Vaccines, mercury and aluminum

I belong to the Autism-Mercury yahoo group where there are tons of fabulous and experienced parents sharing their knowledge daily.  While scanning the threads, I noticed that Haven who is one of the well-versed mothers (love her name too) had responded to a poster who was questioning her DAN! doctor's direction on testing and chelation.  We see this all the time, people questioning their doctors, and with good reason!  I found her response to be riveting and thorough so I asked permission to share it here on my blog.  I am thrilled to be able to offer this additional perspective below, on the road we have chosen for our children.

Haven and I are some of the many many other parents dedicating our lives to their childrens' recoveries.  I have heard time and time again how this is so "rare" to be doing something like this....no, it's not, unfortunately.  I wish that were true, but there are over 9,000 members in the Autism-Mercury group, over 6,000 in the chelatingkids2 group, almost 15,000 on the GFCF kids group, over 5,500 in the MB12Valtrex group and over 3,500 in the Trying low oxalates group.  I am sure there is overlap of members, and I know there are other groups like these, but the numbers speak volumes for the biomedical community.  These groups represent the increase in autism, ADHD and allergies in children today.  And ALL of these parents are looking for safe, non-invasive and natural ways to heal their children, and it's working.

So I repeat, unfortunately, what I do for the health of my children is NOT as uncommon as you might think.  I would however, like to see more parents considering this route when their children are experiencing: learning delays, sensory symptoms, allergies, asthma, GI dysfunction, mood disorders, behavior problems and or anything that you find yourself struggling with repeatedly, with no answers from your pediatricians, your gastroenterologists and your therapists.

Please take a moment to read Haven's fabulous explanation of her own experiences with this path.  One thing you will notice is that parents like us are passionate about healing our children, and all children, because in order to go against the grain of mainstream medicine, we HAVE to be this way, it's what drives us to success! While reading, keep in mind that she is responding to another poster when she says "you".
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Don't bother with a porphyrins test. Use the Doctor's Data Hair Elements
test, and apply the rules of counting per the Dr. Andy Cutler protocol, and
stop letting a DAN milk away your money, having you pay for meaningless tests
and frivolous supplements -- many of which don't work. (What I would give to
have all that money back).

My son in now eleven. I admit that we have been lucky. The very basic
things we did: diet (gf/cf/sf) and metabolic supports: vitamins, minerals,
amino acids along with therapeutic interventions helped our son quite a bit.
We were scared and not knowledgeable in the beginning and thought we had to
have a doctor on board to do AC chelation, and of course DAN! doctors steered
us away from that as they can't make enough money off it, so we were steered toward IV
chelation which caused regressions and serious respiratory reactions in our
son.

What you may wind up finding happens with a DAN! (and I am not saying this is
a definite) is that they try or have you try all these different things, and
then when none of it works, then they will tell you “maybe you ought to put
the child on psychotropics after all”. Well, for us, we were not going to
put our son on Prozac just, because he was stimming and had hyperactivity.

What was more important to us was WHY the stimming came back (probably due
to IV chelation) and why the hyperactivity came back (probably doing IV
again). Then I remembered how those close to the Andy Cutler protocol had helped
put us on the right track in the beginning, and I found myself wishing I had
listened to Dr. Cutler all those years ago, as anything he had told me to do
helped. But we didn't listen at that time about the proper way to chelate
heavy metals.

You need to do a hair test on your child and apply the rules of counting.

If your child has received any vaccines in the last thirty years, your child
has been injected with both mercury and aluminum - among many other toxic
chemicals like antifreeze and formaldehyde.

They did not take the mercury out. My son received 67.5mcg mercury via
vaccines on March 7, 2001, and IMMEDIATELY lost all speech and began a
downward spiral behaviorally, digestively, immunologically, and
neurologically. Even if they had actually taken it out and been truthful
with the public, the FDA NEVER recalled the thimerosal-containing vials
still on the shelves -- a supply which may well still be out there, but
minimally, would have lasted an additional seven years.

