The Health Implications of Heavy Metal Toxicity

Introduction

Heavy metal toxicity is extremely common, one of the main causes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Autism, the Auto-Immune Motor Neuron Diseases (such as ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, sometimes called Maladie de Charcot, or, in the United States, Lou Gehrig's Disease) MS (multiple sclerosis) and motor neuron disease. For these health disorders Vitamin B12 Methylcolbalamin is often very helpful, along side a Heavy Metal Detox Programme. Heavy metal toxicity is also implicated in most chronic health disorders, along with pesticide poisons, the especially common type being organophosphates. 

Multi-Layered Causes of Disease 

Causes of chronic disease are usually multi-layered. Example: a person suffering with Multiple Sclerosis, has Candida Albicans and other infections, that are part of the problem and help to keep the Immune system B cells overactive and attacking the nerve sheaf's. Food intolerances, due to a bowel damaged by the Candida, make symptoms worse and further destabilising the immune system. However prior to all this developing, immunity was lowered as a child via mercury in childhood vaccinations. Later the mercury load was increased via dental amalgams. Living a few hundred yards from regular crop spraying resulted in the already weakened system being unable to detoxify the organophosphate. Lack of exposure to sunlight further weakened the immune system, and finally courses of antibiotics to deal with re-current infections resulted in the normally harmless Candida yeast mutating into a fungal form and entering the blood stream. A year after the development of the Candida the Multiple sclerosis began. 

This is an example scenario. This sort of situation of a history of multiple layered causes is indeed common for the development of chronic health disorders in today's world. 

Symptoms of Heavy Metal Toxicity include:

Mental confusion, pain in muscles and joints, headaches, short-term memory loss, gastrointestinal upsets, food intolerances/allergies, vision problems, chronic fatigue, and others. The symptoms are so vague that it is difficult to diagnose based on symptoms alone. Fortunately a nutritionally based heavy metal detox supplement such as Deep Cell Detox can be taken as a general cell cleanser and as a broad spectrum nutritional supplement to advantage whether heavy metal toxicity is a significant issue with ones health or not, as there are always some toxins that the removal of will benefit the long tem health. 

The health Implications of Heavy metal toxicity with an Emphasis on Alzheimers Disease and Autism

Notes & Quotes  

Drs Markesbery's and Ehmann's experiments have shown there are higher concentrations of mercury in the autopsied brains of patients who died of Alzheimer"s than are present in the autopsied brains of patients who did not have Alzheimer's. 

In 1996 a student doing a thesis on dental amalgam was rung by the Chief medical Officer of the European Commission (in reply to her letter). After his expected defense of amalgam she disagreed with everything he said and stated why there was a world wide conspiracy about the amalgam issue: 1) Millions of people around the world will rush forward holding amalgam responsible for many ailments and start to sue their dentists. 2) Practically every dentist would have to be retrained and many would collapse. 3) Insurance companies would be wiped out overnight. She said it just boiled down to money and the avoidance of a financial catastrophe. There was a complete shocked silence at his end and he then agreed with her! He said there would be a world wide catastrophe if the truth be known about amalgam. 

Dr Haley, Ph.D. has produced tubulin defects in laboratory cultures of brain tissue by adding low concentration of mercury plus EDTA, a common food additive. Tubulin defects are thought to be the mechanism which produces the neurofibrillary tangles characteristic of Alzheimer’s Disease.(Quicksilver Associates) 

Haley, Vimy and Lorscheider reasoned that because mercury vapor from amalgam fillings is absorbed into the sinuses and goes through the blood stream directly to the brain, they might obtain a stronger result by exposing the rats to mercury vapor. The team calculated a dose of mercury vapor that would be the rat equivalent of humans inhaling the vapor from fillings. They exposed six rats to these carefully-measured quantities over a period of 7 days to 24 days. The result was stunning: all six experimental animals treated with mercury vapor deteriorated markedly. When their tissues were examined, all six rats had brain aberrancies like those found in human Azheimers' patients. In Dr Haley’s words, "The results of this experiment are terrifying. I’m getting the rest of my mercury fillings taken out right now, and I’ve asked my wife to have hers replaced too." 

