From: Megan Shea <megs_shea@...>
Subject: [amalgamillness] Re: How do I detox from Mercury Amalgam Fillings if I can't have them removed?
To: amalgamillness@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sunday, June 14, 2009, 10:25 PM

Be careful with all the Tuna you're eating. Tuna has a fair amount of mercury in it too.
--- In amalgamillness@ yahoogroups. com, "kathrynsmailbox" <kathrynsmailbox@ ...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am new to this group and have been using a detox of Apple Cider Vinegar, 6 cloves of Garlic and the juice of one lemon each morning for three weeks for symptoms of Candida and Leaky Gut and Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation. I am eating only tuna, alvocado, and eggs right now. Now from further reading, it looks like all of this may be related to about 20 amalgam fillings in my mouth, which I don't have the financial resources to remove. I am wondering if the detox that I am using will help with the mercury or if I need to do something else.
>
<SNIP>
>
> Kathryn
>

The below statement came from a cooking site on Yahoo.  It never stated where the 'recent study' came from.

Canned white tuna comes from the large albacore and can be high in mercury content. Chunk light, on the other hand, which comes from smaller fish, skipjack or yellowfin, is best for health-conscious eaters. According to a recent study, canned white tuna samples averaged about 315 percent more mercury than chunk light tuna samples.

News About Mercury and Pregnancy

Have you heard about news stories suggesting the FDA may consider amending its advisory for how much fish pregnant women and children should eat -- and might relax guidelines? The agency has circulated an internal draft of a report reviewing the risks versus benefits of eating mercury-containing fish, and the distribution "for peer review" has stirred up some controversy.

Just a few years ago, nutritionists, scientists and others worried about public health risks praised the FDA for working with the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to establish a joint consumer advisory warning pregnant women (or those who might become pregnant), nursing mothers and young children not to eat shark, tilefish, swordfish or king mackerel because they contain high levels of mercury. The FDA further advised an upper limit not to exceed two six-ounce servings per week of fish... or six ounces of albacore tuna a week... for this vulnerable population. Mercury has such a strong toxic effect on the developing nervous system of fetuses, babies and toddlers, experts in the matter felt the guidelines were entirely appropriate. Now the FDA appears to be questioning what the risk threshold is -- and the preliminary assessment in the draft has triggered outrage at the possibility that the current guidelines could end up being relaxed, especially worrisome for children and women of child-bearing age. I called frequent Daily Health News contributor Mark Stengler, ND, to ask what he thinks of all this.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

It's true that fish contains omega-3 fatty acids essential to developing nervous systems and brains -- but there are lots of other ways to obtain these valuable essential fatty acids. An internal EPA memo, posted on the Environmental Working Group Web site, stated its concern over the FDA draft, calling the information "scientifically flawed and inadequate in several aspects."

Dr. Stengler, who sees many patients with mercury and other heavy metal toxicity, says that he believes any change to the FDA advisory would make the FDA look "foolish and untrustworthy." He is concerned that the FDA and indeed most conventional medical doctors underrate the dangers of mercury toxicity in general. Dr. Stengler told me he finds about half of the people he screens for toxic metals (which includes mercury, aluminum, arsenic, lead, etc.) have elevated mercury levels. Genetics and overall good health enable some individuals to tolerate or more easily eliminate mercury from their bodies, but many others cannot. He believes that mercury toxicity triggers many chronic illnesses including autoimmune diseases and those affecting neurological and digestive systems. "Mercury damages the brain and decreases memory," says Dr. Stengler. He is dismayed that researchers have ignored this possibility.

WHY MERCURY IS DANGEROUS

Even miniscule amounts of mercury are potentially very damaging, says Dr. Stengler. Among the ways mercury can harm us...

• It attaches itself to protein and enzymes, creating interference with the nervous, endocrine, immune, enzymatic, gastrointestinal, reproductive and urinary systems.

• It displaces essential minerals (mostly zinc and copper) in cells, thereby creating free radicals believed to be a cause of degenerative diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and chronic fatigue syndrome.

• It turns the immune system against itself.

• It interferes with transportation of oxygen and waste products, impairing blood flow, harming the cardiovascular system and dramatically depleting the body of its most important antioxidants.

