I've said things on it enough times. Leo can do the rest. There's nothing else I know that I haven't posted/commented here. Copied and pasted comments are in between the ----------'s. The rest is additional information. Disclaimer: ALA referred to here is not the omega 3 fatty acid, alpha linolenic acid. It’s alpha lipoic acid. AKA thioctic acid. I don’t have any experience with chelators besides ALA and DMSA, but DMPS certainly seems to have merit as well. ALA must be taken no less frequently than every 3 hours, and DMSA must be taken no less frequently than every 4 hours (i.e. e3h is even better) — both must be taken at this frequency for at least 72 hours straight, otherwise the chelation round was not only unsuccessful...you may have just damaged your body and likely your brain. Anything other than these 3 chelators, zeolite, and in rare cases, EDTA, for chelation, is dangerous and anyone advocating it has no clue how chelators work. The double thiol group acts as a loose but effective hook of sorts — a lone thiol group will just spread metals around haphazardly (possibly causing damage and stress), without latching onto them and actually taking them out of the body. ALA, DMSA, and DMPS are double thiol chelators that are safe when used correctly. Andy Cutler’s writings, and his posts and wikis on onibasu are where you go for further info. ---------- I didn't feel anything off 600mg ALA + 100mg DMSA e3h for 30+ day rounds, fwiw. I mean, I didn't get side-effects. The brain fog and fatigue went away. And ALA only affects mercury (and arsenic, which is not as big of a deal). DMSA chelates lead and mercury.   Btw 64 hours is too short. That's cutting it way too close -- healing/damage ratio is positive by the 72 hour mark for adults, and maybe 60 hours for small children, but you might as well get the ratio as high as possible... Aim for 96+ hours; preferably 7-14+ days. The longer the better, provided you keep copper under control. You CANNOT take ALA for long cycles without zinc (and preferably molybdenum too) 4x/d, or you will be profoundly overloaded with copper. --------- It is very, very risky, unless you do it right. It cured my chronic fatigue but I did it all-in, hardcore style. 6 month cycle with only a few 3-7 day breaks. With every ancillary carefully selected for copper-toxicity control, alarms so I'd never miss a dose, etc. I never had amalgam but by God there must've been something in my body because damn it worked.   I dosed ALA and DMSA every 3 hours around the clock for months on end. Started at low doses and worked up to 600mg ALA / 100mg DMSA e3h. Falling blood levels cause redistribution, so the key is to not let them fall, ever, until you inevitably have to go off -- at which point there will be damage, but the goal is to have the healing net-outweigh the damage. Break-even healing/damage ratio is achieved between hours 60 and 72 of a cycle. Once you make it that long, you know you've succeeded for that round, and you should continue to milk it as long as you can handle to get that ratio up. Thus, long rounds/cycles are much more effective, but harder to deal with side-effect wise... and it carries the risk of oxidative stress from the DMSA, and copper toxicity from the ALA (avoid eating nuts while on ALA). I didn't really have side-effects. As soon as you miss a dose, that round is over, you need to take a break, and if the missed dose occurred before hour 72, the cycle was basically not successful. It can be especially helpful if you have anything significantly greater than perfectly healthy amounts of mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and even iron in your system. The copper overload induced by the ALA very effectively purges iron from the body -- something that may be quite helpful if one has eaten a lot of iron-fortified foods in their life. The reason chelation studies haven't shown much in the way of curing chronic fatigue is simply because they dosed every 8 hours. DMSA must be dosed every 4 (or less) hours to prevent falling levels, which alone is responsible for the redistribution damage and prevents the healing/damage ratio from being a positive number. ---------- You can get it done a lot faster if you do long rounds. Let me explain... The minimum round-length is 72 hours in order to be reasonably certain that the healing/damage ratio is a positive number. The longer the round, the higher that number. Falling systemic levels of the double-thiol chelator are what cause redistribution, which is why you have to take the chelator so frequently, and why longer rounds are far more efficient -- your levels don't fall until the very end of each round, when you stop taking it, therefore you should minimize the amount of times you have to do this, via going as long as you can handle. The only reason not to do them for long stretches is an inability to handle it. A 3-4 day round and a 3-4 day break every week will clean out sufficient mercury/lead within 2-5 years (closer to 1-2 years if you did 1-2 weeks on / 1-2 weeks off) -- the same thing can be achieved with one 6-month round, though you shouldn't actually do it that long. I basically intended to do one 6-month round but there were a few 5-7 day breaks (each initiated upon accidentally missing a dose) so it ended up being essentially three 2-month rounds, in the end -- that's all it took. I recommend planning on a 6 month round and just taking a 7-14 day break each and every time you inevitably accidentally miss a dose. And btw, each 50% increase in dose results in an 18% faster rate of mercury excretion... Since taking larger doses results