Although they afflict widely different age groups, autism and Alzheimer’s disease share a common cause: mercury. Dr. Boyd Haley, professor and chair of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky, and Dr. Bernard Rimland, founder of the Autism Research Institute, presented evidence at this year’s Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meeting that connects mercury with these diseases. 

This heavy metal is highly poisonous. A Dartmouth professor studying the chemical characteristics of an organic form of mercury - dimethyl mercury - spilled two drops of it on her gloved hand. The first sign of mercury poisoning occurred four months later when her speech began to be slurred. This was followed by difficulty walking and loss of vision. She then fell into a coma and died. Another person, attempting to smelt the silver in dental amalgams he obtained (they are 35 percent silver, 50 percent mercury, and 15 percent tin, zinc, and other metals), heated them in a frying pan. The mercury vapor thus generated killed him quickly. The two other family members in the house at the time also died. 

Mercury is one proton (neutron and electron) heavier than gold - the atomic number of gold is 79; mercury, 80. It is distributed throughout the earth’s crust. Unlike other metals, mercury, in its elemental state, is liquid (molten) at room temperature. And it releases a steady stream of gaseous mercury atoms that linger in the atmosphere for months (eventually falling back to earth and its oceans in an inorganic form in rain drops). Even when in a solid state, combined with other metals as an alloy, mercury atoms continually escape into the atmosphere. Once added to latex paint, put in teething powder, used in making hats, as a fungicide on seeds, as an antiseptic (Merthiolate), and as a treatment for syphilis (the cure was worse than the disease), human exposure to mercury today comes principally from three sources: dental amalgams, vaccines, and fish.  

Elemental mercury when released by a dental amalgam is inhaled and (80 percent of it) absorbed by the lungs and retained in the body. Vaccine makers add thimerosal (which is half ethyl mercury) to vaccines to prevent bacterial contamination. This injected organic form of mercury is readily taken up by brain and heart muscle cells. Fish harbor another organic form of mercury – methyl mercury, which is obtained from plankton thatsynthesize it from inorganic mercury extracted from the sea. 

Currently the two most important sources of mercury exposure for Americans are dental amalgams and vaccinations. The Federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for reasons not explained, have chosen to ignore this fact. These agencies and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) focus exclusively on mercury in seafood, to the extent that the NIH will not fund studies that address mercury in amalgams and vaccines. 

In lockstep with the government, the American Dental Association (ADA) claims that amalgams are safe, and the mercury in them poses no problem. The (government-funded) Institute of Medicine (IOM) and various specialty societies, notably the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), and the American Medical Association (AMA), say the same thing about mercury in vaccines. There is growing evidence, however, that mercury in vaccines and amalgams cause both autism and Alzheimer’s disease. The CDC and the FDA and the medical establishment, led by its specialty societies, discount or ignore this evidence – evidence that includes privately funded epidemiological studies; research on how mercury damages brain cells grown in culture; animal studies in rodents, sheep, and primates; and clinical studies in children and adults. 

Autism was discovered in 1943, in American children, twelve years after ethyl mercury (thimerosal) was added to the pertussis vaccine. (The disease was not seen in Europe until the 1950s, after thimerosal was added to vaccines used there.) In a typical case, shortly before his 2nd birthday a normally developing, healthy boy stops communicating with others and withdraws into himself. He avoids eye contact and becomes strange and aloof. His vision becomes blurred; and he develops various motor disturbances, such as involuntary jerking of the arms and legs and walking on his toes. In addition to these manifestations, Dr. Sallie Bernard and her colleagues, in a study titled, "Autism: A Unique Type of Mercury Poisoning," describe the speech difficulties, unusual behavior (such as unprovoked crying spells and head banging), various degrees of cognitive impairment, gastrointestinal difficulties, and immune difficulties that these autistic children can have. Mercury is most likely a causative factor in other developmental disorders as well, such as delayed speech and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  