When pregnant women ingest mercury, there is enormous potential danger to the fetus. A recent study found that women of childbearing age who exceeded the recommended limit of more than the two servings of fish a week would have mercury concentrations seven times higher than women who avoided fish entirely. An increase in fish consumption in pregnant women would certainly increase the number of pregnancies at risk of mercury-related health effects resulting in birth defects and irrevocable damage to cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language and fine motor skills, points out Dr. Stengler.

NO NEED TO TAKE THE RISK

The truth is that everyone -- including women and children -- can get the benefits of fish without risking the danger of mercury toxicity. Dr. Stengler advises patients to avoid eating any of the large fish included in the FDA guidelines, saying doing so is not worth the danger. He recommends limiting consumption of fish known to be high in mercury, including tuna (especially albacore), to no more than one six-ounce portion once every other week and does not recommend tuna at all for pregnant women and young children. Instead, get the benefits of fish by eating those known to be low in mercury. This list includes wild salmon -- available fresh, frozen and, most affordable, in cans -- as well as sardines (fresh or canned) and farmed trout. Finally, supplement regularly with high-purity fish oil in such brands as Nordic Naturals (www.nordicnaturals.com) or Carlson Nutritional Supplements (www.carlsonlabs.com), which are 99% mercury free and, according to Dr. Stengler, quite safe.

Source(s):

Mark Stengler, ND, a naturopathic physician and leading authority on the practice of alternative and integrated medicine. He is author of Bottom Line/Natural Healing newsletter, author of The Natural Physician's Healing Therapies (Bottom Line Books), director of the La Jolla Whole Health Clinic in La Jolla, California and adjunct associate clinical professor at the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. To learn more about his work, visit www.drstengler.com.

Workers Face Toxic Risk Trying to Keep Up With Gold Demand

Saturday , January 10, 2009

From Foxnews.com

KERENGPANGI, Indonesia � 

A gold miner stands waist-deep in a polluted pond, dumps a capful of mercury into a bucket of ore and mixes it in with his bare hands.

The darting liquid metal wraps itself around the gold to form a silver pellet the size of a marble.

The use of mercury in gold mining is illegal in Indonesia because it is toxic to both human health and the environment. But the price of gold has tripled since 2001, and mercury is the easiest way to extract it.

"Of course I'm worried," said miner Handoko, 23, a grim man in a baseball hat who goes by one name. "But this is the job."

Tens of thousands of remote mining sites have sprung up mostly in Asia, Latin America and Africa, using as much as 1,000 tons of mercury each year. The mercury ravages the nervous system of miners and their families. It also travels thousands of miles in the atmosphere, settling in oceans and river beds in Europe and North America and moving up the food chain into fish.

Small-scale gold mining is the second-worst source of mercury pollution in the world, after the burning of fossil fuels. And Indonesia ranks behind only China in the use of mercury in gold mining.

Mercury's impact is evident in mining regions like Central Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. Acres of tropical forest are now virtual desert. Villagers say fish populations have dropped by 70 percent. The Galangan gold mining site stretches several miles, stripped of trees and dotted with mercury-laced ponds.

"This area is finished," said Fauzi Achmad, a gold shop owner, as he drove past the moonscape-like dunes and abandoned mine sites.

Despite the hazards, buying mercury at gold mining sites is as easy as purchasing toothpaste. The international trade in mercury is largely unregulated. And most of the 55 countries where small-scale gold mining is rife lack the political will or capacity to prevent the toxic metal from falling into the hands of 10 to 15 million poor miners.

"The continued use of mercury in gold mining threatens millions of people all over the world, since mercury is a global air pollutant," said Michael Bender, a coordinator for the Zero Mercury Working Group, a coalition of 40 groups worldwide that campaigns to reduce mercury use. "We're talking about a neurotoxin that science clearly shows threatens pregnant women, their fetus and those who eat large amounts of fish."

The use of mercury in gold mining goes back thousands of years. The Romans forced slaves and criminals to extract gold and silver with mercury.

By the 20th century, mining companies had abandoned mercury in favor of chemicals like cyanide. But small-scale miners like it because it's easy to use, fast, cheap and leaves the gold cleaner than traditional panning.

"The miner cannot be separated from the mercury," said Achmad, the gold shop owner, who has campaigned to persuade miners to use less mercury. "With mercury, it makes the work fast."

