thimerosal and autism

Dad,

This may be somewhat related but 10-15years back there was a contrversy about amalgm ( dental fillings composed of a mixture of silver and mercury) Do you know anything about this?

Don’t get me started…

Amalgam fillings release mercury in vapor form which is inhaled. As the mercury leeches out, there comes a point when there is not enough left to maintain the integrity of the filling, and they begin to crumble, with the bits often swallowed as well. A study at the U of Michigan involving over 1,000 campus volunteers found a direct correlation between the mercury content of saliva and the number of amalgams fillings. The ADA denies this occurs.

Amalgam fillings have shown to release the most gas when the teeth are being repaired (old fillings drilled out) and fillings are being installed (nothing like fresh amalgam!). They relesase more gas when chewing or drinking hot foods/beverages than they do when not eating. Because of the mercury inhaled, it is now (v ery quietly) advised that pregnant/nursing mothers NOT get dental work done, as the fetus will take in mercury at a higher rate than the mother’s body will absirb it into storage. Mercury stores in the digestive organs and the cnetral nervous system. In adults, the blood brain barrier protects the brain against storage of metallic mercury (such as is in amalgams) but not organic mercury (such as methyl merc [what is in fish] and ethyl merc [thimerosal]) Since th blood brain barrier is not fully formed until well after the child is born, any merc the fetus or infant is exposed to can and will store directly in the brain where it can do the greatest damage.

Mercury has been implicated in depression, attention deficit, aggression, loss of commincationskills, loss of social skills, mental retardation, and most recently Alzheimer’s and possibly MS. According to a study conducted in FL (I believe the felow’s name is Willis Langsford), amalgams represent the largest source of exposure to humans in our country, more than eating fish, burning coal, batteries and flour lights or patent medicines. This study also suggested the largest source of mercury pollution in FL was crematoriums which release mercury into the air and also into the water system when they clean out the ovens.

Norwa and Sweeden haveboth banned the use of dental mercury because of the health risks their drs. have determined exist. In our country the jury is still out, but Maine has passed the dental mercury disclosure law, which forces dentists practicing there to fully inform their patients about the known health effects of mercury. New Hampshire has a similar bill pending.

Dentists like to use amalgam because it is very easy to install and very cheap. Resin fillings may or may not have harmful properties, they have not been studied very well, but they are more difficult to put in and typically do not last as long. Gold fillings are the safest, but they are very expensive so mist dental plans will not pay for them at all, and most patients cannot afford to have them put in.

FOr a look at what merury from amalgams can do to neurons, google “Dr. Sayed” + “Calgary” + “mercury” and watch the video presentation he made.

Are you aware of any chelation therapy for mercury poisoning? I just read about how dangerous fish maybe. Unfortunately fish oils are great brain food. Seems that the higher on the food chain the greater the concetration in the fish.

This sucks cause I love seafood and I am an angler. Fish is also a good source of complete protien. The chief componet of the brain.

Also Dad do you know how one can get tested for mercucy poisoning?

KEEP POSTING DAD!!!

Hello Dad, I don’t know if you remember me as I haven’t posted since early last year but wanted to say thank you for continuing your information on thimerosal. It is important. I will be posting tomorrow with some questions if you could take a look.

Dr. Amy Holmes, Dr. Ady Cutler and and Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet all have outlined methods of chelating mercury. Chelation is a relatively simple pricess, although it requires sticking to a strict schedule. The most common medication usd is DSMA (succimer) a sulfur based compound which binds to metals in the blood and allws them to be excreted. Other medications used are EDTA (calcium based, more dangerous than DMSA) and DMPS of which I confess I really don’t know anything about.