The flu, combo flu this year, tetanus, and rabies shots all still contain
the full complement of mercury. ALL non-live virus vaccine are still MADE
(manufactured) using thimerosal. They told the public they took it out, but
they supposedly take it out AFTER it is manufactured with it. They
supposedly extract it out after the manufacturing process. HA-HA.

Mercury hides. Mercury binds TIGHTLY to protein (and fat) and as any parent
who has ever tried to get it out of their child can attest, mercury is very
difficult to unbind. It does not reside in the blood for long. Any
exposure not excreted by the body will reside in the fatty tissues in the
body: the brain, the kidneys, the liver, the lining of the intestine. It is
really the only thing that can cause abnormal mineral transport in the
body so, look to see whether there is abnormal mineral transport in
the body.  It has the power to disrupt a myriad of biochemical reactions
in the body.

All vaccines are made with animal protein -- ah, something for the mercury
to bind tightly to.  And who polices the extraction of mercury from the
product? Well, our government allows the pharmaceutical industry to police
itself! Maybe because this industry contributes heavily to their
campaigns. You think?

In addition, the vaccines are still sold in multi-dose vials rather than
safer one dose vials (which would not require a preservative). Many factors
can play a roll in how much mercury an individual child receives. Sometimes
it can be that the nurse doesn't shake the bottle well enough, so one child
gets much more mercury than the next child.

In some vaccines, mercury and aluminum are in there together. The aluminum
acts as a catalyst and makes whatever mercury is in there even more toxic.
In vaccines where they "took the mercury out," they added aluminum as the
primary preservative. Aluminum- a substance known to cause neuronal cell
death and suspect in contributing to breast cancer and Alzheimer's. No
wonder autism has continued to rise, given the number of vaccines and the
amount of mercury and aluminum children are still getting via vaccines.

In all this, mercury is still the primary problem. They try to comfort the
public by saying that it is ethyl-mercury and not methyl. Big whoopee-do.
it is STILL the second most toxic substance on the face of the Earth. No
safety studies were ever done on infants using methyl mercury (unless you
count the massive human experimentation on our children over the last thirty
or forty years). They "guessed." They based its efficacy and safety on
several men who were dying of meningitis who they injected with thimerosal,
and when the men died, the cause of death was listed as meningitis and
thimerosal was pronounced safe.

Did your child receive the Hib shot? This is a type of flu shot.

You need to buy Andy Cutler's book "Amalgam Illness," Study it. Get your
DAN! to order a Doctor's Data Hair elements test and apply the rules of
counting to determine, if your child is mercury toxic. If so, then your
child is probably toxic in other heavy metals too, as mercury disrupts the
detoxification system in the body. If you get the mercury out, the other
metals will follow.

Our environment is filled with this stuff! Our children with depressed
detoxification systems are picking more of it up elsewhere, as well, and it
is cumulative in the body. it is in batteries, lights, electronics, the
air, the water, and in the food supply. It is "pervasive."

I suggest you use the AC protocol for chelation. It will take 100 to 300
rounds to get the mercury out, so you are looking at anywhere from a little over two
years to six years. But this is a very safe -- low and slow method of
chelation. DO NOT allow yourself to get talked into IV chelation, which I
now believe to be dangerous.

You can still use your DAN! to do certain tests when they are warranted such
as re-checking for yeast (which you can tell by behavior usually) and you
can test for neutrophil count and once in a while for kidney/liver function.

In case you have not done so yet, I hope you have done a copper check. Many
of these children can have abnormal levels of copper and disrupted
copper/zinc in the body due to the abnormal mineral transport. High levels
of copper over time can cause permanent brain damage, so I think all
children with this condition should be checked for high copper ASAP.  Zinc
chelates copper. My son's levels were so high after vaccine reaction that
they thought he had Wilson's disease (a genetic disorder), but of course it
wasn't Wilson's, but he has needed to be on extra zinc ever since to keep
his copper levels in check.

As I said, we were very lucky. Perhaps my son's own detoxification system
was not as damaged as other children, so doing the gf/cf/sf diet and adding
metabolic supports helped him tremendously and brought back functional
language. Later, he regained expressive speech and two years ago,
reciprocal speech emerged, and now he has all forms of speech, though about
five years delayed.

