developed by: Andrew Hall Cutler, PhD
Thousands of parents of children on the Autism Spectrum have chelated their autistic children following Andrew Hall Cutler, PhD’s mercury chelation protocol, many with great success.
Andy Cutler Chelation Protocol
Comprehensive heavy metal detoxification protocol that includes diagnostic testing, vitamin and mineral supplementation, dietary restrictions, and chelation with both natural (ALA) and synthetic (DMPS, DMSA) chelators. All amalgams must be removed by a dentist proficient at mercury removal before beginning the protocol in order to avoid re-distribution of mercury. Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment by Andrew Hall Cutler, PhD is the “bible” for this protocol, and contains extensive information on how to diagnose, treat, and work with your doctor to get better.
Several free online Yahoo health groups exist to support those following this, and other, mercury removal protocols—here are a few: Autism-Mercury, Adult-Metal-Chelation, and Frequent-Dose-Chelation. Moria Merriweather has put together a very helpful site called Mercury Detox: Information, Tools, and Resources which organizes information about the Cutler protocol provided through the Autism-Mercury yahoogroup site.
sources: Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment by Andrew Hall Cutler, PhD, NoAmalgam.com, Mercury Detox: Information, Tools, and Resources
see also: AutismPedia.org
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Earthwalker is the username that PT founder Julie Genser created for her online interactions so many years ago when first creating Planet Thrive.
Julie's (Earthwalker's) life was derailed over twenty years ago when she had a very large organic mercury exposure after she naively used a mouth thermometer to measure the temperature of just-boiled milk while making her very first pizza at home. The mercury instantly expanded into a gas form and exploded out the back of the thermometer right into her face. Unaware that mercury was the third most neurotoxic element on Earth, Julie had no idea she had just received a very high dose of a poisonous substance.
A series of subsequent toxic exposures over the next few years -- to smoke from two fires (including 9/11), toxic mold, lyme disease, and chemical injuries -- caused catastrophic damage to her health. While figuring out how to survive day-to-day, and often minute-to-minute, she created Planet Thrive to help others avoid some of the misdiagnoses and struggles she had experienced.
She has clawed her way over many health mountains to get to where she is today. She is excited to bring the latest iteration of Planet Thrive to the chronic illness community.
In 2019, Julie published her very first cookbook e-book called Low Lectin Lunches (+ Dinners, Too!) after discovering how a low lectin, gluten free diet was helping manage her chronic fascia/muscle pain.
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Hello,
I have a 22 year old son with fillings, I want to know if its possible to treat him with the chelation protocol without going to the dentist and removing the fillings?
@Josefina:
Dr. Cutler’s advice, clarified in his ground-breaking book cited in the above article, and in many of his blog posts on the Internet, can be summarized like this:
> I have a 22 year old son with fillings
NO. In order to be able to use the chelation protocol, your son:
– MUST have ALL his mercury fillings (“silver” fillings) removed, preferably by a biological dentists who knows how to do it safely (by providing an oxygen mask and flushing the dust from the patient’s mouth continuously by using a specialized equipment; otherwise you are risking that your son will ingest or inhale mercury vapor that will make the chelation much more difficult)
– if he had root canals done: EXTRACT any dead tooth that was filled with mercury, because mercury will stay in dead tissue forever; you can’t just drill it out (I know people who had to do this with a couple of root canal’ed molars)
– if there is ANY other metal in his mouth, such as under a crown, I would have that removed as well
– if possible, it should NOT be done at one sitting (my hubby had it done by a non-biological dentist without the proper safeguards during one single session and lived to talk about it, but he had to suffer a lot because of it later)
After mercury removal, you MUST wait for four days or more. DO NOT chelate during this time.
