Body Burdened!… Mercury amalgam and their impacts on our health

Ok, so we all now know that mercury get’s into the body through the lungs and the intestines. But what happens then? Fortunately our bodies have evolved alongside small amounts of natural mercury from volcanoes and geological deposits, which means that we have a built in mechanism to actually get it out of our bodies (unlike some modern manmade chemicals!). The liver, the kidney’s and intestines are all set up for small amounts of mercury processing. But we’re probably talking about small occasional amounts. Those of us with mercury amalgam in our mouths have constant daily exposure, in varying degrees, so over time this means lot’s of mercury getting in to the body. And if it’s too much for our elimination organ’s to handle, it get’s stuck in the body (like the pictures of the sheep and the monkey in the last post).

Mercury has an affinity for the brain & central nervous system, the liver, the kidney’s, our hormone-producing glands, the digestive tract and even the heart, and this is where you will find the highest concentrations of mercury in the body. But ultimately mercury can deposit in any body tissue. So what happens when mercury builds up in the body? Well, a short list is that it can suppress the immune system, deactivate crucial enzymes, inhibit the production of hormones, poison nerves, weaken the kidneys and burden the liver. Anywhere it goes it will damage cells and disrupt metabolic activities. For some this might stay sub clinical and without symptoms, for others it can lead to illness. And lot’s of illnesses & symptoms may have a mercury link, including insomnia, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, GI inflammation, auto-immune conditions and even skin problems. And that’s just the short list. The amazing Consumer’s for Dental Choice in the US have put out an extensive list of symptoms here (look under Scientific Facts: Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning).

Over time we’ll look more closely at how mercury can affect each of our body systems, but I guess for now, the point is, mercury get’s in, stay’s in and does damage!

Mercury 102 – How mercury get’s out of amalgam and into your body

See that weird picture right here to the left? That’s a whole body scan of a sheep 29 days after it had 12 mercury fillings placed in it’s mouth. The dark spots in the picture… that’s where the mercury deposited in it’s body. So how did all that mercury get from the mouth to the body? Remember Mercury 101? Mercury amalgams at body temperature constantly off gas mercury vapour. Well it turns out that when you breath in mercury vapour, it easily passes through the lungs at a rate of about 80%. That means that 80% of the mercury you breath in get’s into your body. Yikes.

So mercury definitely get’s into the body through the lungs, but what about through the digestive tract? In most of my research I found sources that say that the certain form of mercury released from amalgam (called elemental mercury) does not easily cross over through the intestines. But Dr. Christopher Shade blew my mind at the seminar on Friday by totally turning this on it’s head. He brought research that showed us that there are bacteria in the digestive tract that can take the elemental mercury and convert it into another form (called methyl mercury… the kind you find contaminating fish), and this form passes through the gut at a rate of 95%. So now you have another source of mercury and the biologically active form at that. We’ll get into more detail about different forms of mercury later but for now, this is how mercury gets into the body, through the lungs AND the intestines.

Oh, and one more picture before we go. The scientists who did the above experiment were criticized for using a sheep because a sheep “chews too much”. The critics said the excessive chewing would release more mercury from the amalgam than a human would. So they repeated the experiment on a monkey. Do you see a difference? I don’t see a difference.

Information Source for experiment here