Mostly though, amalgam dissolves and erodes by an electrochemical process called galvanism. Galvanism is the same electrochemical process used to store and release electricity from a car's battery.

Galvanism occurs within an amalgam since it is not one metal, but a collection of different microscopic metal alloy pockets. Each of these different mercury alloys is called an alloy phase.

Oral galvanism occurs within the amalgam due to differences in ph levels in the surrounding human tissues .

Oral galvanism occurs between amalgams and other metals in the mouth due to differences in electrical potential.

Amalgam is the anode, or negative pole that releases electrons when electricity occurs. A metal crown or different amalgam is the positive pole that consumes the released electrons, called the cathode. The electricity between the anode and cathode poles can flow through the electrolytic compounds of saliva, tooth, and tissue.

Electricity always follows the path of least resistance originating from the weakest material. In the oral cavity, mercury amalgam dental fillings are almost always the weakest metal and the electron donor.

Mercury releases from amalgam alloy as the alloy parts with covalent electrons during the galvanic process. The released covalent electrons are what create the electrical flow to the cathode. Without covalent electrons, the constituents of amalgam alloy lose their chemical bond, and charged mercury atoms are free to travel.

Since amalgam is giving up electrons as it dissolves, its free constituents are left with a plus charge. Elemental mercury freed by galvanism is often missing 2 electrons, in a charged state called divalent mercury, or Hg2+.

Divalent mercury is volatile, and will react with the first available chemical bond it encounters that will satisfy it's need for electrons. Sulfur-hydrogen groups of many proteins, called sulfhydrals, or thiols, are enormously attractive bonds for divalent elemental mercury.

Amalgam corrosion products on the filling surface are constantly being chipped away by chewing, grinding, and tooth brushing, a process called abrasion. Removing the surface corrosion layer exposes uncorroded amalgam as a new surface. Uncorroded amalgam has a full set of electrons and mercury atoms ready to react with the oral environment.

Corroded amalgam compounds have been depleted of binding covalent electrons and mercury atoms. Uncorroded amalgam breaks away along with corroded amalgam particles as they are abraded. Amalgam particles travel down the GI (gastro-intestinal) tract.

Released inorganic mercury can vaporize as pure elemental mercury and be respired directly into the blood stream by the lungs. Respired mercury vapor is one of the two forms of mercury having the widest range of systemic effects.

Absorption of elemental mercury through the lungs is 80% efficient. Respired elemental mercury vapor can cross the blood brain barrier and attach to proteins by an oxidation process that first converts elemental mercury to divalent mercury.

Free Mercury Travels

Mercury can travel down the root and surface of the tooth into the gums. If still divalent upon reaching the soft tissues, mercury can bind into free proteins in the tissues and be carried away into the blood stream. Divalent mercury can bind to the cell walls of the gum tissue and accumulate there.

As divalent mercury escapes dental fillings into the oral cavity, it is rapidly bound into saliva proteins, and ionized with chlorine and other electrolytic compounds and elements found in the saliva. Electrolytic compounds in the saliva are plentiful, reactive, and mobile. Divalent mercury released to saliva preferentially binds with electrolytic compounds and available sulfhydral bearing proteins.

These inorganic mercury ions and mercaptides travel down the GI track with saliva, food and drink. Passing through the stomach and it's hydrochloric acid will convert many of these compounds to mercuric chloride.

Some mercury is absorbed by the digestive system, some pass out in feces, some are ingested by microbes, some are caught in the low spots, folds, and villi of the intestines, as are abraded amalgam particles. Most of the mercury from a dissolving amalgam travels the GI as one form or another of inorganic mercury ions.

In the healthy person, 20% of inorganic mercury ions are absorbed through the GI. Half of that is rapidly returned to the GI as a bile excretion. The other 10% is excreted through urine, sweat, hair, finger nails, or stored somewhere within the body tissues.

Inorganic mercury ions cannot pass the blood brain barrier, and are not easily absorbed by normal cells with strong walls. Permanent bonding and retention of ionic mercury within the body requires it to be stripped of electrons once again to become divalent mercury.

Immune Cells Preferentially Susceptible to Mercury

The greatest danger of low levels of inorganic mercury ions in the blood stream is absorption into the immune cells. Nuetrophil's (immune macrophages) actively ingest the GI absorbed inorganic mercury it perceives as an invader. Human immune cells are extremely sensitive to all mercury compounds. Immune cells will become dysfunctional losing secretion capability, ability to eat invaders, and mobility.