From this point on, follow the book by the letter. If I remember correctly, Cutler says to chelate with DMSA for four months, or to wait for that long for things to settle down, but please check the book to be sure. Every case is different. After four months from the amalgam removal, all hell breaks loose as elemental mercury completes conversion to its bioavailable form that will poison the recipient real bad. Begin chelating with ALA at a very low dose to minimize the fallout. You must space the chelator at EQUAL time intervals during the day and night. The time between to doses MUST NOT be any longer than 3 hours (in theory, the time intervals could be consistently shorter, but then your son would get no sleep, and yes, he must wake up every three hours during night; administration of ALA every 3 hrs is the safest). He MUST NOT change the spacing of each dose once he begins chelating; he must chelate every three hours like clockwork with a low oral dose using plenty of supplements per Dr. Cutler’s recommendation. Supplementation is key, because chelations basically tears the body apart by removing mercury and the body must make repairs at least as fast as it experiences damage. This is why a low dose is so important. ALWAYS ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION: a lower dose is better. Don’t get cocky. He may be a big boy and tolerate a certain dose fine so long as he is consistently taking it, that’s not the problem; sooner or later he will have to stop and that’s when the levels of the chelator drop suddenly, causing redistribution of mercury and arsenic; the lesser of it the better so a lower dose is always safer. Your son also needs a margin of error for the case when he messes up the timing or takes too much (he can’t un-take it). There must be a margin of error. Don’t let him push the limits. Things happen. It’s easy to oversleep, then he has to quit the round, but if this happens too early (e.g. after one day of chelation instead of three), the effects of redistribution will be more severe, so it’s better to be on a lower dose because bouncing back from a redistribution event like that is real hard. The goal is to have “smooth sailing”. Chelating is very hard, particularly from the brain (ALA), because the copper retention may cause mood changes and adds unpredictability to life. You can counteract it using zinc supplementation. I was taking up to 150 mg zinc per day to stay sane and reasonably productive.
While your son is chelating properly, he may not notice any side effects. They will appear at the end of each round. Should he experience rounds without side effects during or especially AFTER a round, he can increase the dose by factor 1.5x or 2x, but not before that.
Don’t use R-LA (R lipoic acid). It is NOT SAFE because it can recycle certain chemicals up to 28 times and you never know how much of it is doing what, if it is chelating mercury or recycling vitamin C and allowing the mercury to bounce back and forth in your son’s brain doing even more damage. No R-LA.
I am using ALA by Dymatize Nutrition (no affiliation); it is FREE of magnesium stereate/stearic acid/vegetable stereate which are all fine-sounding names for a toxic compound present in most supplements). I supplement with raw food supplements by Garden of Life (no affiliation); they work a lot better than synthetic ones, which more than makes up for the price difference. I am sure there are other brands like that.
If I were you, I would put your son on the Rosedale diet: high fat, restricted protein, zero glucose from either carbohydrates or sugars (I’m not affiliated with Dr. Rosedale). This means no bread, no cereals, no pasta, no potatos, no rice. Green vegetables, meat (red pastured is OK), fish, eggs, high-fat cheese, avocados, nuts etc., no sugars, nothing processed, no fruits. I made a quantum leap in chelation once I started eating this diet: ultra-high in healthy fats, zero carbohydrates, zero sugars, less than 1 gram per each kg of lean body mass per day as per his recommendations (meat and fish each have around 20% protein, so if your son weights 80kg in terms of lean body mass, he can eat 80 g protein per day, that would be 400g meat per day if he eats no other protein; anything above that amount will be converted to sugar, raise his insulin level, cause weight gain and put stress on his adrenals by the demands for cortisol, and your son probably is hypoglycemic already, if he has mercury)
DO NOT USE EDTA as a chelator. EDTA is NOT SAFE for mercury toxic individuals as it binds to mercury creating a toxic compound. Dr. Cutler says you MUST stay away from it if you are mercury toxic.
DMSA is optional. In my case it was necessary, but each person is different. “ALA is what cures you” says Dr. Cutler and I can confirm that based on my own experience. God bless you and your son!
@Josefina:
Dr. Cutler’s advice, clarified in his ground-breaking book cited in the above very well researched article, and in many of his blog posts on the Internet, can be summarized like this:
> I have a 22 year old son with fillings
NO. In order to be able to use the chelation protocol, your son:
– MUST have ALL his mercury fillings (“silver” fillings) removed, preferably by a biological dentist who knows how to do it safely (by providing an oxygen mask and flushing the dust from the patient’s mouth continuously with a specialized equipment; otherwise you are risking that your son will ingest or inhale mercury vapor that will make the chelation much more difficult)
– if he had root canals done: EXTRACT any dead tooth that was filled with mercury, because mercury will stay in dead tissue forever; you can’t just drill it out (I know people who had to do this with a couple of root canal’ed molars)
– if there is ANY other metal in his mouth, such as under a crown, I would have that removed as well
– if possible, it should NOT be done at one sitting (my hubby had it done by a non-biological dentist without the proper safeguards during one single session and lived to talk about it, but he had to suffer a lot because of it later)
After mercury removal, you MUST wait for four days or more. DO NOT chelate during this time.
