Revised Protocol for Detoxifying Your Body from Mercury Exposure
January 13, 2013
Story at-a-glance
Your body is designed to detoxify mercury and other heavy
metals. An impaired metabolism can lead to mercury toxicity
Your two principle sources of mercury exposure are inorganic
mercury from dental amalgams and methylmercury from seafood
consumption; these two types of mercury differ in their
toxicity levels, biological effects and detoxification
pathways
Traditional mercury testing that only relies on blood, urine
or hair is riddled with problems, but a new test that
combines all three methods is far more accurate. The new
test uses mercury speciation (the separation of different
forms of mercury during analysis, which tells you what types
of mercury you have on board, from what sources, and which
of your natural detoxification pathways may not be working
properly
My revised mercury detoxification protocol is presented in
detail; this protocol, incorporating the work of Dr. Chris
Shade, supports your glutathione system and all of the
enzymes and transporter proteins that must be working
properly if your body is to efficiently cleanse itself of
mercury
By Dr. Mercola
It is likely you are accumulating mercury and other heavy metals
at a disturbing rate. This is occurring at a time when your body is
already bombarded with multiple chemical assaults, making it harder
to keep its natural detoxification system working smoothly and
efficiently.
The two primary sources of mercury exposure are dental amalgams
(mercury-based fillings) and seafood consumption, followed by
thimerosal-containing vaccines and mercury pollution from
coal-burning power plants.
Other significant environmental offenders are chlor-alkali plants
(which make products like chlorine bleach and PVC), trash
incinerators, cement kilns, and gold mining1.
These industries are loading our environment with inorganic forms of
mercury that are then converted in the sol and water to a type of
mercury called methylmercury (MeHg) — which then
accumulates in the
fish you eat.
Dental amalgams are comprised of 50 percent elemental
mercury. This form of mercury evaporates from the surface
of the amalgam and is inhaled, absorbed inot the blood, and then
converted to inorganic mercury, the most toxic form of mercury to
cells. Inorganic mercury builds up far more in your organs of
elimination — it’s 100 times as high in your kidneys and liver than
in your brain. But when it does make its way into your brain, it’s
far more damaging than any other form.
Dr. Christopher Shade, a mercury and glutathione expert from the
University of Illinois, explains how your body’s natural heavy metal
detoxification system works. It’s a lengthy lecture — about three
hours. But if you truly want an in-depth understanding of this
topic, he gives an excellent presentation of the latest science
about the human biochemistry of mercury. I also previously
interviewed Dr. Shade about mercury detoxification, which you can
listen to here:
Mercury Marches into Your Body and Takes Prisoners
Mercury’s toxicity is related to inappropriate binding — it’s
never a “free agent.” Instead, mercury is always paired with a
ligand, a molecule or group of molecules that binds to other
molecules to form a larger complex. Mercury’s favorite ligand is
sulfur, especially a reduced form called a thiol. Thiols are found
throughout your body for example, cysteine and the super-antioxidant
glutathione.
Enzymes use beneficial metals for their activity and hold those
metals in place with thiol groups.
But mercury has a far higher affinity for the thiols than do
beneficial metals like zinc. How much greater?
In the case of zinc, a billion times! This means mercury
fiercely grabs onto these groups and refuses to let go, depriving
you of the good metals and stopping your normal biological processes
in their tracks. Mercury will also grab onto cell membranes, which
leads to shattering of the membranes, vascular leakage, and
subsequent “spackling” of the damage with cholesterol.
A Two-Headed Dragon: Toxicity and Inflammation
It’s an interesting fact that some people with high mercury
exposure don’t become toxic, yet others with relatively low exposure
do. Why is this? Why does one person get really sick from her
amalgams while another is perfectly fine?
The difference lies in your ability to detoxify naturally. You
already have a system in place for removing mercury and other heavy
metals from your body. Mercury’s half-life can range from 40 to 120
days, and the faster you can clear it out, the less you’ll be
affected.
It’s important to realize that people are either slow detoxifiers
or fast detoxifiers, and a small genetic subset are super slow
detoxifiers. If you are in the super slow group, your detox system
is significantly impaired and the result can be mercury overload.
How quickly you detoxify on your own depends on a several factors,
such as your exposure level, genetic makeup, genetic expression, and
overall health. For example, if your progesterone levels are
low, you can’t detoxify as well, and unfortunately, decreased
progesterone levels are common today.
Additionally, people who are hypersensitive to metals will have
toxic effects at much lower levels than other people. When it comes
to the buildup of heavy metals in your body, the news is all bad.
