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I just received an email from an FCT patient who had heard the following information and sought my view on it:

That a well-known researcher with a speciality (as far as I'm aware) in nutrition-based approaches to mental illness recently made a comment about mercury poisoning at a seminar - that it stays in the brain for up to 70 days and is then gone.

Any thoughts on this from anyone?

My personal response was somewhere between amusement and bemusement. It's no wonder (I thought to myself) that Dr Yurkovsky so often criticises people for "over-specialising," so that they are very knowledgeable in some areas (e.g. nutrition) and yet at the same time very ignorant in other areas (e.g. toxicology). . . I find it's the same old story everywhere I turn, alas, particularly as neither conventional doctors nor alternative therapists study toxicology, as a rule.

Here is the summary of an interesting study I quoted in response (which is only one example I dug out):

Demonstration of mercury in the human brain and other organs 17 years after metallic mercury exposure.

A male subject became exposed to metallic mercury vapor at work in 1973. He excreted 1,850 mg Hg/l urine initially. Controls of urine mercury excretion after D-penicillamine administration led to the assumption of a total body clearance of mercury latest since 1976. Subsequently he developed an organic psychosyndrome without detectable signs of classical mercurialism. He never returned to work again and died of lung cancer in 1990. In different organs (brain, kidney, and lung) which were sampled at autopsy elevated levels of mercury were documented by atomic absorption analysis. Histological examination of the tissue by the Danscher and Schroder method, which is specific for mercury, showed a highly positive staining in the majority of nerve cells and cells of other organs. Ultrastructurally mercury could be demonstrated by elemental x-ray analysis within lipofuscin deposits. The lipofuscin content was increased in the mercury positive nerve cells as demonstrated by a strong positive autofluorescence.

Opitz H, Schweinsberg F, Grossmann T, Wendt-Gallitelli MF, Meyermann R.
Department of Neuropathology, University of Tubingen, Germany.
Clin Neuropathol 1996 May-Jun;15(3):139-44
PMID: 8793247 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Text quoted from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Here are some of the comments I wrote back to the above-mentioned FCT patient by way of response:

Note that this study came out of a department of neuropathology, who it would appear have much more authority and insight to comment on this subject (including neurotoxicology) than the above-mentioned nutritional researcher!

Besides the brain burden of mercury, you might also notice that the man they studied had died of lung cancer, and they found elevated mercury levels 17 years later in his lungs too. That is not atypical, since among the various cancer patients Dr Yurkovsky has treated (with great success), he has repeatedly found mercury to be the cause of the cancer, regardless of the location of the cancer.

There is also another very interesting aspect of the study above, which illustrates exactly what the problem is.

Using a form of urine testing for mercury, they incorrectly concluded after THREE YEARS that he had finally excreted all of the mercury from his body.

But, lo and behold!, when he died about 14 years after that, what did they find? Not just mercury in his tissues, but in “the majority” of his nerve cells. So “the majority” of his nervous system (including brain) was still packed full of mercury, yet nothing had been showing up in the urine testing, leading to the false conclusion about 14 years earlier that he no longer had a mercury problem!

This is the classic mistake: a "mercury problem" is very often denied on the basis of inadequate forms of testing, and after all, there aren't many people who would opt for an autopsy to prove otherwise. Short of post-mortem examination, all other conventional forms of mercury testing are intrinsically inadequate and misleading because they are incapable of penetrating important tissues (such as the nerves or lungs in this case) to reveal anything about the mercury burden there. This study is a very worthy demonstration of why autopsy is really the only valid conventional mercury test that exists to date.

Hence people unwittingly under-estimate mercury poisoning because there DOES NOT EXIST a conventional test that can be performed on the living which will give an accurate reflection of a person’s actual mercury burden. The only accurate way to test for it (on the living) is via alternative methods, such as FCT, if people will allow them a chance; and if they won’t, then they’ll just have to wait until an autopsy can be done to prove it (i.e. when it’s too late to do anything about it!), or else live in ignorance of it like most of humanity! (Or denial, if they give false credence to the severely limited mercury tests performed on superficial bodily fluids such as urine or hair).

Further reflections I sent in response:

I cannot exactly fault people individually for their ignorance, since almost everyone is party to the same ignorance, through collective neglect of important fields of knowledge - particularly immuno-toxicology and bio-physics. In other words, I feel it's a collective problem more than an individual one. And, as you can see when you hear comments like this one, it really is quite an ocean of ignorance we are up against. Half the people haven't even heard of mercury being a common health problem. . . and most of the other half may have heard about it but drastically under-estimate the extent of the problem, most typically through varying degres of ignorance.

