Hello all my beloveds!!
Whew, I was afraid to look but I did anyway and it’s been four months since my last newsletter.
This newsletter is a health update and a health-related PSA (public service announcement) that may be relevant for some of my audience.
I have been experiencing a bout of really over the top fatigue, worse than my usual baseline of moderate fatigue (which is why you have not heard from me). There are a range of root causes for sure, but I discovered one key culprit and that made a huge difference. I stopped taking my multi-vitamin and I felt relief within just a day or so.
Proof of Life
Why would a multi-vitamin cause crippling fatigue? Because this one (and it turns out many other multivitamins and many other supplements) includes an ingredient called Alpha-Lipoic Acic (ALA).
What is ALA and why would that cause crippling fatigue?
ALA is a powerful antioxidant, used for treating diabetic neuropathy and for general anti-oxidation. That’s good, right? For a lot of people, it’s great.
But ALA is also a mercury chelator. What does that mean? It means that for someone who has mercury in their body, ALA will find the mercury, grab hold of it, and carry it away from wherever it was stashed.
That should be a good thing, right?
Wrong. Single or daily doses of ALA grab mercury and carry it away from wherever it was in the body, but only some of that mercury actually gets carried out of the body. The rest ends up re-located inside the body, and tends to be re-located from places where it was fairly innocuous (like muscle tissue) to places where it can wreck a lot of havoc (like organs and the brain.)
So for those of us with mercury in our bodies – and many of us don’t know about the mercury because it’s not something that either conventional doctors or holistic doctors tend to think about or effectively test for – if we happen to use a supplement that contains ALA, our general physical and psychological symptoms will get gradually and steadily worse over time and we will have no idea what is going on.
I have had fatigue and emotional/nervous system issues since I was a teenager, and no medical professional in all that time has ever suggested that I get a hair test for mercury toxicity. I had heard mention of toxic metals as something that can cause health problems. But I figured if it was really a significant threat, one of my holistic doctors would have pointed me in that direction.
At the advice of a friend, I got a hair test done early this year and it clearly shows mercury toxicity. I have started chelating mercury in a way that is safe. It takes time and I’ve only just starting – I will send an update in 6 months or a year, whenever I have clear evidence that my health and energy baseline is above where it’s been for the past several years.
Here is my advice, and you are free to take or leave it:
If you have any collection of chronic problematic health and or psycho-emotional symptoms that do not have a clear and compelling explanation, check your supplements, and stop taking any that contain alpha lipoic acid. If there’s any chance there’s mercury in your body, you don’t want to be moving it around.
Beyond that, if you are curious about whether you might be mercury toxic, here’s a quick overview. This is based on the research and books by Andrew Hall Cutler who was a PhD and scientist who was poisoned by mercury dental fillings and who spent the last decades of his life painstakingly learning the details about what mercury does in the body and how it can be safely removed from the body.
If there is mercury in your body wrecking havoc, your adrenals and liver need support, specific supplements are recommended. And for general support, Vitamin C, magnesium, Vitamin E and Zinc are important.
It is possible to get mercury out of the body but it’s not easy or quick and there are a lot of people including doctors offering mercury chelation protocols and treatments that move mercury around and make people worse. And if you have even a speck of a metal filling in any of your teeth or any other solid mercury in your body anywhere, then attempting mercury chelation will remove some mercury but it will also deposit more mercury in your body.
It is possible to mitigate the problems that mercury causes through supplementation, without trying to get the mercury out of the body. For me, I’m fairly sure the recommended supplements are making a big difference but it’s hard to tell for sure because there are so many moving parts. That is, I’m feeling much better this week than any time in the past four months, but I don’t know how much is due to these supplements, how much is due to getting past my third bout of Covid, how much is due to stopping that multi-vitamin, and how much is due to well-targeted homeopathic remedies.
FYI I don’t have any stake in whether you or anyone buy these books or try these supplements. I buy my supplements from generic websites. There is no financial gain for me in any way connected to these links or this information.
To be frank, I’m feeling shocked and betrayed that the various people I’ve gone to trying to get help for my fatigue, food sensitivities, and general medical distress did not send me in this direction a long time ago.
Here are some links if you want to check this out. Here are two different sites, either of which can get you started:
https://www.maybeitsmercury.com/
Or you can go straight to Amazon or your favorite bookseller and buy The Mercury Detoxification Manual, though it might cost a bit more than from one of the above sites.
OR, here is a Facebook group where you can find a lot of the same information without buying any books at all. There are a number of volunteer admins, each of whom has been through mercury chelation and gotten their life back, who answer questions and help steer people in a good direction. And there are files/”guides” available in the group that cover the basic content that you need to know.
The Facebook group is where I started, but I wish I had bought the Manual sooner and read it carefully because I would have figured out this multi-vitamin problem sooner and saved myself some suffering and lost income. (The information was there in the FB group guides, but my brain fog got in the way of my systematically reading and following everything.)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/acfanatics
I know it’s almost the same picture but at least I had the energy to go outside and take a few pictures. That in itself is progress!!
One more thing. I want to mention two supplements in particular that I was initially cautious about and that seem to be really helpful.
One is Adrenal Cortex. I have used desiccated adrenals before, and last time I tried, they seemed really pushy. Adrenal Cortex apparently doesn’t get pushy, it just feeds the adrenals. Chronic trauma is hard on the adrenals, so this can be something to try. At the moment I’m taking 5 caps 3 times a day. If you want to try this, be sure not to order Adrenal CortRex, which is not so benign. And start slow because some people do react to almost every type of supplement.
https://www.iherb.com/pr/thorne-research-adrenal-cortex-60-capsules/18706
The other is Lithium Orotate. I thought, “Lithium!? That’s what they give people with serious psychiatric problems, and they don’t like taking it!” Right!? But my hair test showed lithium levels through the floor. And when I dug into it, I realized that the amount of lithium I’m getting from the supplement is approximately 1% of a psychiatric dosage of lithium. Lithium deficiency is linked to anger and irritability. I’m using a liquid so I can make the doses as small as I want, but I haven’t noticed anything concerning.
https://www.iherb.com/pr/kal-lithium-orotate-drops-natural-lemon-lime-flavor-2-fl-oz-60-ml/78420
OK, that’s my PSA on Mercury and Alpha Lipoic Acid.
So, apart from dealing with horrible fatigue and now seeing some beginning stage progress, what else is new?
I continue to be excited about the trauma healing work. I’m learning more both about myself and about trauma clients in general as I continue my work. I recently had the opportunity to assist at an ISP training, which was awesome. Raja Selvam, the creator of the ISP model of trauma work, is one of my most important teachers.
I am also repeatedly taken aback at how challenging and difficult my own emotional terrain becomes, despite the work I’ve done and the skills I have. This doesn’t seem to be something that gets fixed and goes away, it’s something that we need to learn to live and dance with, live through, thrive in spite of.
Speaking of ISP, I totally recommend Raja Selvam’s new book, “The Practice of Embodying Emotions.” It describes what ISP is and why and how it works.
So I will close with a reminder to do some sort of practice, there are many options. Something that creates the possibility of movement, insight, breath, and connection.
Love and Blessings to you and your beloveds, wherever and however you are.
And I hope that you will be hearing from me again, sooner than later this time.