By age four, all stimming had ceased, his Sensory Processing Disorder and OCD were all but gone, but then at age six we got persuaded to do IV chelation, and the SPD, stimming,
and OCD returned.

His immune system was severely damaged by the reaction to vaccines. He
began getting sick all the time. From age fifteen months on, he would
develop an infection with fever roughly every two weeks like clock work.
these were usually respiratory. He has had pneumonia eight times, countless
bouts of bronchitis, and they told us he had asthma. He was sick so much we
finally put him on steroids, which made him gain a lot of weight and only
reduced his illnesses by half.

Then he developed an inability to fight off the bacteria that gets
introduced when an insect bites him, so every time he gets bitten, he will
develop radiating staph from each and every bite site. Fire ant bites cause
anaphylaxis, and allergy shots did nothing to reduce the allergic response.

Then after some events that occurred at our DAN! doctor’s office last summer, I took a step
back and reassessed and remembered that in the beginning, the A-M group had
helped us a great deal, so I came back, and from here I learned about the
Recovery From Autism Yahoo group, which has helped tremendously, and we began the AC Protocol a little over a month ago.

I learned that very often asthma symptoms can really be a sign/symptom of
adrenal fatigue (another lovely gift of mercury poisoning as mercury likes
to settle there, as well). A little over a month ago, I started giving my
son ACE (Adrenal Cortex Extract). My son is being chelated using ALA only
due to his being a very reactive kid. Since beginning this protocol, my son
has needed NO asthma medications. He has not needed his rescue inhaler even
once! He has not been sick.

This is the longest my son has gone without being sick in over nine years!
On rounds he is more focused and there is less stimming, SPD, and OCD. About
days 2 and 3 off rounds, the yeast flares up, and we are trying to fight
this with biotin and GSE, but yeast is a big problem for most of these
children. We will prevail.

I urge you to give the AC protocol consideration.

My son was moderate/severe in the beginning. He is high functioning now.
He is bright, funny, imaginative and very well behaved. We home school now,
and at the beginning of that I was worried we might get sick of being
together all the time, but this has been a wonderful experience, and I love
being with him. It gets hectic, but he is making up a lot of ground lost
due to society’s preconceived notions regarding autism. I firmly believe
that with continued AC chelation, my son will continue to improve and
healing is very possible. Three years from now, we will know for sure, but
we KNOW our son is mercury toxic, and getting the mercury out can only
help. I am just still walking on cloud nine that he has not been sick, has
not shown signs of asthma, and has not needed steroids in over a month.

I am not a doctor. I am just a mom who has studied, researched, and worked
her @$$ off to get her son back.

Hope this helps you.

Haven

DAN! doctor versus Andy Cutler chelation

For those of you who understand chelation, you probably also know that there is a distinct difference between the way DAN! doctors handle chelation compared to Andy Cutler's protocol.  In some cases, the discussions can get heated about the two, each parent validating why theirs is more effective or safer.  I have heard on more than one occasion where a parent says that chelation is not a one-size-fits all solution and yes, while I do agree with this for many of the biomedical treatments and even some smaller details in chelation, I do not, I repeat, I do NOT agree that the different forms of chelation are equal.  The science behind Andy Cutler's chelation proves it to be MUCH safer than the alternative IV method of chelation.  There are many factors that set Andy Cutler's protocol apart from the rest and they are scientifically proven.  I sometimes feel as though a parent becomes highly defensive of their chosen method, because after having already started, they feel a sense of fear and/or inferiority, like the Andy Cutler followers are judging them personally and suggesting they are bad parents.  We aren't, we are just very adamant about safely chelating, period!  They often end the conversation by saying that they believe in their doctors....