in comparatively less redistribution, taking larger doses (ramp up as you can handle) will not only speed the process up a bit, it may also have a bit of a buffer effect, protecting you from times when you miss a dose by 30-60min, which should rarely happen, nonetheless. For the majority of my largely-uninterrupted 6-month cycle, I was taking 600mg ALA and 100mg DMSA every 3 hours. ------------- E.g. If you take 100mg ALA every 3 hours for 72 hours running, that would be a 3-day (72 hour) round (or cycle), which is the absolute minimum length the round must be, since you damage yourself every time you come off, but damage while on-cycle (on-round) is minimal -- it's almost all heavy metal excretion (no redistribution) while on-round. The break even healing/damage point occurs after 60-72 hours (of consistently taking the chelator every 3 hours), so it would be to your benefit to do rounds much longer than this. The fastest route would be a 6 month round, but I don't think that's ever been done and it's not advised. I essentially did three 2-month rounds with a 1-week break between each. Doing it for long stretches at a time significantly decreases the total amount of time you'll have to spend on-round before you clear out all the heavy metals you need to. However, copper toxicity can be a problem with ALA, so you'll need to take both zinc and molybdenum 4x/day -- twice a day is insufficient. Even taking 7.5mg zinc and 250mcg molybdenum (the appropriate amounts) 4x a day each will not stave off copper toxicity forever. And oxidative stress can be an issue with DMSA so you have to take antioxidants. Does that clarify? --------------- Those were all the relevant posts I could find. That's literally all I know, but I'm happy to answer further questions if you need clarification. Again I don't know all there is to know about the subject, so I doubt I'll be able to provide anything else. But perhaps there were some posts I missed where I went into some other details. Good luck!   Remember the zinc and molybdenum 4x/d when using ALA. I'm not sure if it's best to take breaks on the zinc/moly in between rounds, or to keep using them off round -- that is one example of something I am unclear on myself -- there seem to be pros and cons to each option -- it's very likely neither choice is gonna kill you though. I'm not the arbiter of truth on this. ^^ ... EDIT 5/24/2021 — additional explanation for the above paragraph. After your final round you should definitely continue to take the zinc/moly 4x/d for some time (probably at least a month), to purge residual copper, which will likely be quite high at this point. When you’re no longer planning on taking more ALA, there’s no reason not to do this... ALA causes some zinc overload but not nearly as bad as it does copper overload, and nothing purges copper quite like zinc... On ALA, you want to take just enough zinc to keep copper retention somewhat under control (30-50mg daily in 4 divided doses; it actually won’t even prevent copper overload, it’ll just slow it down, lol), and too much zinc will just exacerbate ALA’s zinc retention, so it’s a balance... But once ALA is no longer in the picture, if your copper is high, you can continue the zinc for a little while with generally no issue. Since the zinc is basically a limited resource in the scenario of ALA use (as in you shouldn’t take too much of it because it’s only a matter of time before your zinc levels become too high as well), additional means of reducing copper retention would be very wise, such as molybdenum (1-2mg a day in 4 divided doses), stimulating bile flow, and avoiding dietary sources of copper (such as nuts) — the zinc is not optional though, as those options don’t come close to the anti-copper affect zinc has (related to the metallothionein mechanism). There is some evidence that ALA depletes biotin in a hazardous way if you don’t consume extra in the diet or by supplementation.   And never EVER stop DMSA before ALA. It will cause net redistribution into the brain. Stop them both at the exact same time or stop the ALA before the DMSA. If DMSA didn't have a slightly longer half-life than ALA, stopping them both together would not be safe -- but DMSA leaves the body slightly slower, so it is safe to stop them concurrently. This would not be the case if using extended release ALA, but you should never use extended-release ALA to begin with, since the absorption rate differs at different points along the digestive tract, and it hasn't been studied enough. Do not use extended-release anything in chelation. I don't know this, but I have an intuition that it may be prudent to start with a few DMSA-only rounds to reduce body mercury content, so that when you eventually introduce ALA, it won't start with the potential, temporary issue of a net increase in brain mercury -- though even if you did start with ALA, that issue would only happen if mercury concentration was greater in body than across blood brain barrier, and even if that was so, the issue would of course only be temporary -- after all, you're aiming to eventually get essentially ALL of it out, indiscriminately from everywhere. But I'd imagine even temporary increases of mercury in the brain are not desirable. This is a bit of a nod, it seems, away from ALA-only rounds, at least in the beginning, but Andy Cutler didn't mention that issue, to my knowledge (idk maybe he did), and he probably knows best. So I wouldn't worry about it. And if you want to go by the book (so to speak), time on should equal time off. That's not what I did, but that's what I'd advise as a measure of safety.