Mercury contaminated Nuetrophil's lose the ability to eat yeast. Enough mercury ingestion will kill the macrophages. Dead macrophages travel to the liver where they are metabolized, and the mercury is collected and eventually excreted in bile, or circulated to the kidney and excreted in urine.

Enough mercury buildup can cause serious immune problems in macrophages, t-cells and supporting cells. Persons severely poisoned with mercury would seem able to achieve a disease state reminiscent of AIDS without HIV.

Inorganic mercury can also cause autoimmune disease in those genetically predisposed. The immune identification of mercury polluted cells can go out of control when the regulating cells are also mercury contaminated.

A general attack on specific types of normal, healthy, self cells can occur. Autoimmunity is the central feature of MS, ALS, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and some other diseases.

In the healthy person, inorganic mercury from amalgam wears down and causes dysfunction in the immune system first. A constant strain is put upon the bodies liver and kidneys to excrete the mercury.

Good nutrition is constantly at risk due to mercury induced imbalances in metabolism, and the continual loss of important protein compounds to bind and excrete the mercury.

Candida, Enemy in the Gut

In the healthy gut, the yeast Candida albicans; it's many Candida yeast cousins; and staph and streptococcus bacteria are not welcome. E. coli, bifidum, bulgaricus, and other acidophilus type bacteria work together with the human immune system macrophages, called Nuetrophil's, to keep these bad guys out.

Yeast, staph, strep, and E. coli all convert inorganic mercury ions into methyl mercury.

E. coli, when present in a healthy gut, and when well supplied with the amino acid cysteine, along with the other healthy coinhabitants of the gut lining, convert methyl mercury into inorganic mercury.

A healthy GI flora is essential in keeping the bad guys out, slowing the ingestion of methyl mercury, and completing the digestive process for many foods.

Yeasts are fungus or plants, and are not killed or controlled by antibiotics. In effect, antibiotics are plant extracts, having first been isolated in penicillin mold. Antibiotics encourage yeast growth.

Antibiotics are highly effective at killing bacteria, members of the animal kingdom. The healthy inhabitants of the human gastro-intestinal (GI) track, are bacteria. The gut bacteria are killed by antibiotics. With enough exposure to broad spectrum antibiotics, GI flora can be completely exterminated.

Viruses are neither plant nor animal. They are encased strands of DNA and RNA that steal reproduction capability from the cells of the hosts they invade. Antibiotics have no direct effect on viruses.

Abuse of Antibiotics

Over time the immune system suffers from mercury exposure and a person takes just a little longer to heal. Colds and flu's get worse. Candida and the bad guys slowly work their way into the mouth, throat, and GI linings. Opportunistic viruses such as EBV and HHV start to get out of hand.

People are in a hurry to get well, they want back to work, school, and normal life quickly. When they go to a physician, they often demand a prescription for antibiotics.

Physicians are in a hurry, they want to get through that stack of patients quickly, or the day will never end. People walk into the clinic with viral, yeast and bacteria infections.

Without so much as a swab of the throat, or objective pathogen diagnostic of any kind, the patient walks back out with a prescription for antibiotics. Sometimes the antibiotic prescription is tailored to "whatever has been going around".

The lucky ones get well quickly. The bacterial infections are cured, or their virus succumbs to the natural effects of the immune system. The GI flora, abused by the antibiotics, rebounds. All body functions return to their previous state of mercury challenged health.

The unlucky ones with persistent viral and Candida infection go back to the physician, because the antibiotics didn't do the trick.

Things haven't changed with the physician either. Still in a hurry, still no objective diagnostic is employed. It's concluded by inference, deduction, guess, or expediency that the patient must have a resistant bacteria strain. This time the patient leaves with a prescription for a broader spectrum antibiotic.

Such a cycle can continue multiple times. Sometimes the patient will go to another physician, because the last one refused to prescribe any more antibiotics.

After weeks of ever more broad spectrum antibiotics, the friendly bacteria in the GI are killed. Somewhere along the way the patient begins to have diarrhea while on the antibiotics. If the original infection was a strain of Candida yeast, the patient is in big trouble.