As you can see, it is ridiculous and meaningless to state that mercury leaves the brain after 70 days. (Besides the fact there is no mention of what form of mercury exposure it was, or how much!)

On what basis that conclusion was drawn I do not know, but it cannot have been a sound one. If it had any basis at all, I guess it might possibly have been an inadequate form of mercury testing such as urine testing, which tells you nothing about mercury levels in brain tissue. The only accurate way to ascertain mercury levels in the brain is through autopsy, as mentioned above, and that's a fact!

This is why I chose the study summary I did: in it, the autopsy revealed, 17 years after mercury exposure, that the brain (and other organs) were still clogged with mercury. The fact they obtained this information via autopsy makes this study much more credible than many others, since other forms of mercury testing - by recognition of world-class toxicologists - are severely inadequate due to their superficial reach in the body.

It happened to be 17 years in his case, but it would have been the same after 30 or even 50 years, in fact, since the half-life of mercury from brain tissue is about 30 years.

To repeat that important point in different wording: this means literally that after about three decades only HALF of the resident mercury will have been eliminated from a healthy person's brain! (Sidenote: 'healthy' here refers to 'average,' not in my view genuinely healthy, since I would contend that it's not possible to be healthy when your brain is mercury-toxic!)

Of course, don't let this depress you either: remember that these observations are of people who are not receiving any special form of detoxification. Through detoxification we are massively accelerating the rate at which the body can off-load its toxins. That's the reason we are seeking to do what we are doing with FCT in the first place.

But at the very least I find it reminds me that I can't expect all the toxins to leave at once, but only one layer at a time, and it makes me appreciate the value of each detoxification regime I do, by gradually reversing the accumulation of this toxicity in my tissues. Even if, for example, it takes me 6 months, or even, say, 2 years, to remove most of the toxins from my system, then if they have been several decades accumulating, this is actually an amazingly rapid rate of reversal of the process! Without this intervention via FCT, this accumulation of toxins might have stayed in my system for good, until death (and very likely have taken me there sooner as well. . . )

I have since heard that the original researcher's ridiculous comment about "70 days" was made on the basis not of urine testing, but of hair analysis. . .

Suffice it to say that hair analysis is as inadequate a form of mercury testing as urine testing and any other existing conventional mercury test besides autopsy, for the reasons mentioned above.

In the case of the hair specifically, the levels of mercury excreted into the hair follicles may or may not bear any relation whatsoever to the levels of mercury accumulated in the tissues of major internal organs such as the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, adrenals, thyroid, intestines, bladder, pancreas, and so on.

These are the places where mercury does the most harm and accumulates in the most significant quantities. . . and at the same time these are precisely the places about which no meaningful information can possibly be gathered by examining hair, urine, stool, blood or any other superficial fluid or tissue, all of which therefore tend to mislead people - the most common danger of these tests (besides emptying people's wallets) probably being their propensity to give false negatives, i.e. to deceive people into believing that they don't have a mercury problem like the man in the above study. . .

Hi Simon,

Apologies for the delay in catching up with this thread. Congratulations for an excellent input here. You have got to the heart of the problem. How good is the average innate detox capability?

The answer from your half life comment seems - not good enough.

I would very much appreciate to learn more about the research that went into to the estimate of 30 years as a half life of mercury in the body.
This is perhaps one of the single most important messages we can deliver to our patients and I thank you for bringing it out so clearly.

regards, Kevin

Hi Kevin,

Sorry for my delayed response. I re-located the reference some time ago, but then I tried to obtain the original article itself. I always like to go to primary sources if I can, especially regarding important data like these. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way of obtaining a copy of this article for my own interest, but if anyone reading this is able to source a copy from anywhere, please do let me know!

Anyway, the reference, as quoted by Dr Munro-Hall in an informative article on the subject at http://www.hallvtox.dircon.co.uk/amalgam.html, is as follows:

Bernard SR. and Perdue P. (1984): Metabolic model for methyl and inorganic mercury. Health Physics 46: 695-699

I remembered the precise information not quite correctly - the half-life of mercury from brain tissue was not quoted as 30 years but as "over 27 years":

"The level of mercury in the brain is reduced by half every 27 years."

Of course, this would vary individually, but this study made an average estimate. As I mentioned above, 27 years is an extraordinarily long time, and even then we are talking about half of the mercury still left in there! Effectively, unless very special action is taken, we can expect that most people will go to the grave with their mercury poisoning.