Traders once relied on mercury from Spain, Algeria, China and Kyrgyzstan, but most mines are now shut and China only supplies its own market. So mercury comes from the leftover stockpiles of shuttered mines or the dozens of companies in Europe and the United States that recycle the metal from old light bulbs, batteries or industrial waste, according to the U.N. and the Zero Mercury Working Group.

Flasks of mercury worth hundreds of dollars are sold into an opaque and largely unregulated network of brokers who crisscross the globe, according to Peter Maxson, a Brussels-based expert on the trade. They divert mercury supplied for legal purposes to the gold mines instead, where it can fetch prices 10 times higher than on the global market, he said.

"Countries import several hundred times the mercury they need for dental and other legal uses," said Pablo Huidobro, project manager for the U.N. Industrial Development Organization's Global Mercury Project. "The excess makes its way to the miners through the black market."

Maxson and other experts said it can be almost impossible to track the liquid metal as it passes through brokers and even criminal gangs on its way to a gold mine. A flask of mercury can originate in Spain, be sold to brokers in India, go on to popular transit points like Singapore or Vietnam and then get dumped in Indonesia.

The United States alone exported nearly 498 tons of mercury in 2007, up from 378 tons in 2006. It mostly was sent to Canada, Suriname, Hong Kong and Mexico, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"The whole trade has gone underground in the last five to 10 years. It's very secretive," Maxson said. "The companies dealing mercury won't tell you who their customers or even who the end users are."

Experts in the trade say D.F.G. Mercury Corp. and Bethlehem Apparatus are among the top suppliers of mercury worldwide. Robert Goldsmith, president of D.F.G. Mercury Corp. of Evanston, Ill., said he sells his mercury domestically but acknowledged it can be difficult to determine what happens to it. Bruce Lawrence, president of Bethlehem Apparatus in Hellertown, Pa., declined to discuss the trade. On its Web site, Bethlehem describes itself as a global supplier of prime virgin and high purity mercury.

Mercury traders say it's unfair to blame them for what happens at gold mining sites.

"If people don't want mercury to be used in artisanal gold mining areas, particularly in China, Indonesia and South America, then they should stop importing it," said Howard Masters, the managing director of Lambert Metals International, a British company that sells 25,000 to 30,000 flasks of mercury yearly worldwide.

"It is up to the governments themselves, as all imports into these countries are only allowable under license," he said. "But don't stop genuine consumption of mercury around the world, where it has very good uses and is not an environmental problem when used correctly."

Marc Claushuis, director of the Dutch firm Claushuis Metals, which sells 200 tons of mercury each year to Latin America, Africa and Europe, expressed frustration over his inability to control its use.

"Of course, I feel unhappy ... You send your end product to countries where you know it gets a lot of pollution," he said. "There is not so much you can do."

Once in Indonesia, mercury is trafficked through chemical shops in big cities like Surabaya or Jakarta and transported to mine sites in energy drink and vitamin bottles to avoid detection. It ends up behind the counters of gold shops in Central Kalimantan, Papua and North Sulawesi.

Indonesia periodically tears down illegal gold mining camps and slapped a ban on mercury use in mining three years ago, but mercury prices then doubled. Irwanto Thomas, a government environmental official in Central Kalimantan, acknowledged that mercury is widely used and will remain so until miners have better opportunities.

"They ask what job we can provide them," Thomas said. "Until now, the government has not provided them with an answer."

The dusty main street of the Indonesian gold mining town of Kerengpangi is lined with dozens of gold shops. It takes only a gentle inquiry to send a shop owner scurrying to a back room for the mercury.

"Sometimes, I sell mercury to the miners or just give it to them for free," said gold shop owner Rachmadi, who also trades gold for mercury.

Mercury is easily found at most mining sites worldwide. In Africa, miners buy it in small plastic bags stored in Tupperware containers or Vitamin C tubes. In Peru, it is sold in dental shops.

In gold mines, as much as one to three grams of mercury are lost for every gram of gold produced. But mercury is a slow and silent killer, so miners scoff at health concerns. They recall how they breathed mercury fumes or handled the toxic liquid for years with no problems. Some Indonesian miners have even smeared mercury on their skin in the belief it will make them stronger, according to a U.N. report.

