Why Can't I Chelate Anymore?

[The Mystical Man]

My goal was to do at least thirty rounds, but, unfortunately, I had to stop my last two rounds, because ALA is making me vomit. That had never happened before. One capsule is enough to make me feel nauseous. I've done eight rounds without problems, so why is this happening now?

[Osaid]

What does the vomit look like? Is it like bile? Yellow/green? Kind of smells like chlorine/chemicals?

Also, before you vomit, how does it lead up to it. Do you lose appetite? Any shaking or trembling prior? 

[The Mystical Man]

7 hours ago, Osaid said:

What does the vomit look like?

Orange. 

7 hours ago, Osaid said:

Kind of smells like chlorine/chemicals?

No.

7 hours ago, Osaid said:

Also, before you vomit, how does it lead up to it.

Stomachache.

7 hours ago, Osaid said:

Do you lose appetite?

Yes.

7 hours ago, Osaid said:

Any shaking or trembling prior? 

No.

[Michael569]

Then don't do it. Chelation is not the only healthy therapy out there. 

Consider getting a medical assessment for those symptoms to make sure you're not missing anything important. 

[The Mystical Man]

2 hours ago, Michael569 said:

Then don't do it. Chelation is not the only healthy therapy out there. 

Consider getting a medical assessment for those symptoms to make sure you're not missing anything important. 

I'm pretty sure that chelation is the only thing that can help me, and if the only thing that can help me is making me vomit, then how am I supposed to get better? I ate a can of tuna every single day for at least five years. I definitely need to chelate more. Eight rounds are not enough. 

[Michael569]

22 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

I ate a can of tuna every single day for at least five years

Eating higher mercury food does not necessarily translate into having a high heavy metal count in your brain. In order for them to get from the gut to the brain they need to go through a transport system so incredibly complex and protected by multiple mechanisms that none may get there at all. It also depends on what you ate with tuna. The more fibre there was, the more likely it was that any pollutants just got excreted. 

Have you considered getting some basic blood work, ferritin tests, thyroid tests, and assessment of some basic B vitamins (doctor can do all of this).

How is your diet, sleep, stress management, , the environment in which you live (e.g. mould, dust, poor ventilation), relationships, daily routines, hydration, stimulant intake, current body weight, lean muscle mass density, body fat density, the current level of physical activity etc.  How much time do you spend on your phone and social media vs on disconnecting yourself. Work-life balance & socialisation?  There is so many factors that could be causing you to feel the way you do.

I wouldn't jump straight into the chelation pool without investigating more obvious patterns. At least not until you fix that vomiting reaction. 

Either way, all the best with the protocol! 

[Leo Gura]

Try taking it with food.

[The0Self]

Maybe take it with food, although this does decrease absorption of ALA. Maybe take antacids (preferably sodium bicarbonate) before dosing — it could be its acidity causing nausea, in fact that’s my best guess.

Sodium bicarbonate, as well as citrus fruits, and vegetables, and even magnesium citrate, can increase the speed of cadmium chelation, which can be extremely slow without sufficiently alkaline urine (and sufficiently high thiamine intake, fwiw).

Also, I would not use ALA by itself, for many reasons (some of which I will get into in this comment)  — try to take it with DMSA, or even DMPS… it reduces side-effects, they’re synergistic, and in my opinion, ALA by itself is far too fast-acting (as in very short half-life) to be fully safe on its own. Its half life isn’t 3 hours, it’s 30 minutes... The e3h frequency is an almost gratuitous recommendation of pure convenience — it’s an absolute maximum time between doses before damage (net mercury flow into the brain) occurs, basically. DMSA has a half life of 3.2h and serves as a decent buffer on low chelator levels, but it also (again when taken with ALA e3h) improves the concentration gradient of free mercury in the direction of from the brain, when compared with ALA alone — as DMSA only binds to free mercury on the outside of the blood brain barrier, thus making the relative “pressure” of mercury a bit more favorable to moving mercury out of the brain and slowing it from going into the brain… however slight (or pronounced… who knows?) the effect is, it nonetheless does happen.

DMSA can even reduce the rather swift pace at which ALA trends one toward copper overload, and actually zinc overload as well. Sounds counterintuitive since it causes zinc overload itself, but since copper overload is way worse… if you’re using ALA for chelation, you should be taking 5-10 mg zinc (and preferably 250-500 mcg molybdenum too, which here serves to do the the same thing as zinc… though much less prominently… yet molybdenum will not build up to toxic levels like zinc will so you might as well use it if you don’t get a bad reaction from it) before meals, to decrease the amount of copper you absorb from your food… again since copper overload is way worse than zinc, and zinc very effectively reduces copper absorption. So definitely avoid high copper foods such as nuts, while on ALA!  The DMSA will increase zinc excretion, theoretically allowing you to consume more of it to more strongly prevent copper absorption (still it’s probably best not to exceed 30-50mg total of supplemental zinc per day), before you would otherwise (with ALA-alone) reach suboptimal-health elevated zinc levels. Not to mention DMSA has its own anti-copper mechanism, technically entirely separate from zinc (though like zinc it involves metallothionein).

It’s just quite a bit better to take ALA with one of the other chelators, preferably DMSA. Never allowing ALA to be the sole chelator in the body — you can ensure this by taking 1 straggler dose of DMSA-alone both 3 hours prior to the first and (most importantly) 3 hours after the last combination dose. The combination (ALA+DMSA) doses themselves should be continued for at the very least 72 hours, and preferably 5-10 days — side note:

2 weeks for a round would be best for mercury chelation, but for lead chelation… after only 5-10 days (at 2 grams a day ?… so perhaps more like 12-19 days at doses for our purposes, generally up to 800mg/d, so this might be a totally moot point if you’re not using high doses, though Cutler has stated it’s potentially fine to use up to 100mg DMSA every hour), the DMSA will have chelated so much lead in the body (blood and tissue) that the rate of lead chelation slows down considerably, at which point additional lead has to leach from sequestered areas (bones, and possibly brain) and replenish the blood and tissue concentration (the only reservoirs that can be reached by DMSA), which takes about 7-14 days to reach near the new equilibrium, before another chelation round can effectively chelate the next round of now-leached, once-sequestered lead.

Edited November 1, 2022 by The0Self