Other references also cited with the same conclusion are:

Goldwater L, Ladd AC, Jacobs MB. Absorption and excreetion of mercury in Man VII Significance of mercury in blood. Arch Environ Health 1964: 9:735-40.

A.D.A. Council on Dental Materials and Devices: Recommendations in mercury hygiene. J Amer Dent Assoc 88:39l-2, 1974

Chang LW and Hartman HA. Blood-brain barrier dysfunction in experimental mercury intoxication. Acta Neuropathology 21: 179-84, 1972.

If you want objective evidence of mercury toxicity you can analyze the porphyrins in the urine. There is a lab in France, The Laboratorie Phillpe Auguste, doing this now and it is of interest to the parents of autistic children.

Jill,

Thank you for your post. What you write is technically correct, but still I would hesitate to recommend this test. "Objective evidence of" (certainly not quantifiable in terms of body burden nor with any indication of affected locations) is possible, but not guaranteed, hence the great danger of false negatives (more on that below). So, beyond this, as I wrote above, there is no conventional test which can tell you your body's mercury levels (my posts above explain why), and it is no different with a porphyrin test. . . another reason for my hesitancy with even this test.

As measured in porphyrin testing, mercury selectively alters porphyrin metabolism in kidney proximal tubule cells, leading to an altered urinary porphyrin excretion pattern. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with body burden of mercury. Like all of the other conventional "mercury tests" this gives only a partial reflection of the body's ability to excrete mercury, and its damage in a particular tissue (in this case, mainly the kidneys). That does not tell you about mercury levels in the hundreds of other tissue compartments around the body.

Lest a reader proposes another test, such as for example the MELISA test, or another one altogether, this is fine but do also re-check my comments above for overall context, to avoid over-recommending such tests, as so many people do. . . And for example, before recommending a mercury test to patients, practitioners would do well to ask themselves the following sample question as a test: Would this test determine the mercury levels and damage in the bone marrow, the brain or the spinal cord? Sadly, we know in advance what the answer will always be. . .

The MELISA test has for example been much publicized lately. Please note that it is an expensive test which does not offer any clinically useful information to an individual patient, in my view. It gives a partial reflection of immune reactivity to mercury, which, once again, does not tell you the mercury levels in the hundreds of different tissue compartments around the body.

Such tests - including the MELISA test - are potentially useful on an epidemiological scale, as by performing a test like this on a large selection of people, they can demonstrate concretely (as they have been doing) that a significant proportion of people are very reactive to mercury. On a political level, this does help to convince people to take amalgam toxicity more seriously, by proving that the rate of reactivity to mercury is much higher in the population than is usually suggested. The same could be said for porphyrin testing, and other forms of mercury assessment. In my view, they are only potentially useful as part of surveys of the population generally, to help draw attention to the issue. On an individual level, I would contend that there is no significant clinical conclusion that can be drawn, either way, from such tests (referring to my posts above as to why). Hence for clinical purposes, in individual cases, I would not view these as useful tests, as they are more likely to cause problems than offer any help due to the ever-present danger of false negatives.

I apologise if I appear to over-state the matter. . . It's no doubt through my frequent exposure to people advocating such tests, sadly including so-called, and widely famed, "mercury experts"!

No matter how often this is explained to people, some still go off to get one of these tests, because they want a "piece of paper." Then they come back and protest, in some cases, that the "piece of paper" didn't show up anything: in this case, all I can say is that I did warn them not to waste their money. Or they come back with their "piece of paper" that does show something: and still it does not mean anything to me, because I can use the case history and bio-resonance testing to find out clinically useful information, whereas these pieces of paper tell me nothing useful, as even on the off-chance that they show up something, there is no indication of which organ locations are most badly hit and, consequently, no indication of which are in priority need of attention through FCT treatment.

Please note, also, that my above-described conclusions regarding the inadequacy of all forms of mercury testing except autopsy are based both on common sense and on the conclusions of world-class toxicologists writing in a voluminous textbook of toxicology which I have. The book is called the "Toxicology of Metals" (Chang et al). I would recommend this book if anyone is in doubt, but please note that it is an expensive, enormous and rather technical scientific book. It would be easier to accept their conclusions as summarized here, which make sound sense, but otherwise I would recommend seeking out this book. . .

Dear Simon,

Have you read a recent study below? If you are interested to read it, here is a link to the full study. A lot of parents of children on autism spectrum are using the test and will be interested to read your detailed comments.