Investigations have shown that there is a direct relationship between increasing doses of mercury in vaccines and autism. In the 1950s, with an immunization schedule limited to four vaccines (against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and smallpox), 1 in 10,000 children developed this disease. As vaccines for other diseases were added, health care providers began injecting increasingly larger doses of mercury into children. Those born in 1981 were given 135 micrograms of mercury (on average), and one case of autism occurred in every 2,600 children born that year. With the addition of hepatitis B vaccine (injected on the day of birth) and one for Haemophilus influenzae Type b, providers injected 246 micrograms of mercury into children born in 1996. Autism occurred in one out of every 350 of these children. Today, providers follow an immunization schedule prepared by the CDC and approved by the AAP and AAFP, that includes 13 vaccines given, with variable numbers of booster shots, 33 times before a child reaches the age of 2 (when the development of the brain is completed). Autism now afflicts 1 in 100 boys and 1 in 400 girls, and physicians diagnose 100,000 new cases of this disease every year in the U.S (using diagnostic criteria, in the DSM-IV, that is more restrictive than the previous DSM-IIIR). Over the last 30 years more than one million children have come down with this disease, and currently one in every 68 families in America has an autistic child. 

Mainstream medical journals, like Pediatrics and The New England Journal of Medicine, only publish studies that claim thimerosal is safe. And it turns out that these articles are written in large part by researchers in the pay of vaccine makers, as the Coalition for Safe Minds (Sensible Action For Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders), a private nonprofit organization, has shown. Editors of these journals will not publish studies that show a link between thimerosal and autism like "Thimerosal in Childhood Vaccines, Neurodevelopment Disorders, and Heart Disease in the United States" by Mark and David Geier, which documents a strong association between the amounts of mercury injected in vaccines and autism. Such articles can only find acceptance in alternative (i.e., "politically incorrect") journals like the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, where this one was published. 

The amount of damage a given dose of mercury can do to the brain (and also the heart) depends on one’s age, sex, and genetically determined ability to excrete mercury. Young children with still developing brains are more susceptible, and males are more vulnerable to a given dose of mercury because testosterone enhances its neurotoxicity. Most important, however, is one’s genetically programmed ability to rid the body of mercury. The brain has a house-cleaning protein that removes dangerous waste products, which comes in three varieties: APO-E2, APO-E3, and APO-E4. The APO-E2 protein can carry 2 atoms of mercury out of the brain; APO-3, one; and AOP-E4, none. The genes we acquire from each parent determine which two we have. People with two APO-E4 proteins (and thus no APO-E2 or -E3) have an 80 percent chance of acquiring Alzheimer’s disease. And according to one study, autistic children have a huge preponderance of APO-E4 protein in their brains. 

Alzheimer’s disease was discovered in 1906, again in America, where dentists used mercury-laden amalgams to fill cavities (dentists in Europe largely avoided them). Today, more than 4 million Americans now have Alzheimer’s disease. It afflicts half of people over the age of 85 and 20 percent aged 75 to 84.  

The first symptoms of this disease are difficulty concentrating and variable degrees of memory loss, leading ultimately to devastating mental deterioration. The brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease shrink by 25 percent and have distinct pathologic hallmarks (neurofibillary tangles, amyloid plaques, and phosphorylation of tau protein). Brain cells grown in the laboratory develop the same three pathologic findings when exposed to nanomolar (3.6 × 10-10 molar) doses of mercury, an amount approximating that found in the brains of people who have a lot of amalgam fillings. 

Dental amalgams are the main source of mercury in an adult’s brain. An average-sized amalgam filling contains 750,000 micrograms of mercury and releases around 10 micrograms a day. Researchers put radiolabelled mercury amalgams in the teeth of sheep and determined where escaped mercury went with a scanner. They showed that mercury atoms exhaled through the nose travel up filaments of the olfactory nerve to the hippocampus, which controls memory, and to other critical areas in the brain. In another study, rats given the same concentration of mercury that people inhale from their amalgams develop the pathologic markers of Alzheimer’s disease. People with Alzheimer’s disease have mercury levels in their brains that are 2 to 3 times higher than that seen in normal people.

The mercury in flu vaccines also plays a role in this disease. One investigator has found that people who received the flu vaccine each year for 3 to 5 years had a ten-fold greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than people who had zero, 1, or 2 shots. 

Another important factor with regard to mercury on the mind, which officials at the CDC, FDA and the professors in the IOM do not consider, is synergistic toxicity – mercury’s enhanced effect when other poisons are present. A small dose of mercury that kills 1 in 100 rats and a dose of aluminum that will kill 1 in 100 rats, when combined have a striking effect: all the rats die. Doses of mercury that have a 1 percent mortality will have a 100 percent mortality rate if some aluminum is there. Vaccines contain aluminum.  