Heavy metal toxicity produces a wide range of adverse biological
effects.2
Your brain is a primary target for heavy metals, which results in
many neurological symptoms, including depression and anxiety,
irritability and memory loss. Mercury overload can even lead to
major neurological conditions like
Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
Heavy metals also target your kidneys, liver, heart, pituitary
and thyroid glands, and increase your risk for developing
type 2 diabetes. In fact, a mercury detoxification protocol can
significantly improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic syndrome.
Mercury, especially from dental amalgams, can accumulate heavily in
your digestive tract where it attaches to your gut epithelium.
Amalgams BATHE Your Brain and Digestive Tract in Mercury
Besides creating a significant
environmental burden, the biological damage from
amalgams is two-fold. Mercury vapor emitted from amalgams passes
readily through your cell membranes, across your blood-brain
barrier, and into your central nervous system where it causes
immunological, neurological, and psychological problems.
At the same time, mercury is leaching into your saliva and being
swallowed, making its way down your digestive tract where
it causes inflammation and damages your immune system — because the
frontline of your
immune system is in your gut. This blocks one of your
body’s major detoxification pathways: passage out of your GI tract.
Additionally, mercury shuts off the ability of your liver and
kidneys to move mercury into your gut for elimination. So, if you
have amalgams in your mouth, you are bathing your digestive tract
AND your brain in mercury every day, poisoning your brain while at
the same time blocking its route out of the body... the perfect
recipe for mercury poisoning.
How do you know if mercury toxicity is a problem for you? Well,
if you have a mouthful of amalgams and a laundry list of health
challenges, chances are mercury is a factor. According to Dr. Shade,
there is 2,000 times more mercury coating the inside of the
mouth (and thus the whole GI tract) of people who have amalgams than
in those who don’t. The only way to know for sure whether you are
accumulating mercury is to have yourself tested. But before you do
this, there are some important items you need to know.
What You Need to Know about Mercury Testing
Traditional mercury testing involves testing either your hair,
blood, urine, or stool. Challenge tests that implement a chelating
chemical, such as DMPS or DMSA, are also commonly used. However, all
of these tests have drawbacks. They primarily measure total mercury
load — and inaccurately at that. But most importantly they don’t
give you any information about the forms of mercury in your system
or how efficiently you are getting rid of them.
Traditional mercury tests don’t answer questions like, how much
of your mercury load is from the seafood you eat? How much from
amalgams? How well are your kidneys and liver eliminating it?
The two principle forms of mercury accumulate differently in your
body, and are eliminated by different pathways. For example, mercury
levels in your hair only reflect the mercury from the fish you eat.
But mercury levels in your urine reflect the mercury coming from
your dental fillings (plus some of the fish-based methylmercury that
has broken down into inorganic mercury). The only way to determine
if there is a problem is to compare your hair and urine levels with
levels in your blood. So, if mercury testing is to be meaningful, it
must measure both of the following:
Exposure level: Overall mercury level for
each of the two main forms of mercury (methylmercury,
related to your fish/seafood consumption, and inorganic
mercury, related to dental amalgam exposure)
Excretion ability: How well your body is
getting rid of each kind of mercury, regardless of your overall
mercury level
A newer testing method called “mercury speciation ”does just this
— it measures both of these factors. This test uses blood, urine and
hair to give you a more comprehensive picture of how your body is
eliminating mercury and where the process may be blocked. This
information can be immensely helpful in preparing a successful
detoxification plan. For more information about
mercury speciation testing, refer to my recent interview with
Dr. Shade.
Your Body's Natural Detoxification System: The Glutathione Machine
Toxicity is not just the level of a toxin—it’s your body’s
response to a toxin, which depends on the strength of your
natural detoxification system. Many people don’t understand that
your body comes with its own built-in detoxification system. It’s a
common myth that once you ingest mercury, it stays in your body
forever.
Your body has a system to efficiently remove mercury and other
heavy metals, as long as your detoxification system is working
properly. The problem is, many of you have one that’s broken,
and one of the principle causes is inflammation. Your genetic makeup
is another factor. As Dr. Shade says:
“Your genes load the gun, and the environment pulls the
trigger.”
The glutathione “supersystem” is your body’s main detoxification
system. Glutathione binds to heavy metals, but it doesn’t do it
alone—it requires the assistance of enzymes, antioxidants, and
transport proteins.
Old age, impaired genetics, poor diet, and toxic exposures of all
kinds—aflatoxin, chloroform, DDT, organic nitrates, radiation, and
others—impair your glutathione system. Some people try to supplement
with glutathione or its precursors and expect the system to jump up
to speed but for the most part this doesn’t work very well as
typically this is done orally with non-liposomal forms or done with
IV glutathione, which is very expensive, inconvenient, and
only marginally more effective. A far more effective strategy is to
upregulate the expression of the genes that produce the enzymes and
transport proteins that assist glutathione in doing its job.