Here is the link to the full article:

http://filariane.org/anglais/DOC/MSFINAL.pdf

Thank you,
Vera

1: Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2006 Jul 15;214(2):99-108. Epub 2006 Jun 16.Click here to read Links
Porphyrinuria in childhood autistic disorder: implications for environmental toxicity.

* Nataf R,
* Skorupka C,
* Amet L,
* Lam A,
* Springbett A,
* Lathe R.

Laboratoire Philippe Auguste, Paris, France.

To address a possible environmental contribution to autism, we carried out a retrospective study on urinary porphyrin levels, a biomarker of environmental toxicity, in 269 children with neurodevelopmental and related disorders referred to a Paris clinic (2002-2004), including 106 with autistic disorder. Urinary porphyrin levels determined by high-performance liquid chromatography were compared between diagnostic groups including internal and external control groups. Coproporphyrin levels were elevated in children with autistic disorder relative to control groups. Elevation was maintained on normalization for age or to a control heme pathway metabolite (uroporphyrin) in the same samples. The elevation was significant (P < 0.001). Porphyrin levels were unchanged in Asperger's disorder, distinguishing it from autistic disorder. The atypical molecule precoproporphyrin, a specific indicator of heavy metal toxicity, was also elevated in autistic disorder (P < 0.001) but not significantly in Asperger's. A subgroup with autistic disorder was treated with oral dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) with a view to heavy metal removal. Following DMSA there was a significant (P = 0.002) drop in urinary porphyrin excretion. These data implicate environmental toxicity in childhood autistic disorder.

PMID: 16782144 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Hi Simon, I simply meant that it is a good indicator. As I am at the very nascent beginning of FTC therapy, I can only say right now: the remedies are powerful. Should it change my life, I would then want to spread the word in part by documenting for the rest of the nonbelieving world, some objective measures that can be replicable. They are good folks at that lab. The porphyrin levels may be a good indicator because the kidneys are vulnerable to mercury and it is something you can measure in the urine, thus easy to measure. I myself did not take the test, but I know it is of interest to the autism community. Hair analysis, on the other hand, I agree with Boyd Haley--if its in your hair you're probably able to at least partially detox it. Its the autistic kids without any in their hair who have the highest body burden as it turns out~.

I would like to read that book on toxicology and will google a bit. I did not mean to misinterpret you, just to extend the discussion a bit. Thanks!

Hi Vera and Jill,

Many thanks for your posts. Yes, you're right, it's certainly an interesting study, and thanks for sharing it here.

As I described above in regard to the MELISA test, the same applies to the porphyrin test - that these are useful tests on an epidemiological scale, i.e. in studies and surveys such as this one. It helps to draw more public and academic attention to toxicity issues, especially Amalgam Illness.

My criticisms of these, and other, forms of testing relate principally to the context of obtaining clinically useful information for individual cases. In the context of population surveys or studies there are circumstances where tests like these can certainly help to highlight useful things on a broader scale - so long as it's still remembered that here, too, false negatives are likely to be common - i.e. if anything the extent of metal poisoning is likely to be even more than revealed in studies, not less.

The mainstream media, general public and academic opinion all vastly under-estimate heavy metal toxicity, and Amalgam Illness particularly, largely because of a general lack of knowledge and understanding of this field and its implications for society. Almost without fail - including among most dentists - ignorance is at the root of the problem. For example, most dentists have not studied toxicology or read the studies and books which would be most likely to open their eyes.

I asked one mercury-free dentist what she says to her mercury-abusing dental colleagues when she meets them. She says that there is only one thing that she can say, and does say, if asked, and that nothing else is of any use: she simply names the books that she recommends they should read - the ones she read herself and which led her to give up the use of mercury in her practice.

Usually, she says, they don't show any interest in those books, and then on account of their ignorance there is no basis for any discussion of value with them on the subject, because anything they say is arguing from a point of ignorance. But if and when certain dentists do read the right books, she says they normally return to her with a very different perspective. Suddenly, and for the first time, they are better informed on subjects they have never studied before such as toxicology. Then a conversation is actually possible and worthwhile.

So given this situation - that even our so-called "experts" are insufficiently informed and trained and lack the requisite knowledge - then it is imperative that we raise awareness of just how widespread toxicity issues - and Amalgam Illness - are. Since studies like the one you mentioned above do show up a clear correlation between metal toxicity and illness (in this case autism), I can see that serves a very useful educational function, even though the tests are not clinically useful for individual patients.