Wasn't it blind trust in our doctors that put us in this position in the first place?  Would we be here trying to recover our children, if doctors truly understood the science and technical mechanics behind how the body responds to certain stimuli, drugs, antibiotics, vaccine ingredients, metals....?  I think it's safe to say that no matter what label they are given, there is still a clear lack of understanding the very nature of the chemicals they insist we use in our children.  I am sorry, I don't mean to suggest that I hate doctors, I know that they hold a very important part of our medical needs, but some do claim to know more than they really do.  How many people have you heard about being misdiagnosed or that doctors just don't know what the patient is suffering from?  Too many.  When it comes to chelation, I think I would rather put my faith and trust in a chemist who knows the very science behind how these chemicals work in our bodies.  Andy Cutler is a chemist, he knows their half-life in our blood, he knows their function down to the minute details, what they do and even more importantly, what they don't do!  For example, EDTA is a chelator very similar to DMSA, but it has an affinity for lead over mercury, yet more doctors are prescribing or injecting it for mercury toxic people!  Do you know what the implications are for a mercury toxic person to take EDTA?  Well, let me educate you briefly and keep in mind, I am no chemist, but this just makes sense even to me!  The little EDTA ions flitter about in the blood collecting whatever metals they encounter first, let's just say that is mercury.  They mobilize the mercury attempting to usher it out of the body, but in it's trek towards the exit, it comes in contact with the lead bystander.  It is going to immediately drop the mercury ion and pick up the lead, because it's bind with lead is stronger.  Now, simply put, this is mercury redistribution at it's finest!  Those mobilized and now free (where they used to already be attached to body tissue before the EDTA came along) mercury ions are going to find new tissue to adhere to, potentially causing more and new symptoms of mercury poisoning and the damage they do is dependent upon which tissue they find...liver, brain, etc. 

Ok, so what about the doctors who aren't using EDTA, but their dosing schedule and amount of chelator being used is different, is this a concern?  Sure is!  There is a half-life that these chelators have in our bodies.  When a chelator reaches it's half life, mobilized metals drop and again, you have redistribution, as described above.  Andy Cutler's protocol is designed to reduce redistribution, hence reducing the symptoms AND DAMAGE associated with it.  He uses the half-life of the chelators as a guide for dosing.  He uses smaller doses for longer periods of time, sustaining the chelator in the blood for a period of days.  Each round will result in minor redistribution, but not large amounts of metals and only once in that round.  The result is a slow steady flow of metals leaving the body over a longer period of time, SAFELY! He has proven that higher doses of chelators doesn't pull many more metals, but DOES increase symptoms and redistribution.  And who are you going to trust on this, the chemist or the doctor?  Chelation is a long process and if you are causing significant amounts of redistribution every time you take or are injected with a chelator, you are setting yourself up for long-term damage, which may not even be obvious for some time.  I could spend days explaining the mechanics of it all, but since chemist Andy Cutler has already done that, let me share a few links with you here.

In this link, you will learn the significant and dangerous differences between DAN! doctor chelation and the Andy Cutler protocol.  You will hear people balk at calling DAN! chelation a "protocol"...ok, so you can get caught up in the details, but people, it is what it is, let's focus on the things that are important, read this very clear explanation from Andy himself (he is responding to a forum poster's question about how the two methods differ).


Difference between DAN! and Cutler chelation methods

In the next link, you will find MANY questions answered about Andy Cutler's protocol, anything you could want to know: testing, safety, length of rounds, redistribution, supplementation to ease symptoms, dosing and timing of chelators, chelation of infants, chelating other metals, and more.

Cutler protocol

This link below will take you to the Autism-Mercury Yahoo group and the reason I am recommending this group is, because you can search the database to see the sheer number of people who have been harmed by improper chelation methods recommended by DAN! doctors.  These people know when and how their children were harmed and are seeking advice on reversing it.  Andy Cutler's protocol is discussed adamantly here, but many don't come here until they have already listened to DAN! doctors or tried unsafe chelating methods first.  Unfortunately, we are learning from their mistakes, but learning is learning.  What you can also learn here are the number of people who have experienced complete recovery using the Cutler protocol.  Did you notice that I said, COMPLETE?  Children are fully recovering with his protocol in a fraction of the time that other methods are harming innocent family members.  That means no need for supplements, diets or treatments, autism diagnoses are being reversed, from classic full-blown autism to normal.

