Dr. Cutler not only studied American medical journals to formulate this protocol, but overseas medical journals as well.  He shows you how to safely remove mercury from your body and brain using alpha lipoic acid, an over-the-counter antioxidant. The most important things to remember about chelating with lipoic acid are to (1) go slowly and (2) to take the doses (25 mg to 120 mg according to  tolerance) every 3 to 4 hours around the clock.  Dr. Cutler explains how this method keeps the blood levels of lipoic acid stable in order to move the Hg from the brain and eliminate it, not merely redistribute it to other places.

    Most of the neurological symptoms I've suffered from are gone now.  They don't come and go; they are just gone. The rapid heart beat stopped, along with the numbness and tingling of the extremities, and the tremor and twitches in my head.  My blood pressure has come up from 70/40 to 120/80 - perfectly normal. My cholesterol has dropped from 305 to 240.  My facial color is no longer ghastly white, but rather a normal and natural color.  H-Pylori titers (a bacteria associated with peptic ulcers and cancer) have gone from 6 plus to 1.37 without medication.

    I'm thrilled I found a way to improve these stubborn health problems that refused to budge with any other means.  Believe me, I had tried everything. If you want to get well from CFIDS, candida, MS, and other neurological problems please don't overlook this book, Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment. Then follow the directions for how to get well safely!

60 of 62 found the following review helpful:

The truth about mercury poisoning from dental amalgams.  Apr 24, 2001
By Kenneth Southwell
Dr. Cutler tells it like it is. No cover-ups here like the one from the .... How do I know? My wife is extremely ill from dental amalgam poisoning for more than 20 years. She is seriously chronically poisoned. After so much lying from dentists and ignorance from medical doctors, here comes a good book that sheds light to one of the most insidious forms of sickness, mercury poisoning! Even after all mercury amalgams are replaced by safe composites, the next nightmare comes when trying to figure out how to get rid of the mercury already inside your brain, nervous system, kidneys, blood, etc from an already debilitated and compromised body.

Dr. Cutler says on page 54: "First, do no harm. Note: the DMPS challenge is not a legitimate diagnostic test since over half the population will give a positive result but most of them do not appear to have amalgam illness. In addition there is a high incidence of adverse drug reactions during it, including permanent disability and death. It should never be used. DMSA challenge tests that involve the administration of 500 mg - 3g of DMSA as a single dose are also dangerous and not diagnostic."

Dr. Cutler says on page 89: "Therapeutic approaches currently offered by some practitioners but which should NEVER be used include: DMPS by injection except when oral administration is contraindicated and dosage is low, DMPS or DMSA on any schedule not involving frequent administration of equal doses for at least several days in a row, EDTA chelation, or penicillamine in any form. Supplementary cysteine, glutathione, or a "high sulfur" diet, or chlorella should NOT be used. All of these "therapies" will be VERY HARMFUL to you."

Dr. Cutler says in page 90: "For most people the proper chelation protocol using DMSA and LA (Lipoic Acid) is: . Starting 4 days after the last filling is replaced, 50-100 mg DMSA every 4 hours (including getting up at night to take a dose) for 2-6 months, until urine mercury is reduced 80%. . Then DMSA 50-100 mg + LA (Lipoic Acid) 50-200 mg every 3-4 hours (including getting up at night to take a dose) for about 3 days per week. When you feel all better, keep going for a few months. You may need to do this anywhere from 6 to 36 months depending on how sick you were to start and how hard your body holds on to the mercury. . It is important to keep taking your supplements and medicines during the whole time you are chelating.".

Thanks Dr. Cutler. .....

49 of 50 found the following review helpful:

A phenomenal book; probably worthy of a Nobel Prize  Nov 01, 2004
By lector avidus
Mercury-containing "amalgam" fillings have been with us for 150 years, and have been the intermittent subject of vehement controversy for just as long. In the 1850s or 60s, for a while it was a crime to insert these fillings into human beings in parts of the United States. In the 1930s Alfred Stock, a brilliant chemist, wanted these fillings banned; various American dentists have urged the same since the 1970s. In Sweden they were banned until the European Union intervened. The use of mercury to treat syphilis, as was customary into the 1890s, is now a huge embarrassment; many of the "symptoms" attributed to syphilis are now known to have been due to the "treatment."

In various European countries, the medical fraternity acknowledges that mercury, being a liquid, slowly evaporates from these fillings. This is where things become complicated. Cutler adduces evidence from different journals that the ability to excrete mercury varies by more than a factor of 20 between humans; in other words, as in lactose intolerance, a minority of human beings can't tolerate an otherwise safe product. Even more counterintuitively; mercury poisoning, unlike other intoxications, does not have a single set of symptoms, but rather at least 20 very different sets of symptoms. I was initially deeply skeptical of Dr. Cutler's claims, which are at odds with everything you hear from "mainstream" medical authorities. However, the more I delved into the established scientific facts, the more confirmation I found for his claims. As part of my quest to regain my health I obtained excerpts from a 1400 page post-doctoral thesis on the side-effects of amalgam fillings by a dentist who went on to post-doctoral studies at Harvard University. Unfortunately this thesis has yet to be published, reportedly due to pressure from the (so-called) National Institutes of Health. In any event the excerpts fully support Dr. Cutler's claims.

