You are not quite yourself for a while now, but you cannot explain exactly what’s going on. You’ve seen your primary care doctor or even some specialty doctors. They couldn’t find out what’s wrong with you either, but they still prescribed medications, probably for your symptoms. Not only the medications did not work, they made things worse.

What are you to do now? Where do you go from here?

Did you or your doctor(s) consider heavy metal toxicity? Probably not. Why should you/they?

The real question is: why not?

Now, let us reason!

It is no news to anyone anymore that we all live in a much more polluted environment than our predecessors from about two hundred years ago. We, as humanity, are doing it to ourselves and that is the reality of nowadays.

Heavy metals and many toxic chemicals contaminate our environment – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothing we wear, the furniture we touch at home and work, the technical devices we use at home and work, etc. The list goes on and on. Pretty much everything around us has some sort of negative impact on our health, most of it long-term. So, many things you don’t see, smell, taste, touch or feel they are affecting you now – it’s not quite so! They all do affect you, but not immediately. And the harmful effect is synergistic and exponentially additive. So, no matter how clean we try to live, our contamination and toxicity levels are rapidly increasing.

Among the heavy metals, the most toxic one is mercury that affects almost every single cell in our body and can mimic a myriad of chronic conditions.

Whatever heavy metal or toxic chemical is outside of our body, will eventually find its way to the inside.

For example, if you or your mother has been exposed to mercury, you have a certain level of mercury toxicity as well. A comprehensive medical history can reasonably predict mercury toxicity and even point to which bodily compartments are involved in mercury toxicity.

The most common forms of mercury exposure are to:

• Metallic mercury and its vapor through amalgam fillings
• Organic mercury as methylmercury from contaminated fish consumption

The number of amalgam fillings may predict the body burden of mercury, but not the severity of the symptoms or the storage location for mercury. Once the mercury vapor from amalgams passes the mucous membranes of the mouth and respiratory tract, most of it gets oxidized and binds to other elements in the body, getting deposited in tissues that require greater blood supply and use.

 The first baby of a mercury toxic mother will inherit some of the mother’s mercury load, thus being more sensitive to its effects.

Same goes for mercury toxicity due to consumption of substantial amounts of fish contaminated with mercury. And obviously, the scenario can get more dramatic when one is exposed to both forms of mercury.

We only made a brief introduction to why one should consider heavy metal toxicity as a root cause for ill health. It takes a well-educated patient and a very well-trained practitioner to determine if that is the case and act toward the next steps.

If you red part I, I am sure you agree with me that we are all toxic, no matter how hard we try to stay clean, because we are surrounded by so many types of toxins and so much more than two centuries ago. It’s true – not all of us feel it, not all of us get sick – because we are all unique individuals with unique responses to the various types of stimuli coming from outside or inside of our body.

• So, for the ones of us who do really care about health and wellness and have no health-related complaints – awareness and education are key. Continuously detoxifying the body will be one helpful tool in maintaining the health.
• For the ones who have some health issues, but not so bothersome, maybe now is the time to learn what’s causing them and act.
• There are so many of us though who suffer with all kind of chronic ailments or symptoms without getting the needed help and relief – sometimes being able to control some of the symptoms with medications. This is called maintenance therapy and that’s all it does – maintains the disease under control with medication. No cure! But what if heavy metal toxicity is the major root cause of those chronic conditions? With the right help, the condition(s) can be reversed.

 You also understood that the sad reality is that one of the hardest next steps is to find a health care practitioner who can actually help you. So many scientists researched this topic and wrote books, created educational websites, video recordings, podcasts, treatment centers, etc. So many non-medical and non-scientific people also wrote books and created many informational venues to share their experiences and the knowledge they acquired in the journey to health.

Apparently, that is not enough! It is too many of us who need help and too few who can provide it.

So, what do you think the next step should be?

I would say – to learn if you are indeed heavy metal toxic, how much and which metal or metals!

This is easier said than done. Because chronic heavy metal toxicity – particularly for mercury – is not recognized by the conventional medicine community and the health officials – as a real medical condition, there are no standard tests recommended to diagnose chronic mercury/heavy metal toxicity. 

Among the non-conventional practitioners, out of which an extremely small number are licensed health care practitioners, there is no consensus on what and how to test for mercury/heavy metal toxicity.

Any good practitioner who is specialized in integrative or functional medicine (which is a new and growing medical specialty), will start with a very comprehensive medical history to try and identify a potential source for exposure to heavy metal, will do a very thorough physical examination and, finally will recommend the specialized tests for heavy metals. But again, there are no specialized tests for heavy metals, not all of them are reliable and not all practitioners know how to interpret them. Either way, here are the options (I will place them based on the reliability criteria – from best to least):

• Hair tissue mineral testing
• Urine testing after provocation – can be very dangerous if not done cautiously and when needed.
• Toenail – used very rarely
• Blood – least reliable because in chronic exposure, the heavy metal is already stored deep in the tissues or bones, thus not circulating in the blood.

All tests here can be recommended by the practitioners – blood and urine require a licensed health care practitioner’s referral order.

Hair test does not always require a doctor’s order. There are laboratories that can analyze the hair tissue sample and some even provide the extra service of interpreting the results – without a doctor’s order.

 If you have questions about how to test yourself for heavy metal toxicity, you may contact us at: 

646-350-0033 or [email protected]

We’ll continue with other episodes covering other aspects of heavy metal toxicity. Stay tuned and thank you for reading.