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| I'm confused. My IOMNT/merc free dentist said that I need not wean my 10 month old because of all of the precautions they take. They said I should just pump for the day of the procedure- I'm getting 2 fillings replaced and won't be chelating. Thoughts? |
I have thoughts, but the caveat is that my situation may be different. Mercury is contributing to my current health problems so I think it's clear that my body doesn't excrete it well. I think my son (17mo) is the same. We're GFCF due to this. That said... the HCP I'm working with seems pretty knowledgeable about mercury, and her concern about me getting my amalgams replaced while nursing is a) the exposure that day, despite the precautions, and b) how much/soon my body will start mobilizing the various deposits of mercury in me after the amalgams are out and there's no new, daily input.
From my reading and her experiences, some people have nasty detox reactions really fast (like the next day) and some people never do. But I think the detox reactions are mercury (and possibly other toxins? since it seems like the lack of new daily mercury could allow the body to deal with more than it could before) moving around--and if it's moving around, that's in the bloodstream and it would move into the milk at the same level.
So for me, I'm working on my health (which is poor but moving up to fair) and will wean after Christmas when I think my son will be done teething, and then I'll get these things out. And then start the chelation process (not sure how quickly to start that, I think that'll be a see-how-it-goes kind of thing).
I'm bummed about weaning him early for many reasons. It was a hard decision in some ways. But it came down to balancing our needs. And for us, while I can try to meet his needs for cuddling and touching in other ways, it's becoming clear that it's imperative for my health to get these things out and start ridding my body of the accumulated mercury. But honestly, I'm putting off thinking about the actual weaning and how I'm going to do it because it seems really hard.
My son doesn't have blatant mercury toxicity symptoms--there are really only two, the first I attribute to mercury even though I don't think it's on a real list--he didn't crawl right, and although I did a lot of reading on crawling, the way it looked made me think that something in his brain wasn't wired correctly from left-to-right (a coordination type of thing). Maybe that's just coincidence, but this was really ringing my alarms, way before I knew that my fillings were a problem. It wasn't just a non-traditional cross-crawl, to me it looked like a real lack of the ability to coordinate the left and right halves of his body. But with practice and modeling (my daughter and I had lots of crawling races for a while), he got really motivated and tried and tried (it was almost painful to watch at times, because he so wanted to move but couldn't make his arms and legs work together), but then he got it, and after a while he was doing a great cross-crawl. The other is more classic, in that he started banging his head on things. Doing a bunch of nutritional supplements that help detox pathways has stopped that (yeah! I feel like shouting to the world, but I don't know anyone who understands enough to do more than give me a puzzled look).
Anyway, I guess this is mostly a ramble. I'm not really knowledgeable (that should be obvious). I've been trying to learn from the Chelating Mamas thread, and various reading. I hope I know a bit more come January and (hopefully) it's time for replacement with composites.
Gardenday--One thought. We're mitigating the effects of the daily mercury in my milk to my son with nutritional supplements. It's sort of a modified DAN! protocol from what I gather. One way to consider would be finding a well-respected DAN! doctor in your area (or an expert in environmental medicine, like my HCP, but that seems harder) and, if you don't think you're having health problems due to the mercury, and your little one isn't either, do something like this to help with excreting what may be higher levels for a few months.
One other thought--not sure how accurate the test was, but a few years ago, I did a hair test for mercury, and it was low. I think this was because my body doesn't get rid of it efficiently. For me, it wasn't clear that mercury was playing a role until I had stressful life events that triggered health problems, and then we (HCP and I) realized that the mercury had made me susceptible to them. But it seems just as likely that someone with a low test means that their body gets rid of it just fine, and has been doing so at a steady state for years. How's that for nothing helpful?
, I just wanted to vent to those who would understand how sad I am.
