Hi, This looks like a great group!  I’m looking forward to the dialogue.

Just a few observations.  I tried the salt protocol about 6 months ago, and a friend with Lymes also started it.  We had somewhat differing experiences.  My friend has had great success.  I had some immediate success, but then started losing weight on the protocol, and started having digestive issues.  As I am underweight, this caused some concern, so I stopped for awhile and studied.  Found no real explanation although I eventually theorized that the salt was killing some of the ‘friendly flora’ that I desperately needed.   Consider that it is very strong broad-spectrum…  So I decided to slow way down, to just one tablet a day, or a tablet every few days.  And that seemed to help my energy levels a lot without the weight loss.  OK, so I was curious why I had more energy, so I conducted more searches of research, and I found out that salt acts on the adrenals, and in fact is recommended as a support for adrenal exhaustion.  Of course nearly everyone with chronic Lyme has adrenal exhaustion, and I have it very bad.  Here is a page that discusses salt as adrenal support:

http://www.drkaslow.com/html/adrenal_insufficiency.html  (about half way down the page)

I am led to wonder whether part of the effect of the salt is actually support for exhausted adrenals, and whether that leads to a stronger immune response, and is part of what is actually happening with salt…

One other observation, I notice when I take just a little salt (one CNC tablet a day) that my muscles have more fluid in them.  Clearly the salt is needed for many reasons.

Another issue – I have some concern about taking high doses of sea salt or Real salt (my favorite), because won’t this overdose the person on trace minerals?  I believe that the use of CNC salt over sea/Real is important for this reason.  We still need some sea/Real salt, but not high dose.

One more point – mercury has antimicrobial properties and I believe at one time was used to treat tough bacterial infections.  Although we DON’T need and want mercury, I wonder whether some of the problems people have after Amalgam removal is that they have lost the antimicrobial effect of mercury.  This could allow new dysbiosis and immune activation, worsening the ‘mercury detox’ symptoms for people with bad bogs.  I know that sounds unbelievable but isn’t this possible? If this is true, we shouldn’t remover mercury and chelate until the bad bugs are under control… and the immune system is working properly again.   I have Cutler’s book too and recognize a lot of ‘herxheimer’ type symptoms in his descriptions of mercury detox, which I believe supports this admittedly strange idea.. J

--Kurt