CHelation is done in rounds, with periods of rest in between. There is some degree of controversy about thescheduling and dosages for the round. Some say less medication more frequently (every 4 hours, even over noght) for three days then rest. Others say more medication every 8 hours for several days then rest. When we chelate we follow the standard protocol for lead toxicity established by the British, 200 mg DMSA (based upon my boy’s size ~45 lbs) 3 x’s a day for 5 days, then 200 mgs 2 x’s a day until gone, a 3 week period altogether Then our dr. makes us rest for about 5 mos. (I do not think that long a period is necessary, but he is the dr. and he has to write the Rx.)

Chelation will pull all the free metals out of the blood (this includes benefitial metals like calcium, zinc, magnesium, etc.) and then it will start pulling from the soft tissues. It cannot pull from the brain, as DMSA will not cross the blood barrier and it also will not pull lead from the bone marrow. Duirng the period of rest, the lead level in the blood will “rebound” aslead will come out of the bones back into the blood to reestablish an equilibrium point.

To pull mercury from the brain you will need to add a second medication called alpha lipoic acid (ALA), an over the counter anti-oxidant. Most drs. will have no idea at all about this, even if they are somewhat familiar with the chelation process. It is suggested that you clean out the body before you add the ALA to your mix (for us it was round 5 that we added it). Here’s why… Think of the body like a fishtank, the crud on the bottom as metals, and chelation as the hose you will siphon it out. When you chelate, it is not dissimilar to using the sphon to clean the crud out from under the gravel. However, you cannot get it all out, as the fish would die without waterin the tank. Likewise, you cannot chelate all the metals out in one shot, because you strip the good metals with the bad, so you need to take short rounds with periods of rest in between (it is advisble to supplement with zinc, calcium, magnesium, etc. a couple days after you sdtop chelating to help bring these back up to proper levels.) When you stop siphoning the fish tank and re-add water, the crud that remains stirs around and then resettles in a new place. So it is with chelation. When you stop a round of chelation, you will have pulled some metals from their storage in the soft tissue without binding, and they will resettle often someplace other than where they were before, the closest storage site to them when they settle. It is not inconceivable that if you “open” the blood barrier of the brain too early with ALA, you could actually allow metal to settle in their that was not there previously. So most drs. knowledgable about chelation will suggest clean the body first, then when those levels are low, add the ALA.

Many people say you should not chelate at all until you have any mercury amalgam fillings removed. It is theoretically possible that the DMSA could pull metal from the teeth and allow it to circulate thru the bllodstream before excretion/resettling can occur. I cannot say it will or will not, the science does not exist to prove the theory. However, when we first started chelating my boy we tried opening the capsules and putting it on a spoon of applesauce as was suggested by the dr. When we put the spoon in his mouth he began to cry and we could see “smoke” coming from his mouth. We immediately thought it was reacting with his fillings, stopped the round, made an appt. with the only dentist in the region who will work on auties and had his fillings removed and white fillings put in (let me tell you, THAT took a great deal of arm twisting!)

Each round that cleaned lead out of the body brought a majour improvement in my boy cognitively, which almost immediately appeared the day after we stopped chelating. It may be argued that it was coincidental, and that we imagined it. I would counter it may also be coincidental that when you flip the switch on the wall the light comes on (just freak timing, right?) and no one can tell me what my wife and I imagine we see when we have spent the last 8 years with my boy. We have had therapists and others comment on how much better he is doing, which have also occured almost in perfect synch with a round of chelation (we do not tell anyone when we are doing it). It was after round 5 (when we added the ALA to work on the brain merc the blood test said was not there) that he began talking expressively for the first time.

Before we celated at all, his IQ was tested and confirmed by two excellent centers for developmental disabilities as being 31, his non-verbal (problem solving) IQ was mid-50’s. After 5 rounds of chelation we had a re-evaluation with one of the same teams and his IQ was 77, his non-verbal in the mid 90’s. That is in two years, with no formal program, very limited ABA (the amount and quality of which clinical trials have shown are basically useless), and a hmoeschool program that while my wife works very hard at, she is untrained to do and we get no expert consultation.