Thanks again for sharing the study, and I'm delighted if parents of autistic children are, as a consequence, becoming ever more aware of the true cause of autism.

It's great that studies like this one are performed.

I also noted, in the above study, how they chose porphyrin testing partly because it is less invasive than chelation testing. That was an interesting remark, and probably true. Chelation testing is another form of testing which can be useful in studies and surveys, although as they say it is a little more invasive, since by ingesting chelation agents (substances which bind to toxins in the system and carry them out into the urine) the toxins in the system are being "stirred up."

It goes without saying that, as with other forms of testing discussed in this thread already above, chelation testing too is very limited for the purposes of individual testing - since, once again, it cannot reach, or reflect, mercury levels in all the hundreds of tissue compartments around the body - and so in cases of "retention toxicity" - which is a very common scenario - chelation tests will give a false negative - a circumstance I have seen to occur in clinical practice, before which I had more faith in chelation testing than I do now. By chelation tests I'm referring principally to DMSA and DMPS tests. As in the original study I quoted above, toxins may - and do - remain in organs long after they have stopped showing up on chelation test results - and may, as in that case, lead to mental illness and lung cancer due to mercury in the brain and lungs, neither of which has showed up in chelation testing or any other form of testing.

Another interesting thing I noted in the autism study is that after DMSA chelation for around 18 months, the metal-implicating coproporphyrin test result went down, therefore doubly confirming that they were dealing with heavy metal toxicity strongly correlated to the autism. However, they made no mention, it seems, of whether this also led to an improvement in the autism for any of those studied. Nonetheless, personally I would not recommend DMSA chelation for autism, because there is no specific focus or support of the brain in chelation therapy. FCT is very good for treating autism because using FCT the metals are specifically flushed out of the brain and, at the same time, brain tissue is specifically and powerfully supported therapeutically - an important component of treatment that makes the FCT approach both more effective and safer for treating autism than other approaches to metal detoxification which lack this ability to focus on, and support, the brain specifically.

The above also illustrates the severe limitations of both porphyrin testing and DMSA chelation: the detectable metals in the former were reduced in correlation with around 18 months of the latter being administered. This is not surprising to me, because both have a focus on superficial tissues only, and particularly the kidneys. DMSA binds to metals in various tissues, but mainly superficial ones, and particularly the kidneys; meanwhile, this is also the level of tissue at which the porphyrin test can show up metals. You are totally right, Jill, that mercury is very nephrotoxic - that the kidneys are very vulnerable to mercury and it tends to accumulate in them - and so this accounts for the fact that both porphyrin testing and DMSA testing do often show up metal toxicity, as in this study. Nonetheless, I'd still urge caution not to invest much value in these tests on an individual level, even though they are clearly useful when doing studies and population surveys.

In the autism study, I noted that they quite rightly completely rejected both blood and hair tests for mercury as totally inadequate, because mercury commonly fails to show up in blood or hair. I agree with them that chelation and porphyrin tests are, at least, relatively less inadequate than blood and hair tests. Stool tests (which they didn't mention) are another form of testing which some people have found quite useful. However, even though some of these tests are "relatively less bad" than others, all of them are essentially inadequate in individual cases, for the reasons discussed earlier in the thread above. I still don't understand why so many practitioners order tests like these for their individual patients! It's almost like engaging in wishful thinking, conveniently trying to forget the truisms I've raised above.

One other comment in the study caught my attention, where they wrote, "In no case was there prior evidence of heavy metal exposure." This left me wondering what on Earth they meant by this!

Since the study showed up significant heavy metal poisoning in the population of autistic children studied, and since it was in France where most parents - to my knowledge - probably have amalgam fillings - then my guess is that most of the children in this study probably had "prior evidence of heavy metal exposure" at the very least at the start of life, bathed in it continually during 9 months in their mother's womb; then after this they may also have had other exposures such as their own amalgam fillings, and/or vaccinations with thimerosal, and/or industrial or other exposure. I was left feeling curious as to what type of "exposure" they were referring to, since it seems highly unlikely to me that there had been "no prior exposure," and indeed their own test results confirmed that there must have been!

Hi Simon, it is quite fascinating isn't it? I know I'm mercury toxic because of my own personal experiences as a teenager having my braces removed, and a lot of cavities because of a junk food high sugar diet, and a lot of amalgam fillings all at once. I emerged from adolescence with at least 16 amalgam fillings and some of them had been re-done several times. I actually remember, before getting my fillings, wishing I could ask my mother for white fillings but...I thought she would think they were too expensive.