If these fillings can cause mercury intoxications, the question arises how to treat such states. As Alfred Stock experience proved, some people can recover by simply having their fillings removed; others can't. Were I sure that I was so poisoned, I would consider waiting to see if my body can heal itself depending on the severity of the intoxication, and not immediately rush to treat it chemically, a consideration Cutler unfortunately omits in this book. For those who can't recover unaided, Dr. Cutler's book is invaluable. Many in the "alternative medicine" community "treat" mercury intoxications with chorella, an algae that forms loose bonds with mercury. This does sometimes help, but in talking with dentists who will talk frankly about amalgam issues, I have been told that Cutler is correct in writing that some people have significantly harmed themselves this way.

Cutler advocates the use of chelators with two adjacent sulfur atoms, which form bonds with mercury that are much stronger than those that chlorella forms. Toxicologists use such chelators - and not herbs - to treat mercury intoxications because they know what they are doing. Most toxicology handbooks note that none of the customary chelators used to treat mercury poisoning (DMSA or DMPS) meaningfully penetrates the blood-brain barrier; in other words, if you have a lot of mercury in your brain, and can't move it out once you've reduced your exposure, they can't help you. Cutler happily found that lipoic acid, a medication sold in Germany for the last 40 years, gets into the brain, and removes mercury from the nerve cells; some clinical work with a lipoic acid derivative in this regard was done in Poland and Russia. In other words, Cutler accomplishes what most toxicologists believe can't be done. Cutler's other invaluable insight that most experts overlook is that you have to use the chelators on a schedule that actually allows them to remove mercury from the body. This requires taking lipoic acid on a 3 hour schedule to maintain relatively constant levels of lipoic acid in the body. (If it takes, say, 12 hours to move a mercury atom from the brain to the feces, and lipoic acid has a half-life on the order of 6 hours, taking lipoic acid every other day is useless.)

Cutler is qualified to write on the subject; not only does he have a PhD in biochemistry from Princeton, he also writes that he overcame an amalgam intoxication. When your own skin is on the line, you become very meticulous. I was deeply, deeply skeptical of Cutler's claims which lie far outside of mainstream medical scripture; it wasn't until I had corresponded with scientists who had spent years of their lives researching amalgam toxicity that I concluded that his claims are true. I myself have followed his advice, my health improved significantly.

In my informed opinion, this is the gold standard of treatment for mercury intoxications; more than a few people report that they had tried sundry remedies, but it was not until they got serious with Cutler's treatment that they began to recover. It may be worth mentioning Cutler's subsequent book, Hair Elements, which offers a better understanding of Cutler's thinking and results on some aspects of this subject. A caveat: prepare for a somewhat disjointed book that has never met a professional editor.

Some books deserve 5 stars, this book would easily deserve 12 or more. Allow me to note that the Nobel Prize has been awarded for smaller innovations.

31 of 31 found the following review helpful:

A Way out of the Maze of Confusion into Health  Oct 11, 2003
By Jerome Deutsch, MS, LN
In this book on chronic mercury posioning, Andrew Cutler deftly explains the myriad manifestation of illnesses related to mercury toxicity. He guides both the patient and practitioner through a safe protocol for chelation and explains why so many commonly accepted means of chelation are VERY dangerous. The crux of Dr. Cutler's work and contribution to this area of medicine lie in his knowledge of the pharmacokinetics of chelating agents (Lipoic Acid, DMSA, DMPS), nutritional supplements as well as medications. He successfully forges a middle road using both pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals and teaches the patient how to combine both when necessary in order to support the process of proper chelation, and eleviate tremendous suffering.

I was personally injured by improperly applied chelation technique according to guidelines for detox in Dr.Sherry Rogers' book, Detoxify or Die, in which Dr. Rogers recommends the use of single doses of Alpha Lipoic Acid (300-600 mg 2-3 times daily). The neurological consequences of using lipoic acid in this manner were devastating for me. I could not understand why using such a seemingly innocent and popular antioxidant could cause such severe problems in my immune system over a period of just a few months. I had the good fortune of finding Dr. Cutler's work as I perused the internet looking for clues on Lipoic Acid and my complex neurological symptoms (which mimic MS and were tentatively diagnosed as such). When I found the book, Amalgam Illness, I was able to quickly see that the pharmacokinetics of Lipoic Acid require it to be used at least every 3-4 hours to prevent redistribution of mercury to motor neurons. This pharmacological fact, as well as the fact that Lipoic Acid crosses the blood brain barrier, make it a powerful and healing nutrient when applied properly but also a russian roulette nutrient when misapplied. Using Dr. Cutler's protocol and supportive therapies I have been able to slowly regain my neurological function and now my future looks much brighter.