Before everyone rushes out and demands chelation I would like to caution that this is not something to do without a medical reason. Chelation strips the body of zinc, which is critical to metabolism, and calcium which is needed for bones and metabolic finctions. Some people cannot use the DMSA because it is sulfur based. You need to have a clear reason to do this, just like any medeical procedure, and you need to work closely with a dr. to monitor the progress of the process. My boy had elevated lead (26.4 when we started), and had a good deal of merc exposure as well, although it did not show up on the standard testing.

Do your homework, read Dr. Amy, Dr. Andy and Dr. bradstreet’s work, talk to your dr. about it, get your child tested.

There are several testing procedures, each with the strengths and their weaknesses.

Blood testing is te most common. It will tell you the present level of metals in the blood. This works very well for lead, because lead will stay free in th blood at a point of equilibrium to that which is in the bone marrow, not so well for nickel, cadmium, arsenic, and antimony because their equilibrium points are much lower compared to storage, and damn poorly for aluminum and mercury, because these “stealth” metals will go almost completely into storage in a short period of time after exposure. Both of these can and wills ettle in the central nervous system, with organic mercury seeming to “prefer” the brain.

Hair testing is also used, but this is more a record of what has been rather than where we are now. In a normally metabolically functioning person, the hair will have in it everything that was in the blood at the time the hair was alive in the follical. As this grows out of the scalp, it presents a timeline for what was ingested/inhaled which can be read by proper testing. However this is faulty as it cannot tell you what was in the body prior to the last haircut (that hair is gone) and the trace residue in the hair still attached will leach out due to sun, wind, water, shampoo, etc. over time, destroying the record. Many labs will suggest sending baby’s first clipping in to test for mercury (vaccination thimerosal), but if you have not had their clipping stored in an airtight container outof the sun and away from sources of heat, it will be faulty at best when they run the test.

Another problem that Dr. Amy found was that autistic children with the highest levels of metal in their bodies showed the lowest levels of metals in their hair. What happens is the MT protein (I think this stands for metalthiolate) metabolic function in humans, which naturally excretes metals for us is haywire in some autistic people. Instead of gradually shedding thethe metals we ingest and inhale almost daily like the rest of us, their bodies retain it all, and that includes not shedding these toxins into the hair. So the people with the highest retention of metals become those who appear to be the cleanest with conventional testing, especially true for merc, the stealth metal. Dr. Andy Cutler has developed “counting rules” that allow you to determine the presence of mercury by the way it throws off the more easily tested metals.

Urine testing is a good way to tell what metals are coming oiut of the body, and it is frequently used during the chelation process to gauge how well the body is being cleansed. It is often the only way to detect mercury after it has gone into storage. What they may do is a chelatin challenge. Assuming that the levels of lead and other metals are well within the safe range, so chelation is not warranted, if mercury is strongly suspected, you may administer a few dosages of a chelator such as DSMA, and then test the urine for the presence of mercury coming out. The main problem with this is that the tests universally used are for metallic mercury, such as you would get from amalgams, thermometer, flouro lights, batteries, industrial settings, tsealing merc from the chem lab at school, etc. These tests do not detectorganic mercury, such as from fish and fungicides (methyl mercury) or from patent medicines (ethyl mercury). I do not know the name of te tests needed to detect these compounds, but labs specializing in testing autistic kids have them, such as Great Plains, Great Smokies, etc.

The final testing that I know of is biopsy, where you actually get tissue samples and test for metals stored there. I do not advocate this, and I doubt you will find any dr. who will agree to this one and is would involve invasive surgery, and with mercury favouring the brain to store in… IF your child need to be opened up for another reason (apendicitus, etc.) you MIGHT convince the doctor to sample the intestine, kidneys or pancreas (where mec stores in the gut), but again, they will most likely look at you like you have sprouted a couple extra heads, and perhaps call the orderlies to take you to a safe, warm place to rest.

Google Dr. Andy Cutler and Dr. Amy Holmes, or visit the yahoo group autism-mercury for much more detailed information.