I had my mercury fillings out, slowly over a period of about a year or two, in my 20's, and it did help my health. Because I did it slowly because of expense, I didn't suffer any ill effects.

However in my 30's I tried DMSA provocative chelation. I got slightly elevated mercury, I decided I would chelate with 50 mg pills. I took one more 50 mg pill and I got kidney aches that lasted for MONTHS. I never took another one. I am sure it redistributed.

I don't think the chelators we have are safe. They bind but don't hold onto it all so it gets redistributed. If you are genetically vulnerable to mercury or metals, ie don't have the best detox genes (like for instance, the honeybees that are dying--honeybees are very much more vulnerable to toxins and infections than fruitflies or other species--they have less detox genes and less immune system genes), then the chelation may harm you as it's 'helping' you. In addition I have read of autistic children who gave up no mercury on chelation, but when their ability to detox was restored through supplements etc, they began to dump mercury on their own. (PS I know that even this biomedical approach is considered allopathic on this forum, I'm not endorsing anything, just writing what I know of). Thus I agree, provocative chelation is not such a reliable indicator. Probably the porphyrins would be an indicator of mercury toxicity and if you could see it come down that would be a nice correlation. IE if you were doing FTC therapy. It would not prove all the mercury was out but people would have to say, Hmmm, something is going on.

Boyd Haley is working on a glutathione based chelator and it may be available as a supplement in a few months.

The plastics used for teeth now are not so good either. They contain bisphenyl-A which is a known endocrine disrupter that is under intense scrutiny right now. Its used in many products including tooth fillings. I have a lot of THOSE fillings so....the best approach in life of course would be to eat a healthy diet from the beginning, with raw and natural foods and no high sugar stuff, and not get cavities...

Hi Jill,

Many thanks for all your fascinating comments! Everything you wrote makes sound sense and I enjoyed reading it.

Dr Yurkovsky has described the potential negative side effects of chelation therapy and so he would certainly not be surprised to hear your story about the kidney aches lasting months. Thank you for sharing this, because it is a clear and classic example of why we don't recommend chelation therapy in FCT. As mercury is very damaging to the kidneys (as well as many other tissues) it is medically irresponsible to use any chelating substances in the body without simultaneously offering powerful support and protection to vulnerable tissues such as the kidneys, which as you know is one of the primary focuses in FCT. Powerful kidney support and treatment is nearly always included in FCT treatments, for example.

As for me, I agree with Dr Yurkovsky, because yours is not the first story like this which I have heard. While there are some who have certainly benefited from chelation therapy, there are others who have experienced the hazardous side effects of redistribution of toxicity, and ditto with pretty much any other "detox" substances, including ones which in "theory" aren't supposed to cause redistribution such as PCA: even through stirring up some toxic layers, other toxic layers will shift and move around.

Dr Yurkovsky once described why he stopped practising chelation therapy himself in his clinic, many years ago: one of his patients developed insomnia after starting chelation therapy. Bio-resonance testing revealed that mercury had moved up into his head, redistributed there after the chelation therapy had begun. Based on observations such as these - and yours - it's logical to conclude that chelation therapy is for some people like a form of Russian roulette, as Dr Yurkovsky described it at a seminar once! In that patient, no support or protection was offered for his brain or pineal gland. In FCT his pineal gland or brain or both would have been evaluated as vulnerable in that particular case, and then individually supported with FCT remedies.

It's interesting to hear about Boyd Haley's efforts to make a new chelator. However, if it is used within the same paradigm as other chelators - with no FCT paradigm of organ assessment, support and protection - then even a good chelator will still be Russian roulette, sadly!

Regarding the plastics in composite dental fillings - you're right, these can't be regarded as completely non-toxic. We are also exposed to thousands of chemicals in our daily lives. Nonetheless, a core topic which Dr Yurkovsky emphasizes in the FCT training curriculum is the concept of "key toxins": certain toxins, such as mercury, can be considered the ringleaders, and when these are removed the body is better able to handle other, lesser toxins. While composites are by no means non-toxic, they are far less harmful than amalgam fillings. Also, there are some composites that are totally metal-free and non-toxic (e.g. the 'DiamondLite' series), plus individual biocompatibility testing can be helpful, which can be performed using FCT testing. The key is to find a good holistic dentist who is up-to-date and experienced with the latest and least toxic alternatives to metal fillings - and every year newer and better brands are introduced, I gather.