More Complementary & Integrative Healthcare Articles
Mercury
According to many scientific references, we are all exposed to mercury. This article references the largest international conference on the subject to date, “The Impact of Mercury on Human Health and the Environment.” Dr. Barry Kohl, PhD, adjunct professor at Tulane University School of Public Health in New Orleans, provided a unique overview of the impact of industrialization on environmental mercury levels.
According to Dr. Kohl, “Mercury levels are on the rise in the industrialized world.” Some of the reasons for increased mercury exposure include volcanic eruptions, the California gold rush (where mercury was used for smelting), coal-fired industrial plants, chlorine plants that use mercury in the process of making plastics, pesticides, and PVC pipes.
We get mercury in our bodies from many different sources including mercury vapors in air, ingesting it through drinking water, fish, dental amalgams, vaccines, occupational exposures, living where coal is burned for heat or power, home exposures including fluorescent light bulbs, thermostats, batteries, red tattoo dye, skin-lightening creams, and over-the-counter products such as contact lens fluid and some nasal decongestants, just to mention a few. In fact, over the past 100 years, there has been a 30-fold increase in mercury deposition, 70 percent of which is from human sources Dr. Kohl stated.
You absorb about 80 percent of inhaled mercury vapor and nearly 100 percent of the mercury in fish through your gut. Once this mercury is in your body it is primarily distributed in the kidneys and brain. Mercury is lipophilic, meaning that it concentrates in fatty tissues. The symptoms vary from person to person and are dose related.
Mark Hyman, MD states mercury in the body can be an underlying cause for chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. (He himself suffered with these conditions until mercury was discovered and eliminated from his body). Because of its action on the body, mercury can produce many differing symptoms, such as muscle pain and twitches, insomnia, digestive problems, food allergies, depression, obesity, dementia, Parkinson's disease, cancer, heart failure, heart disease, autism, ADHD and anxiety.
The body removes mercury through urination, defecation, expiration (breathing out), and breast milk. A major reason mercury is toxic to human physiology is because it binds to sulfur-containing molecules in the body. These sulfur-containing molecules are found in nearly every one of our 5,200 enzymatic systems and in the mitochondria found in every human cell, as well as other chemical binding sites in the cells.
New methods of treating mercury exposure involve cold laser therapy, total body detoxification, and lipoic acid supplements. One of the reasons that lipoic acid is effective at clearing mercury is because it contains sulfur groups that bind and remove the metal, with no toxicity to the body's cells.
Treating the myriad of degenerative diseases is frustrating to both doctor and patient, but by removing toxic mercury we can start the process of healing by eliminating one of the possible causes of these diseases.