As a clinical nutritionist in private practice, I have been able to apply much of the information in the book to my work. In fact it has changed the very way in which I look at metabolism and how I assess nutritional patterns in bloodwork and hair analysis for my own patients. Amalagam Illness gives important and highly therapeutic guidelines for the use of nutritional supplements in disease. Even if one is certain they are not poisoned by mercury I still recommend this text as a valuable guide to nutritional supplements as well as how to get the type of care you need from your physician.

I believe it is only a matter of time before the applied therapeutics of Dr. Cutler's work replace the dogamtic and sometimes barbaric approaches to chelation, such as IV DMPS and others. Physicians and lay persons alike can learn a lot from the perspective an engineer's advanced training in chemistry as it relates to metabolism and mercury toxicity. Dr. Cutler's book, Amalagam Illness, offers real hope to getting well from a complex syndrome. And the cure is actually very simple. This book is a must-have and must-read.

35 of 36 found the following review helpful:

The Book Brought Me Back To Life...  Mar 21, 2007
By sunny "sunnynparadise"
3 Years ago I was suffering from many of the symptoms of heavy metal poisoning. I did not really know what was wrong and I attributed many of the symptoms to stress and the beginning of middle age. I consulted a dr who wanted to put me on hormones, and a naturopathic dr. The ND took a full medical history and informally asked me if I had silver fillings. It turned out I did, I had many of them including one that had broken several years before and was continuing to crack. I could taste metal in my mouth. I then was sent to do a heavy metal test, via a "Challenge" test. I was very shocked when the results came back off the charts. I was rather skeptical that this was the source of my problems so I started to do resarch. I talked to people all over the world including firefighters who had been exposed in 911. I talked to the Department of Ecology in Washington State and the E.P.A. I then found Dr. Cutler's book and a support group for Chelation online via yahoo. I sought out additional medical advice. By this time I was very ill, almost bedridden. It was very horrible because I had been quite well most of my life and took wellness for granted. I considered the possibility that if I continued to feel so sick I wanted to end my life. I first did a detox as recommended by Dr. Cutler while your fillings are in and noticed improvement. I then went and scheduled total filling removal. After the removal I was even more sick. I had taken all the fillings out at once, something that is not recommended. It is better to do it in stages. I followed Dr. Cutler's recommendations for chelation and his protocol and I started to recover. Under the guidance of a naturopath, and an MD(who does not want to be named because of the controversy) I did chelation and natural detox using fir saunas and supplements. I have had a full recovery. I still need to chelate but I do it lightly in the spring with a follow up from ND and MD. I followed Dr. Cutler's recommendations to the letter. His book is very clear cut and concise. I recommend it for anyone who thinks they may have problems due to their amalgams. I am not a researcher but I do have common sense. An element which is very toxic out of our mouths, in fact a hazardous waste...cannot suddenly be safe in our mouths. I was told basically off the record by people at the Department of Ecology that this is "a consumer driven issue." In other words they thought it was a good idea to get mercury out of your head, and not let a dentist ever put mercury fillings in your mouth...but due to this controversy they could not say anything on record. Moreover...if you go to the E.P.A. website you will see they are telling dentists NOT to use amalgam fillings. I also had been overexposed to flouride due to a habit of eating toothpaste while on the way to workouts at the gym and not really spitting it out. I thank Dr. Cutler, Andy very much for his work because I believe it saved my health. I think it is very irresponsible for dentists not to let their patients know about the possible dangers of amalgam fillings. It is true that not everyone is sensitive, and everyone gets different results but we cannot ignore the effects and possible ramifications related to heavy metals being in our bodies. This controversy has been around for a long time. The attitude of some researchers is sort of to say, "well not everyone gets this from their fillings so it must not exist" This is not a very responsible position. Not everyone gets lung cancer from smoking, but we now know there is a definite correlation between cancer and smoking. I thank Dr. Cutler very much. I have purchased several copies of the book and given them away to people who have symptoms. I would recommend this book to anyone who currently has silver fillings and has symptoms or no symptoms. Recently a contractor I had hired took his 4 year old to the dentist. She was given 6 silver fillings and became ill and had spotting indicative of a reaction. I shared the book with him and he had these fillings taken out. I would never let my child get silver fillings now that I know about this research. I was most fortunate that the people I worked with were open, and willing to look at other research including studies from Europe, and the basis of the treatment came from Dr. Cutler because of his experiences and the fact he had evaluated other treatments that can cause harm due to how mercury works in the human body. I recommend this book to everyone who currently has amalgam fillings. For the people who say that it is quackery, I challenge you to consider that this was what people have said about smoking, having lead in paint, pesticides, and anything in the environment where people profit until enough people get sick and or die. It is very irresponsible to take this position. Thank you Dr. Cutler for having the courage to do the work and publish it.

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