"Sometimes the gold and mercury gets into my mouth," said Sumardianto, a jovial 36-year-old miner who has dug for gold in Central Kalimantan since 1996 and lives in a tented camp with his wife. "I'm OK. I don't have any illnesses. I don't worry about using mercury."

Numbers of people killed or disabled by mercury are impossible to nail down, experts say. But tests on miners in Indonesia, the Philippines, Colombia, Guyana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Brazil found mercury levels up to 50 times above World Health Organization limits, according to a 2006 U.N. report. Symptoms such as reduced motor skills, fatigue and weight loss are routine at mining sites, the U.N. said. Gold shop owners also breathe the mercury vapor they burn off.

The U.N. has spent $7 million in six countries, including Indonesia, to educate miners and gold shops about mercury. The European Union agreed earlier this year to ban mercury exports from 2011. And President George W. Bush signed a bill in October sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, now president-elect, that bans all elemental mercury exports by 2013.

Mercury recyclers argued that bans would promote the mining of more mercury and shift the export trade from Western countries to developing nations like India.

Already, 83 percent of mercury in the U.S. is believed to come from abroad, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and 44 states have issued health advisories about eating contaminated fish.

"What is motivating governments at the highest level is a strong recognition that mercury is a global pollutant," said Kevin Telmer, an expert on small-scale mining at the University of Victoria in Canada. "It's clear that small-scale mining is adding to the global mercury problem."

Source: http://www.foxnews. com/story/ 0,2933,479108, 00.html#

-

From: hiheaven5 <hiheaven5@...>
Subject: [amalgamillness] yahoo-heads up!
To: amalgamillness@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, 3 January, 2009, 7:22 PM

Passed along from another group....... ......... ......... ...

Yahoo is Tracking Group Members

If you belong to ANY Yahoo Groups - be aware that Yahoo is now
using "Web Beacons" to track every Yahoo Group user. It's similar to
cookies, but allows Yahoo to record every website and every group you
visit, even when you're not connected to Yahoo. Look at their updated
privacy statement at
http://info. yahoo.com/ privacy/us/ yahoo/details. html

About half-way down the page, in the section on *cookies*, you will
see a link that says *WEB BEACONS*.

Click on the phrase "Web Beacons." On the page that opens, on the
left find a box entitled "Opt-Out."

In that section find "opt-out of interest-matched advertising" link
that will let you "opt-out" of their snooping. Click it and then
click the opt-out button on the next page.

Note that Yahoo's invasion of your privacy - and your ability to opt-
out of it - is not user-specific. It is MACHINE specific. That means
you will have to opt-out on every computer (and browser) you use.

Please forward this to your other groups. You might complain, too,
but I'm not sure if anyone is listening. I remember when they signed
all users up to get spam and we had to opt out of that a few years
ago.

Related article:
http://antivirus. about.com/ od/spywareandadw are/a/yahoobugs. htm

Please pass this information to all of your groups...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

From: profitomax <profitomax@...>
Subject: [amalgamillness] Re: Hello. Just Had My Amalgams Removed
To: amalgamillness@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, 3 October, 2008, 10:01 PM

--- In amalgamillness@ yahoogroups. com, "ed_zep_2" <ed_zep_2@.. .> wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> I'm new to the group and I think it's great that someone set this up.
> So thank you to whoever that was.
>
> My story is one of low-level depression and what I learned was my main
> problem, which is hypoglycemia.
>
> I found a dentist who removed my 4 amalgams using a rubber dam. I had
> them all done in one go two days ago.
>
> I'm hoping that the hypoglycemia will go and I'll occasionally be able
> to eat anything I like without the fear of the awful feelings I get.
>
> Apart from the mercury, I think it's great that I won't have an
> electrical current in my mouth anymore. I've heard that the it can
> prevent nerve signals being sent and received.
>
> Would be interested in any tips that people can give regarding detox,
> whether it's helped your hypoglycemia and how long it took for you to
> have any improvement in anything?
>
> Many thanks, Ed.
>

Hi Ed,

I want to remove my amalgam fillings as well, but i don't have the
money yet.

Ed, have you ever heard of the "natural Cellular Defense" from zeolite

I know it's excellent for detox and may also be good to fight
hypoglycemia. Here is a site you can visit for oustanding
testimonials http://www.testimon yinfo.com/

Best of Luck

Judith
http://www.curealln atural.com/