[T]onight at dinner, I tried to thank my family for their patience and understanding for the last 10 months during the times I was too messed up to do anything but sit on the couch. I had trouble getting the words out and broke down crying so many times I started laughing and crying at the same time. It really hurts to think of all the family activities we didn’t do in 2013.
When I look at the calendar on my wall showing all of my rounds and titrations, I see an enormous record of pain and suffering over the last 10 months. But, as hard it has been, I’ve done it with a decent amount of good humor because previously, with no diagnosis to hang my hat on, I was pretty sure I was going to lead a short miserable life. For the last 12 years, everything that I wanted was always just out of reach. I had the talent, vision and ambition to do great things, but never the physical capabilities.
Now, I feel relatively sure that I can recover my physical capability and complete the puzzle by following the simple recipes laid out by Cutler and Fred. Okay, I know it’s an exaggeration to call the recipes simple, and I did write about how complex it all is. If I were just more patient and not such a tinkerer, it could be simpler.
As for the difficulty of the healing process, I really like this explanation from Val (on FDC) which explains the pain of removal :
Mercury toxicity is like someone who has been hit with an arrow. It caused damage going in, it is causing damage while it’s lodged in your body, and it causes damage when it is “yanked” out, so to speak. Not until it’s removed, can your body truly heal. Can you imagine healing with a big arrow stuck in your flesh?
I’ve done 20 rounds and 83 chelation days since starting in March. My doses have not increased much in those 10 months, but I did move to 2 hour dosing which I find more intense but more stable. The length of my rounds have also increased roughly from two or three nights to five or six nights. At the same time, my side effects have diminished substantially. Oddly, even the side effects that I enjoyed from ALA, the energy surge and euphoria have diminished or disappeared at my current dose.
While I’m confident that chelation is the long-term permanent solution for my health problems, I suspect that I get faster results from methylation support. Both are difficult for me in terms of side effects so I struggle to balance how much time and energy to devote to each.
Because today is my redistribution day and I’m suffering a bit, I shouldn’t be doing any planning at the moment. That said, I’m tempted to do only one round in January instead of two. That will give me a chance to increase my folate and mb12 further. I was impressed by a recent comment Freddd made about target doses of folate which for some people could reach as high as 30 mg per day.
Given everything I’ve read, it seems reasonable to think that I should be increasing my folate doses as long as I’m reacting to each increase. I have one more 200 mcg increase planned for Monday and then I will be at 4 tablets or 3.2 mg per day.
Is my treatment working? I’ve definitely experienced some critical improvements. Not needing to eat every 10 minutes anymore is just a remarkable freedom. But, I’d say my overall capacity level might have moved up just 5%, let’s say from 65% to 70%. I’ve got a long way to go and truthfully, continuing my protocols is something I’m doing on a lot of faith and intuition.
Looking at my symptom list, here’s what I’ve been able to cross off in 2013:
- constant hunger
- low body temperature
- omega-3 intolerance
The recovery stories I’ve read from people like Viking, Brad, John, Fred and many others have a deep influence on me because my reactions to the treatments are so well predicted by their experiences. I’m expecting big gains in 2014 and hoping that I could be nearly 100% recovered in early 2015.
Next month, I’m thinking of doing a single round of 50mg DMSA and 37.5 mg ALA every two hours. Here are my round 20 notes:
Round 20 (5 days) – 60 mg ALA every 2 hours, total chelation days to date: 83.5
- Sunday, December 22: No energy surge this time, big disappointment. Although I stayed active, ALA increased my fatigue and gave me mild headache along with slow thinking. Maybe because I started this round without a good night sleep before… Lips are dry and cracking as usual. Because the kids are home it’s noisy and more demands on my energy – started feeling overwhelmed around 4 PM. Probably not a good idea to start rounds on weekends.
- Monday, December 23: Very mild headache, feeling thick, dull and slow. Would you call that muggy-headed?
- Tuesday, December 24: Slept deeper last night and woke up feeling more clearheaded today. No headaches at all just slow and mildly fatigued. Thinking I probably need to increase my ALA dose next month. Unable to sleep at night until 2:30 AM because of a timing problem related to it being Christmas Eve.
- Wednesday, December 25: continued to chelate in spite of insomnia and sleep deprivation. Napped after breakfast. slept so deeply that night that I missed a chelator dose and took the next dose without realizing that I had missed the previous giving me an interval of 5 1/2 hours between doses, oops!! Still, no noticeable side effects from this.
- Thursday, December 26: Have recovered from sleep deprivation which is a great relief. Also took along deep nap after lunch. just read this interesting post where Andy talks about high versus low chelator doses, a good reminder not to push too hard.
- Friday, December 27: Decided to end my round 10 hours early at 7 AM today. It has been a hard round and hard month. 12 chelation days per month may be too much for me. I’m slow and fatigued, got a 30 minute nap and having trouble waking up and clearing my brain. Almost feels like I have a mild headache.
- Saturday, December 28: I was fatigued for two days after this round – makes me think I should not end rounds in the morning!
A reflexion about the Cutler protocol :
I just discovered the Cutler protocol a few days ago, as I suffered for long years of mercury poisoning without knowing it.
I have not yet read the book, but the summary confirms completly what I have found by myself, having experiencied different foods to improve my health.
I think a final touch is missing in the Cutler protocol, the view of biology.
If I summarize, the Cutler protocole stops at the bile level, when the liver has done its job, which is to put a mercury atom inside a transport molecule.
But I am inclined to think, it is not the end of the story.
In fact the bile is released upstream from the large intestine, where things may and will happen.
The large intestine is a biologogical digester, where countless different bacteriae break down molecules. The functionning of the microbiote is just beginning to be investigated.
It cannot be ruled out that the transport molecule (the chelator) could be broken by some strain of bacteriae, conducting to the release of mercury inside the large instestine.
To counteract this biological reaction, it is vital to have fibers in the digestor that act as sponges for the mercury.
The best mean is active charcoal but it is a catch-all, collecting the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. If you use charcoal, you will capture also the essential minerals and vitamins. and supplementations afterwards is a must.
If you dont have these fibers in the right place at the right moment, you are at a risk of recycling the mercury throu the intestine and back in the blood stream.
From my point if view, this explains the fact that cabbage is in herbal therapy THE food against poisoning because it has both sulfur compounds and fibers.
Disclaimer : I am NOT a cabbage producer or reseller.
Congratulations on finding the Cutler protocol – it can change your life. I can’t comment very scientifically on your ideas about the digestive side of the heavy metal excretion business, but I will say that Cutler emphasizes that we should take very large quantities of probiotics. He says to ignore the recommended quantities on the bottles and take five times as much.
Another thing that I’ve learned through Cutler that may be relevant is that most people who are toxic experience most of the damage in the brain where mercury will stay indefinitely without chelation…
My advice: get the books and read them.