Efficient detoxification depends on a series of seamless
reactions that bind toxins to shuttle molecules and “escort” them
out through a series of doors. Specifically, in order for your
glutathione detoxification system to operate well, it requires the
following three elements. If you have a shortage of any one
of these three key elements, your cells lose their resistance to
mercury, so it can accumulate and make you sick:
Glutathione in your cells: You body has to
manufacture most of its own glutathione (biosynthesis), so it
needs adequate building blocks
Glutathione s-transferase (GST): An enzyme
responsible for prying the mercury OFF the cellular proteins,
then linking it TO the glutathione in the cell
Transport proteins: A series of transport
proteins (multi drug resistant proteins, or MRPs) are
responsible for getting the conjugated mercury out of your cells
and into your blood, as well as from your blood into your liver
and small intestine, and into other places so it can be
eliminated
Before You Do Anything Else, Optimize Your Diet
As with nearly every other health challenge, your
diet is a critical factor in supporting your body’s
detoxification system. In fact, consider dietary optimization the
“pretoxification” phase, which should last for two to six weeks
before starting the full detoxification phase.
Your goal is to remove inflammatory and allergenic foods such as
sugar (especially
fructose/HFCS), processed and packaged foods, fast foods, most
starch and grain. Your diet should be low in carbohydrates,
moderate-to-low in protein, and high in beneficial fats (as high as
50-70 percent). Proteins repair mangled protein molecules and supply
sulfur, and fats repair your cell membranes. This type of diet not
only prepares your body for detoxification but also has the
additional benefit of improving your insulin sensitivity and
reversing type 2 diabetes.
Overall CAUTION
It is important to realize that mercury detoxification is a
marathon and NOT a sprint. You do NOT want to do this quickly. Even
if you believe you are healthy you want to start this process SLOWLY
as you could easily cause severe flare ups. I am one of the
healthiest people I know and when I did my program I did it over six
months. Some people may need to do it far more slowly and may
need a few years to effectively eliminate the mercury safely.
Your Most Important Goal: Removing the Source of Exposure
Now that you understand what’s required to eliminate mercury, we
can start discussing how to support and augment your body’s natural
detoxification apparatus. That is really what “mercury
detoxification” is all about—simply helping your own natural detox
system to function better. In other words, you must “upregulate”
this system.
The very first goal is to plug the hole in your leaking ship. You
must remove your source of mercury exposure, whether it’s primarily
from the seafood you eat or from amalgams (or both). Mercury
speciation testing, as described above, can help you identify which
source is problematic. There is little point in embarking on a major
detox mission if you continue exposing yourself to the
offender...that’s like trying to bail water out of a sinking boat.
Avoid the consumption of contaminated fish and seafood. Most
fish and seafood are now contaminated, unfortunately, but some
types are worse than others. Avoiding fish is relatively easy, but
having your amalgams removed is more involved and costly and must be
done with great care. You should do this ONLY with the help of a
qualified biological dentist as you can become quite ill if your
amalgams are extracted incorrectly.
However, if you have a mouthful of amalgams it is no mystery that
you have exposure that ideally needs to be addressed. Just be very
careful about jumping from the frying pan into the fire and have
your mercury amalgam fillings removed by a non-biological dentist
like I did. That mistake caused very serious damage to my kidneys
that still trouble me 20 years later. You can find a trained
and qualified dentist from the following list:
The first requirement for effective mercury detoxification is
boosting your glutathione levels. Most forms of oral glutathione are
not effective because they are destroyed in the digestive process.
But you can consume foods that contain the precursors of glutathione
so that your body can make more of it—specifically, cysteine-rich
foods. The absolute best source is high quality whey protein. This
whey must come from the “clean” milk of organically raised cows, and
not have been overly processed, which denatures the fragile
proteins.
Just be careful not to consume too much of the whey. For more
information on whey, please refer to my interview with Ori
Hofmekler, an expert on the health benefits of whey protein. The
video below is older than this article but my new position is to be
careful with your protein intake and limit the amount you are using.
Additionally, you may want to try liposomal glutathione.
Liposomal glutathione is a relatively new form of oral glutathione
that is actually well absorbed and eliminates nearly all the
concerns previously mentioned with oral glutathione. It’s
encapsulated into extremely tiny phospholipid particles, which
increase its bioavailability 100-fold.
II. Mobilizing Mercury by Boosting Enzymes and Transport Proteins
Now that your glutathione levels are up, you can work on building
up the other parts of your glutathione system—specifically, enzymes
and transport proteins. Your natural production of these factors can
be augmented with superfoods.
