Thanks for the interesting posting.

I would just like to mention that mercury (and other metals such as gold or nickel) can have immunologic (allergic) effects on human helath as well as toxic. Sadly, this is not wellknown, and I work for an organization trying to spread this information.

To illustrate the difference, let’s take the old controversy concerning the safety of amalgam fillings. The anti-amalgam standpoint is that amalgam consists 50% of mercury – one of the most poisonous substances on earth. Environmental laws make sure mercury doesn’t pollute our lands and lakes and there are strict rules for how it can be transported. In this sense it seems that the only safe place to store mercury is in a person’s mouth. During the last years, many reports have been published describing cases of people getting cured from serious diseases only by removing their amalgam fillings.

This is countered by most dentists with a toxic argument, stating that the amount of mercury released from amalgam fillings is below the safe level set by authorities and therefore cannot cause any harm to a person’s health.
A patient might argue that after removing three amalgam fillings, his tiredness disappeared, so it must have been due to the mercury being released. A dentist might reply that he has ten amalgam fillings himself and he’s never been tired so the fatigue can have nothing to do with amalgam.

Who is right and who is wrong? They both are right – and they both are wrong – because they have ignored the basic facts that immunologic effects of metals, which states that in some cases a person’s health will be affected, depending on their genetic inheritance. Let’s use peanut allergy as an example. One person can eat a handful of peanuts and feel great, while a second might feel itching in the throat and fatigue – a sign of allergy. A third person will be rushed to the hospital because a bag of peanuts was opened in the first place and they suffered an anaphylactic attack – a serious allergic reaction, sometimes resulting in death. Are peanuts dangerous? For some people, yes. Is there a safe level of peanuts which everybody tolerates? No, it depends on a person’s sensitivity, which is dependent on our genes. We are all different.

Returning to the discussion whether mercury and amalgam fillings are safe, the rational answer is it depends. If a person doesn’t have an unusually large amount of amalgam fillings, we can assume that the amount of mercury released from the fillings is below the safe toxic level and will not cause any side-effects. But if a person is allergic to mercury, one or two amalgams can be enough to cause health problems. The most common signs of metal allergy are diffuse symptoms such as profound fatigue, body pain, metal taste in the mouth and psychological problems. Only rarely, there are local symptoms around the filling.

Apart from a general suspicion that amalgams might cause health problems there are tests which can confirm both the toxic and immunologic effects of metals. The former looks at the levels of metals in the body, which can be measured by analysing hair, urine and blood. The results are not always relevant because the body detoxification might not be working properly, leading to a storage of metals in body tissue, and unless the levels are above safe levels, they do not tell you if metals are leading to disease.

Metal allergy has traditionally been measured by patch test, where metal-containing solutions will be placed on the skin. The skin reaction is measured by a doctor’s naked eye and a rash or swelling is diagnosed as a sign of metal allergy. But the method has many flaws such as not being objective and also exposing the patients to harmful substances.

A blood test in now available that that instead will test the patient’s white blood cells, so called lymphocytes - which are involved the allergic reaction in the body - to metals and measure the reaction in a laboratory. The test, so called MELISA®, will confirm the presence or absence of allergy and also measure the severity of the reaction.

Typically, a patient with amalgam fillings will be tested to a panel of metals that are present in amalgam fillings, such as mercury, silver, tin and indium, and that are known to cause allergies. If a patient is found allergic to one or several metals, he might consider consulting a dentist experienced in safe amalgam removal and replaced the fillings with non-metallic fillings. Other treatments will depend on the allergy-causing metal, for example a nickel allergic patient will be put on a nickel-free diet and a titanium allergic patient told to avoiding titanium-containing make-up.

Studies show remarkable result. Approximately 80% of patients with chronic fatigue and autoimmunity will improve after removing the metal they are allergic to in the MELISA® test. The explanation behind this incredible change in health is that white blood calls are stimulated by metals which causes inflammation in the body as long as the patients is exposed to metals. Inflammation affects the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal), which regulates the body’s stress reaction and the hormone levels and other processes.

For more information, please see www.melisa.org.