Autism-Mercury Yahoo Group

And if you are interested in using Andy Cutler's chelation Yahoo group for direction on proper chealtion, use this link.  You will find thousands of members on this group, thousands!

Frequent-Dose-Chelation Yahoo Group

The only children I have learned of having complete recovery, meaning that they don't rely on anything for normal behavior, are those who finish Andy Cutler's protocol.  In order to see full recovery, most people require between 100-300 rounds of chelation.  Yup, it's a long haul.  It took years to get this poisoned, it is going to take years to get better, but don't let that deter you.  Just take one day at a time and you will get there!  We are on rounds 45 and 20 with our boys, and I believe this was the single most important part of our healing process.  It is the only treatment that is going to remove the problem at it's root, everything else we do is just to maintain normalcy in the meantime.  Chopping down a weed at ground level is just temporary maintenance, it looks good temporarily, but to truly remove that weed and prevent it from returning, you need to pull it out at the roots!  Need I say more?

And just for the record, Andy Cutler has recovered himself fully from debilitating illness using his own protocol.  So he doesn't just study and dictate what others should do, he himself experienced this monster at it's worst!  I have the utmost respect for this man who has personal experience in what he preaches.

As a mother of children who are experiencing heavy metal toxicity, nothing but the most conservative and safe will work for me.  Do kids recover from IV chelation?  Perhaps, but how many are sheer luck, and how many more are harmed in the process?  I'm not willing to play Russian Roulette with my kids' health any longer, I already did that and it landed me right where we are sitting.  The turtle wins the race, slow and steady.

Doctor doctor on the wall

I swear that is where I feel like our doctors are these days, posted like a trophy on the wall. "Look, I am a degree"...but where is the continuing education, where is the common sense, where is the research? I know, I know, I have been reminded by even my own pediatrician that they do NOT prevent, they are taught to treat illnesses, to be reactive, not proactive and they use medicine, period. We are so torn between going to our standard pediatrician who is covered by our insurance, but doesn't know a thing about what we are going through or going to our DAN! doctor who is a holistic doctor and handles many cases of children on the spectrum through biomedicine, BUT insurance will not approve any of his tests or treatments, they are considered "experimental", hence making the appointment ineligible for payment too. Until a parent is faced with these frustrations, you could never ever know how frustating it is to know that your child will only get better, if you are financially capable of fronting the cost for the doctors, many tests and the long-term treatments necessary to correct his or her health problems. How do you think it would feel to know that the only thing standing between you and your child's wellness or recovery is money, and a lot of it? Frustrating to say the least, unfair at best. On top of it, the parents need to highly educate themselves on the treatments, because there are SO many biomedical protocols out there. What works for one might not work for another, so in addition to spending a fortune, imagine spending a fortune on things that don't work so you end up with bottles upon bottles of full supplements that didn't work, just to move onto the next $40 bottle of something, that maybe doesn't work either! It's a never-ending battle and we feel SO alone since we often can't just pick up our phone and call a ped for advice. They wouldn't even run a viral titer so I can see if he has developed antibodies to the vaccinations he DID get.

Since we are caught in this position, I had some standard blood tests run on Grayson just to see where his health status is, at least it's covered by insurance. He doesn't have anemia, his hemaglobin is good, thyroid good, D levels are great, but his CBC showed elevated platelet counts. The range is 150-400 and his count is 532. I have done some researching and the scary things like leukemia aren't even an option, I won't even give that a thought, but some things did pop out at me on a few web sites. I saw mention of irritable bowel disease and clostridia as possible links. Now THIS would make sense. So while I am still uneasy at the results, I am somewhat relieved to see that the very thing we are battling could be at play here, again, supporting every route we have taken, confirming to me and anyone else who wonders about holistic quakery, that this autoimmune issue is, in fact, real! I am not trying to find something wrong with my child, I don't WANT him to be like this, he just is. The recurrent medical findings confirm that my child is not a case of hypochondria, he is ill, very ill on the inside and I intend to fix it, even if I have to do it alone! If your child had a heart disease, you would do everything, and more, in your power to help him, this is no different.