Plants contain thousands of natural chemicals (phytochemicals)
that help your body to work properly, including production of
enzymes and antioxidants. One group of phytochemicals is the
polyphenol group, which actually helps activate health-promoting
genes.3
Polyphenols are abundant in a wide range of fruits and vegetables.
Sulfur-based phytonutrients are particularly important in
supporting your glutathione system, since glutathione is a
sulfur-based molecule.4
Therefore, you should consume vegetables from the cruciferous family
(cabbage, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, radishes,
wasabi, etc.), which are rich in sulfur. Fermenting these vegetables
is the most nutritious way to consume them.
Garlic is especially powerful, but it’s the oil of the
garlic that supports detoxification, not the allicin (which is
the compound known for its antimicrobial effect). And you want the
smelly kind of garlic—deodorized garlic is useless for detox! Either
eat the garlic raw (yes, you have to chew it up), or purchase a
garlic oil supplement. Some of the other compounds recommended by
Dr. Shade include:
Haritaki (Terminalia chebula) extract5:
An Ayurvedic fruit used extensively in Tibetan medicine, called
the “King of Herbs;” it has potent effects on your glutathione
system and on expression of other intracellular antioxidants,
such as superoxide dismutase (SOD)
Sodium R-lipoic Acid
6: The most bioavailable and active
form of alpha-lipoic acid; also good for increasing insulin
sensitivity and treating type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, liver disease, and mitochondrial dysfunction
Pine Bark Extract8:
One of the most potent polyphenolic antioxidants; has
been found to prolong the activity of vitamin C in your body;
good as an adjunct to vitamins C, E and lipoic acid
Your approach with these agents should be to gradually titrate
the dose upward to a high therapeutic level, then back it down. It’s
best to “pulse” the treatments because your body can’t sustain
upregulation for very long. You will be more productive with shorter
bursts at an appropriately stout therapeutic dose. This means taking
the treatments for a few days, followed by a few days off. Dr. Shade
suggests cycling your treatments on the schedule of five days on,
two days off (to start), working up to 10 days on, four days off. He
instructs, never go more than 10 days on when upregulating your
detoxification system.
Ideally, this should be done with the assistance of a healthcare
professional trained in heavy metal detoxification who can help you
decide on an optimal dose and schedule. If you begin to feel worse,
you may be titrating up too quickly.
III. Capturing and Eliminating Mercury with Intestinal Binders
You do NOT want to mobilize mercury without making
sure it has an escape route out of your body!
Once the mercury is in your intestine, you need something to bind
it and pull it away from your intestinal wall, and for this we use
something called an intestinal binder. Intestinal binders help carry
the mobilized toxins out, which prevents them from building up in
your bloodstream where they can end up making you sicker.
Binders prevent you from absorbing or reabsorbing the toxic
agent, but they also help prevent intestinal inflammation. If your
intestine becomes inflamed, the traffic stops because the transport
proteins are shut off. That causes toxins to back up into your liver
and kidneys, and blood. Removing mercury from your gut will also
help prevent
dysbiosis, which is at the root of a mind-blowing array of
health problems.
Thiol Resins
There are several types of intestinal binders, but only a couple
of them work well for grabbing mercury. Dr. Shade’s favorite binder
is thiol resin, because it’s the most specific to heavy metals
(mercury, lead and arsenic) and produces high rates of excretion.
Thiol resins have a powerful attraction for mercury.
Chlorella
Another good binder for heavy metals is
chlorella. Dr. Shade suggests working up to 50 to 70 tablets per
day, which is a lot of chlorella. Please work up to that level
gradually. Other binders you’ll hear about are clay/zeolites,
and pectin. For mercury, these bind very weakly, and you would have
to take enormous quantities for many years to see any benefit so I
don’t recommend them.
If you haven’t yet had your amalgams removed, you may find
rinsing with a binding agent helpful. Chlorella, activated charcoal,
or N-acetyl cysteine can be prepared as a mouthwash where it binds
to the mercury coating your oral epithelium. Levels of mercury can
be very high in this rinse — make sure you don’t swallow
it.
Beneficial Bacteria
Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride believes that one of the most
potent detoxifiers of mercury and heavy metals are beneficial
bacteria. Their cell membranes tend to bind very effectively to the
metals and they are typically excreted in the stool. One of the best
ways to provide your body with this resource is with
fermented vegetables
Other Factors to Consider Adding to Your Regimen
In addition to a healthful diet as discussed earlier, the
following supplements and other measures will enhance and support
your body’s detoxification ability:
A good whole food multivitamin that includes the full
spectrum of B vitamins
A good mineral supplement (consider Thorne Citramins II,
citrated minerals without copper or iron)