Why do officials at the CDC, FDA, and leaders of the medical and dental establishment discount or ignore all these important facts? Some of them being in the pay of vaccine makers is one reason. The specter of litigation for having sanctioned thimerosal and amalgams and, in the case of the FDA, not doing appropriate safety studies on them is another. But it is more complicated than that. The hypothesis that mercury causes autism and Alzheimer’s disease is a new truth. And as Schopenhauer points out (see my article on him), each new truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. And third, it is accepted as self-evident. The mercury truth is now in the second stage. 

Today the medical establishment, led by the AAP, AAFP, AMA, CDC, and IOM, has gone to the other extreme. The accepted wisdom now is that vaccines are a panacea. Health care providers start injecting them in infants on the day of birth, and government officials seek to have them made mandatory for all Americans. But some little-discussed facts belie their value. Deaths from diphtheria, for example, declined 90 percent from 1900 to 1930, due to better sanitation and nutrition, before there was a vaccine for this disease. Likewise, the death rate for measles declined 95 percent (13.3 to 0.03 deaths per 100,000 population) between 1915 and 1958, before the vaccine for measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Viewed from a risk/benefit perspective, providers and government officials downplay the deleterious effects that vaccines can have on one’s health and inflate their benefits. The top medical textbook on the subject is Vaccines, edited by Drs. Plotkin and Orenstein. In the 1999 3rd Edition that I reviewed (a slightly longer 4th Edition was published last year), its authors confine their discussion of mercury in vaccines to two short paragraphs in this 1,230-page book. They do not address concerns that have been raised about its neurotoxicity. 

Vaccine manufacturers have started removing thimerosal from vaccines. And for the first time since the state began keeping records on this disease, California has had a decrease, of 6 percent, in the annual number of children over the age of 3 who have been diagnosed with autism. This occurred in children born in 2000, when the phase-out of thimerosal in vaccines began. Iowa has passed a law banning thimerosal in that state, and California has done the same thing for pregnant women and children under 3 (the bill awaits the governor’s signature). But pharmaceutical companies still add thimerosal in their Flu vaccines; and pediatricians are vaccinating children with their remaining supply of thimerosal-containing vaccines, which the FDA has chosen not to recall. 

Taking mercury out of vaccines would substantially reduce the incidence of autism, but this alone will not eliminate the disease. Giving too many vaccines over too short a time to infants whose nervous system is not yet fully developed can also trigger autism and its spectrum of disorders. As Dr. Blaylock has shown (see Recommended Reading below), multiple vaccines given close together over-stimulate the brain’s immune system and, via the mechanism of "bystander injury," destroy brain cells.  

Much more research needs to be done on the neurotoxicity of mercury and excessive vaccination. Dr. Haley terms autism Mad Child Disease. Finding one cow in the U.S. with Mad Cow Disease, from Canada, prompted the Federal government to spent millions of dollars examining other cows to see if they had contracted it. With regard to Mad Child Disease, however, the government spends $59.00 in research for every case of autism diagnosed in this country.  

Avoiding flu shots that contain thimerosal, and having dentists stop implanting mercury amalgams in people’s mouths would lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease. If you have amalgam fillings, particularly if there is a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, you might consider having them removed. Be sure to have a dentist do it who follows the protocol established by The International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology for safely removing them. 

For the third source of mercury, follow the CDC’s advice and don’t eat mercury-contaminated fish, especially if you are pregnant because mercury in your bloodstream crosses the placenta and is concentrated in the fetus’ brain. 

Recommended Reading – in addition to the online links provided above

An excellent review of thimerosal and autism, titled "Mercury in Medicine – Taking Unnecessary Risks," is to be found, of all places, in the Congressional Record. Prepared by its Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, this report was presented to the Committee on Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Dan Burton (who has an autistic grandson). Congressional Record, May 21, 2003, E1011–E1030.  

