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Can the mere removal of amalgams improve health?

Since it has not been possible to establish a Hg-B or Hg-U level below which mercury-related toxicity symptoms will not occur and since the use of mercury can cause allergic immunologic reactions that may be genetically dependant, any exposure to mercury, no matter how small the level, may prove harmful to sensitive individuals.

Before discussing the effects of mercury from amalgams on health, I want to tell you about a case I dealt with in my early years of treating mercury toxic patients. Greg was a 20-something computer programmer who complained about a ‘foggy brain’.

He would take 8-10 hours to accomplish two hours worth of work. He could not bill the client for the actual time spent and was thus seeing a huge reduction in his income. He could also not stand loud noises and never went anywhere there were large crowds.

About two days after I removed his amalgams his wife phoned me. “What have you done to my husband?” was the first thing she said to me. I immediately thought that he had suffered a relapse. But I need not have worried. According to her, he was outside playing with the kids, he had only slept a few hours the previous night (as opposed to his usual ten hours or more), he was not as moody (he had fewer emotional outbursts) and, best of all, he was more clear-headed. He had not felt so good in years!

Amalgam advocates will call this anecdotal/subjective/unreliable evidence. I really don’t care what you want to call it. This man had suffered terribly because of the amalgams in his mouth, but was able to enjoy life again after his amalgams were removed safely.

In cases such as this where the improvement is so fast and so dramatic, one has to ask if the improvement is merely due to the removal of the source of mercury from the mouth, due to the removal of the galvanic current in the mouth, or due to a combination of both?

By now you know that there is a large body of scientific literature showing that mercury from amalgam spreads around the body and that amalgam typically provides the greatest portion of the mercury found in the human body.

But there is as little research published on the galvanic effects of metals in the mouth. This is unfortunate, as I believe that the galvanic currents in the mouth can wreck havoc on one’s health. Later in this chapter I will discuss the cases of Jacques, Betty and Maria who showed dramatic improvements immediately after their amalgams were removed.

But let’s get back to the issue of mercury...

Mercury’s toxic effects have been associated with human death and several ailments that include cardiovascular diseases, anaemia, kidneys and liver damage, developmental abnormalities, neurobehavioral disorders, autoimmune diseases, cancers in experimental animals, oxidative stress, autism, skin and mucosa alterations as well as non-specific symptoms and complaints.

A UCLA study in 2009, interested in the I-Hg levels of 6,000 women, found that I-Hg accumulated in tissues that are known to be targets for the toxin, such as the liver, the immune system and the pituitary gland. A connection was also found between the levels of the pituitary hormone lutropin and chronic mercury exposure, a fact that explained mercury's link to neurodegenerative diseases. I-Hg accumulates in the brain and can stay there for years. To top it all, the study found a dramatic increase of the I-mercury in women from 2000 to 2006.

Overall, "these results suggest that chronic mercury exposure has reached a critical level where inorganic mercury deposition within the human body is accumulating over time," the researcher said. "It is logical to assume that the risks of associated neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases will rise as well."

The question remains whether removing amalgams will improve the health of those already affected (patients who present with symptoms), or even prevent health disasters of those that are not yet affected (known as the sub-clinically toxic patients)?

When designing the research method for a research project, much scientific weight is given to double-blind studies. In this type of study, one group will receive the proposed treatment, e.g. the drug to be tested and the control group a placebo. But with procedures such as the removal of visible ‘silver’ fillings being the treatment under question, it is not possible to adopt a double-blind placebo-controlled design for obvious reasons and many times the test group would need to be their own control group. Some pro-amalgam dentists would want to replace the amalgams and then wait a few years to see if the symptoms return. I think it would be very difficult to convince someone that has suffered health effects due to amalgams, to have the amalgams replaced once they were healed.

At the former Department of Clinical Metal Biology at the University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, the treatment of patients was evaluated with the use of a questionnaire comprising questions about their symptoms.

In this study the patients constituted their own controls. More than 70% of those patients who responded reported substantial recovery and increased quality of life after their amalgams were removed. This is truly remarkable, as the only treatment performed was the removal of the fillings - no other treatment was given to increase detoxing of the mercury from the body. Hg-P before and after treatment supported the hypothesis that mercury exposure was, indeed, the cause of the ill health.

Images from a high magnification microscope shows how brain cells die when in the vicinity of very, very low concentration mercury.