560mg at a time when I give it to her. That is 2 of the Nature's Way activated Charcoal capsules.

 

Make sure you are spacing the charcoal 2 hours away from ANY other supplements or meds otherwise the charcoal will simply absorb the meds/supps and you will get no benefit from them.

[mama2alex]

We use Takesumi Supreme - one scoop once or twice a day. It's supposed to bind various toxins, including heavy metals. Our integrative doc has all his patients take it.

 

Do you have metal fillings? It's very important to remove any metal fillings before any type of chelation because they are about 50% mercury. I had mercury poisoning years ago, and did chelation with DMPS, so just wanted to mention this.

[bws1565]

These are the supplements that target mercury specifically:

 

Glutathione, Selenium, and vitamin C. Check out Dr. Boyd Haley (university of Kentucky) for more information on this. And of course get rid of your mercury fillings if you have them. (BTW high mercury in your hair would show that you are a GOOD excretor and is not an indicator of high blood mercury).

 

LL Magnetics Clay Baths are also a good idea. They have one specifically for mercury removal.

[Wombat140]

Thanks very much everyone. Mayzoo, the capsules I've ordered are the same size so 560mg is easy, that's a relief, was afraid it was supposed to be several grams at a time or something like that!

 

Mama2Alex, I'll see how it goes with the Zipvit brand charcoal now I've ordered it, but I'll bear the Takesumi Supreme in mind. Strangely enough, it's actually a bit cheaper than the Zipvit, if I'm adding it up correctly! Entirely possible that it might behave a bit differently, too; one of the things I came across in my project was that bamboo charcoal (like the Takesumi) adsorbs different amounts of metal than wood charcoal does, though it varied depending on conditions. (Interesting to come across this stuff in real life!!) But it's always fiddly for me to order things from America (slow and expensive postage) and there doesn't immediately seem to be a British supplier.

 

No, no fillings at all. I'm puzzled to know what I could have got mercury from, in fact!

 

bws1565 it's not that there is a lot of mercury in the hair, in fact very little, but the homoeopath swears that the ratios of the different metals indicate high mercury in the body, according to something he refers to as "Andy Cutler's counting method". (Noticed a few references to this person on here, so perhaps some of you know more about this than I do.)

[rowingmom]

No, no fillings at all. I'm puzzled to know what I could have got mercury from, in fact!

 

 

Childhood vaccinations, flu vaccine, contamination of food especially seafood.

 

The metal adjuvants in vaccinations are different from most in that they are engineered to remain in the body, increasing intensity and length of time of the antibody response.

Edited February 16, 2015 by rowingmom

[Mayzoo]

There is also mercury in old thermometers (if they break and have skin contact or if the mercury evaporates) and there is mercury in the "new" light bulbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp). Liquid mercury is absorbed though the skin rapidly and upon evaporating, it can be inhaled. ( https://health.state.tn.us/Downloads/mercury.pdf)

 

 

Here is an article excerpt on mercury as well:

 

Another source of mercury exposure comes from coal-burning power plants. This mercury pollution is distributed in the air, and is deposited in the ocean, where of course it bioaccumulates in fish. So indirectly, it's still a major source of exposure.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/01/06/dr-shade-on-mercury-exposure.aspx

"The one paper that has shed some light on coal-burning was the Palmer paper coming out of Texas, where they found higher rates of autism with proximity to coal-burning power plants. But that's the only [study] that's done that," Dr. Shade says. "From all the data that I have looked at, from all the people that we have measured... fish and amalgam dominated everything. People who don't have any fish consumption and don't have any amalgam exposure, we very rarely see any significant amounts of mercury in."

 

and another article: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/exposure.htm

 

Ironic, they remove mercury from vaccines, and include it in the "new" light bulbs

Edited February 16, 2015 by mayzoo