manganese poisoning
 

Hello,

Over the course of about a year I was exposed to high levels of vaporized manganese. I won't go into great detail but I was experimenting with potassium permanganate as an oxidizer in rocket motors. I was unaware that manganese was a dangerous thing to be inhaling. Since then I've learned that people with high levels of manganese in their water may be inhaling enough in their daily shower to cause damage.

I'm posting this here because the effects of manganese poisoning are very similar to Parkinson's disease and because I don't know where else to post it.

I'm trying to find a doctor who has treated a patient with Mn poisoning or another person who has it.

Unlike other poisonings, the cessation of contact with the offending agent does not mean symptoms will stop getting worse. Actually, from what I've found on PubMed, the symptoms of Mn poisoning will keep getting worse for more than a decade.

L-dopa is described as marginally and transiently effective. Selegiline apparently does not help (the suggestion was that Mn-induced oxidative stress was the cause, so the hope was that selegiline as an antioxidant would help). Chelation is described as being useless outside of acute poisoning.

So I haven't found any good news. My muscles are always stiff, my hands shake, I have terrible rls (for which I was given a number of Parkinson's drugs, the only one that helped was l-dopa, which worked amazingly, but soon augmentation meant I was having restless legs at 5 o'clock so I discontinued it). I find that I'm walking on the front of my feet which is giving me hard calluses. Worse, on a few occasions my legs haven't done what I've wanted them to and I've fallen at work.

Is there anything that can be done or do I just have to live with it? I'm only 28 and I've always prized my intelligence above all else (I had an iq test when I was in high school and scored 140 something). I hate to think I may lose that.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Ham

Hammilton,

Welcome to the forum.

I guess you've already come across this paper:
"Medication Tolerance and Augmentation in Restless Legs Syndrome: The Need for Drug Class Rotation"
Roger Kurlan, MD,1 Irene Hegeman Richard, MD,1 and Cheryl Deeley, RNP1
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1924754/

John

Yeah, I didn't have much luck with dopamine agonists, though. I was given diazepam for it as well, worked good but couldn't take it long term. I would like to try Horizant. Gabapentin itself would have been alright but it made me a bit hyper and fuzzy/dizzy, which all lasted well into the next day.

Pas
 

I presume that you are trying this. If not, it might be very useful.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19150464

I'm not. From what I can tell, it is too long after exposure for chelation to be effective.

andy cutler chelation protocol
 

you might want to look into this do it yourself chelation protocol.
not endorsing it but it certainly was widely used, not sure what the current opinion is on it.

No, aside from the pseudoscience factor, manganese is very different from mercury

best of luck. i tried.
you asked a group of mainly non-scientistsfor for suggestions. maybe a thank you wouldn't hurt?
cutler is a Ph.D chemist, the 2 chelators he recommends are real chelators. i don't have a chemistry degree but his protocol seems to make some sense.

From what I have read in a Chinese study, it was effective 17 years after exposure. How long has it been since your exposure?

"The amazing thing is that this drug reverses Parkinson-type symptoms of manganese intoxication," Zheng said. "We see remarkable improvement after treatment with this drug even 17 years later."

https://news.uns.purdue.edu/html3mon...manganese.html

Almost two years, I think. I'll have to see if my doc will prescribe it. The studies I've read referred to drugs which didn't penetrate the blood brain barrier, like CaEDTA and the like. This shouldn't have a problem crossing as far as I can tell (not charged and not polar, so it should be good). The aromatic amine substitution is worrying, as this sub is well known to cause liver damage, but it doesn't seem to be needed long term.