I've spent countless hours researching mercury chelation. There are so many differing views on how to do it. For example, some doctors will want to test your mercury levels and so they have you do a urine provocation test, where you take DMSA or some other chelator - in large and harmful amounts - and look to see how much mercury is excreted afterwards. I did this back in 2009 and my level was off the chart, literally. Mercury toxicity is such a tricky monster because your symptoms could be something else - hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, poor digestion, systemic candida, neuropathy - or you could be suffering the effects of mercury exposure. Provocation tests are sometimes not accurate, cause redistribution after whatever is not excreted becomes reabsorbed, and are not recommended. Heavy metal toxicity and chelation are topics that I will discuss with much more frequency. I have a long history with this condition and want to share it with you, but I also want to give you the experience of successful chelation, and I'm not there yet. I am using Andy Cutler's protocol. He is a Ph.D. who wrote Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment. His site is http://www.noamalgam.com/.

EDIT 1.12 : I stopped the Cutler chelation protocol last summer after only a few months. I was taking low doses in the correct way, but noticed increased/new symptoms due to too much mobilization and not enough excretion. It is also possible that by attempting to remove the mercury, I began to feel the effects of possible Lyme infection. Please see the post on Chronic Lyme Disease of Mercury Poisoning? and/or Dr. Chris Shade and the new way to test mercury toxicity levels.

I write this post today because I came across a site that, as it did a few years ago when I saw it for the first time, gives me hope. It's a site created by a lawyer who finally figured out that mercury was her deal. It took years, but she (I think it's a she) improved tremendously, mostly with DMPS chelation. I emailed her back then but got no reply - no doubt she's been besieged by emails over the years by people who are starting out on the chelation journey.

It's very important to keep in mind that I.V. DMPS is never the way to go, but oral DMPS does work for some - if taken the right way (i.e. on a timed schedule for a few days on, and then some more days off - these are called rounds). The other useful chelators a la Andy Cutler are DMSA and alpha lipoic acid.

The site is http://www.mercurylife.com. Check out her story - it is very well documented, thanks to her many journals. Here is a little of what she writes on how DMPS worked better for her than DMSA:

Overall, I think DMPS has several advantages over DMSA, the principal advantage being that it is a much more effective mercury chelator -- it has made all the difference in the world in my own recovery. Actually, many doctors believe that, when used properly, DMPS actually has less side effects than DMSA, and from my 1.5 years of experience with both types of chelators, I would definitely agree with this. Other advantages include the fact that DMPS appears to remain in the body for a longer period of time than DMSA. Also, DMPS acts more quickly than DMSA, probably because its distribution is both extracellular (outside of cells) and intracellular (within cells), where DMSA appears to be distributed only extracellularly. And, DMPS is available for intravenous and Drawing_intestinesintramuscular use, as well as in oral form, where DMSA is only available in oral form. Furthermore, DMSA appears to cause more yeast problems than DMPS, possibly in part because more DMSA remains in the gut than DMPS (only about 20% of an oral dose of DMSA is absorbed from the GI tract -- the other 80% travels through the GI system unabsorbed -- versus about 50% for oral DMPS). This may draw more mercury into the gut, and thus increase the presence of yeast (causing a yeast "flare-up") due to the sequestering effects of yeast described previously. Also, a higher percentage of DMPS appears to be excreted through the kidneys than with DMSA, which presents certain advantages over the liver/bowel route, such as avoiding the "enterohepatic reuptake loop."

Much more to come...