SafeMinds president, Lyn Redwood, presented testimony at a Congressional hearing held on September 8, 2004 that exposes malfeasance by the CDC and FDA related to thimerosal. It is titled "Truth Revealed: New Scientific Discoveries Regarding Mercury in Medicine and Autism" and is posted on their website, safeminds.org. See also this organization’s 84-page Report to Congress titled, "A Brief Analysis of Recent Efforts in Medical Mercury Induced Neurological and Autism Spectrum Disorders" (September 8, 2004). 

"The Three Modern Faces of Mercury" – in fish, vaccines, and dental amalgams – by Thomas Clarkson in Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 110 | Supplement 1 | February 2002 | pages 11–23. This study provides an current-day perspective on mercury exposure, post Calomel, Merthiolate, and Mad Hatters. 

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD (http://members.aol.com/nitrf), the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. http://www.whale.to/vaccines/flu11.html 

In January 1987, experiments performed at the Medical Research Endocrinology Dept., Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and the Physics Dept of the Univ. of Ruhana, Sri Lanka, showed that fluoridated water at 1 ppm, when used in cooking in aluminum cookware, concentrated the aluminum up to 600 ppm, whereas water without fluoride did not. (Science news 131:73)  

They suggested that because of the known fact that aluminum is neuro-toxic and is in abnormally high concentrations in the brain of Alzheimers and other neurological disease victims, including AIDS, that these findings raise questions about adding fluoride to the water supply of communities to reduce tooth decay....  

Because of these findings, a test was made of Antigo, Wisconsin water which has been fluoridated for 33 years. The water was examined by a certified Wisconsin laboratory, and showed that when it was used in cooking in aluminum cookware, it concentrated the aluminum by 833 times and increased the fluoride content by 100%.  

The maximum allowed aluminum content of water is set by the World Health Organization at 200 micrograms per liter. This makes Antigo water, when cooked in aluminum, 75 times over the maximum. No test was made of distilled water, as the Antigo Water Dept. does not dispense distilled water." http://www.whale.to/a/alz.html 

Aluminum is technically not a heavy metal, but it is so toxic many people categorize it with the heavy metals, as I do. I could go on, but I think I have made my point: lead, mercury, aluminum and fluoride, and other heavy metals, are the major cause of Alzheimer's.

Heavy metals get into the body by many different ways, but primarily by:  

• Dental amalgam (mercury),
• Cooking utensils (aluminum with floridated water, iron pots),
• Vaccinations (mercury),
• The foods we eat and the things we drink (mercury, aluminum, etc.),
• The air we breathe, meaning pollution (lead and many others),
• Combinations of the above items.

Aluminum By Itself :  

"Alzheimer's "disease" has only existed about 25-30 years. (Not to be confused with dementia) Alzheimer's patients on autopsy have consistently elevated levels of aluminum in the CNS. Widespread use of aluminum cans in beer and soft drinks began about 30 years ago. "Coincidentally" the aluminum industry has recently launched an expensive pre-emptive television advertising campaign citing all the many benefits of aluminum containers for use in food storage. Their slogan reads "nothing keeps foods fresher than aluminum." [No doubt in the hopes of reaching all those uninformed soft drink bottling company executives who haven't yet heard of this marvelous new packaging option!] The EPA requires that public water have less than 50ppb [parts per billion] of aluminum, yet canned beverages contain 6160ppb."

Research presented at the May 2000 meeting of the American Academy of Neurology revealed a dramatic correlation between on-the-job lead exposure and the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in later years. The occupational histories of 185 people with Alzheimer's disease were compared to 303 people without the disease. Results showed that individuals were up to 3.4 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's if they had worked in jobs exposing them to high levels of lead - either by breathing lead dust or from direct skin contact. http://www.fi.edu/brain/metals.htm 

And another article on lead and Alzheimer's:

A four-year study looked at 535 former chemical manufacturing employees, who had an average of eight years of occupational exposure to lead and an average of 16 years since last working with lead. Blood and bone levels of lead were measured, and neurological tests were given - and compared with 118 non-exposed people from the same neighborhoods. The lead workers not only had greater declines in test scores, but also in normal age-related declines in brain functions. "The effects of the average level of bone lead found in former lead workers was like five more years of aging on the brain," said Dr. Schwartz." http://www.fi.edu/brain/metals.htm

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