From this point on, follow the book to the letter. If I remember correctly, Cutler says to chelate with DMSA for four months, or to wait for that long for things to settle down, but please check the book to be sure. Every case is different. After four months from the amalgam removal, all hell breaks loose as elemental mercury completes conversion to its bioavailable form that will poison the recipient real bad. Begin chelating with ALA at a very low dose to minimize the fallout. You must space the chelator at EQUAL time intervals during the day and night. The time between to doses MUST NOT be any longer than 3 hours (in theory, the time intervals could be consistently shorter, but then your son would get no sleep, and yes, he must wake up every three hours during night; administration of ALA every 3 hrs is the safest). He MUST NOT change the spacing of each dose once he begins chelating; he must chelate every three hours like clockwork with a low oral dose using plenty of supplements per Dr. Cutler’s recommendation. Supplementation is key, because chelation basically tears the body apart by removing mercury and the body must make repairs at least as fast as it experiences damage. This is why a low dose is so important. ALWAYS ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION: a lower dose is better. Don’t get cocky. He may be a big boy and tolerate a certain dose fine so long as he is consistently taking it, that’s not the problem; sooner or later he will have to stop and that’s when the levels of the chelator drop suddenly, causing redistribution of mercury and arsenic; the lesser of it the better so a lower dose is always safer. Your son also needs a margin of error for the case when he messes up the timing or takes too much (he can’t un-take it). There must be a margin of error. Don’t let him push the limits. Things happen. It’s easy to oversleep, then he has to quit the round, but if this happens too early (e.g. after one day of chelation instead of three), the effects of redistribution will be more severe, so it’s better to be on a lower dose because bouncing back from a redistribution event like that is real hard. The goal is to have “smooth sailing”. Chelating is very hard, particularly from the brain (ALA), because the copper retention may cause mood changes and adds unpredictability to life. You can counteract it using zinc supplementation. I was taking up to 150 mg zinc per day to stay sane and reasonably productive.
While your son is chelating properly, he may not notice any side effects. They will appear at the end of each round. Should he experience rounds without side effects during or especially AFTER a round, he can increase the dose by a factor of 1.5x or 2x, but not before.
Don’t use R-LA (R lipoic acid). It is NOT SAFE because it can recycle certain chemicals up to 28 times and you never know how much of it is doing what, if it is chelating mercury or recycling vitamin C and allowing the mercury to bounce back and forth in your son’s brain doing even more damage. No R-LA.
I am using ALA by Dymatize Nutrition (no affiliation); it is FREE of magnesium stereate/stearic acid/vegetable stereate which are all fine-sounding names for a toxic compound present in most supplements). I supplement with raw food supplements by Garden of Life (no affiliation); these products work a lot better than synthetic ones, which more than makes up for the price difference. I am sure there are other brands like that.
If I were you, I would put your son on the Rosedale diet: high fat, restricted protein, zero glucose from either carbohydrates or sugars (I’m not affiliated with Dr. Rosedale). This means no bread, no cereals, no pasta, no potatos, no rice. Green vegetables, meat (red pastured is OK), fish, eggs, high-fat cheese, avocados, nuts etc., no sugars, nothing processed, no fruits. I made a quantum leap in chelation once I started eating this diet: ultra-high in healthy fats, zero carbohydrates, zero sugars, less than 1 gram per each kg of lean body mass per day as per his recommendations (meat and fish each have around 20% protein, so if your son weights 80kg in terms of lean body mass, he can eat 80 g protein per day, that would be 400g meat per day if he eats no other protein; anything above that amount will be converted to sugar, raise his insulin level, cause weight gain and put stress on his adrenals by the demands for cortisol, and your son probably is hypoglycemic already, if he has mercury)
DO NOT USE EDTA as a chelator. EDTA is NOT SAFE for mercury toxic individuals as it binds to mercury creating a toxic compound. Dr. Cutler says you MUST stay away from it if you are mercury toxic.
DMSA is optional. In my case it was necessary, but each person is different. “ALA is what cures you” says Dr. Cutler and I can confirm that based on my own experience. God bless you and your son!