If the problem before was a virus, it has now become one or more strains of Candida yeast.

Candida's Fire

With the friendly bacterial soldiers of the GI wiped out by broad spectrum antibiotics, Candida takes off. If the patient continues a high sugar diet, Candida infection spreads even faster. If the person has a gut full of unabsorbed inorganic mercury, amalgam particles bearing mercury, and a steady stream of mercury ions coming down from the mouth, there will soon be fire and flame.

Some people reach the state of Candida's Fire without the spark of antibiotics. They can get there by the decline of the mercury absorbing immune system. The rates of mercury exposure, absorption, and immune ingestion determine the rate of onset. A person can get there quickly by an all immune consuming viral infection.

Any change in your natural ability to excrete mercury can send you towards Candida's fire and flame. A loss of a kidney, malnutrition, or any severe illness may give opportunity to Candida.

E. coli may also reach a methylizing state if proteins are not sufficiently digested to provide sufficient free amino acids in the GI. If the mercury load in the GI in any way becomes out of proportion with the available free amino's, E. coli will methylize mercury to protect itself from mercury poisoning. E. Coli have the ability to methylize mercury at a rate 2:1 over Candida.

Antibiotics overdose is a reliable match, a sure spark for Candida's fire. The GI flora can be totally decimated by antibiotics. Along with the friendly bacteria goes the ability to keep Candida out, and the ability to convert methyl mercury back to inorganic mercury before it is absorbed by the human.

Candida's Fire and Flame

Candida ingests everything in it's environment, and grows and spreads rapidly when unchecked. The inorganic mercury in the gut is also consumed. Inorganic mercury ions ingested by yeast form various compounds.

Yeast cell walls can bear their own weight in mercury. When the mercury load becomes too much for the yeast, it is excreted free as methyl mercury.

Methyl mercury is Candida's flame. Methyl mercury is rapidly and efficiently absorbed throughout the human intestines. From there the blood stream carries methyl mercury (CH3Hg) throughout the body. CH3Hg can pass the blood brain barrier, the placental barrier, and can be tightly bound into proteins, fatty acids, hormones, enzymes, nerve cells, everywhere.

The selective attack of mercury on the immune system is now completed for people at all states of compromise. Nuetrophil's, the immune system macrophages patrolling the GI, consume the mercury bearing yeast. Macrophages collect up all the various forms of mercury within and on the yeast as they eat them.

As the Nuetrophil looks for the antioxidant glutathione (GSH), to rid itself of the yeast poisons, it finds little or none available. The mercury compounds in the blood stream have already preferentially bound up the available GSH as the body moves to clear the mercury poison through the liver.

At some point the body becomes short of resources for combating mercury and Candida. The neutrophil's are crippled, and unable to eat Candida. New GSH is in short supply.

Depletion of available amino acids, and disruption of the enzymes and reaction processes required to free the amino's from food proteins are the reasons. As quickly as GSH is formed, it is binding up mercury.

A valiant effort to clear mercury is further confounded by the bile loop. Bile excreted mercury is deconjugated in the intestines and rapidly absorbed once again into the blood stream.

Within the GI, Candida spreads, entering the cell walls, robbing trace minerals directly from the blood stream. Candida creates rents in the cell lining that allow food particles and inorganic mercury ions to pass directly into the blood stream. Candida facilitates the development of allergic food reactions in this manner. This condition is often called "leaky gut".

The normal recycling process of digestive enzymes is disrupted by the GI Candida. Important compounds that should have been reclaimed are excreted in soft stools and diarrhea. Short chain fatty acids and vitamins normally formed by the GI flora are lost or not formed.

The human with this condition is in a downward spiral. Continued sugar consumption speeds the process by putting the yeast metabolism into a frenzy, reproducing themselves, loading themselves up with mercury, and methylizing that mercury with higher efficiency.

Degrees of Candida fire exist. The worst cases go systemic, with live yeast entering the blood stream, invading every part of the body.

Methyl mercury binds anywhere, and everywhere in genetic dependent proportions. Females retain methyl mercury 2:1 over males. Methyl mercury accumulates in the central nervous system, the endocrine system, and every major organ, as well as the body at large. Different genotypes have different preferential storage locations.

Perhaps the most devastating for those with CFS is the pituitary, thyroid, hypocampus and adrenal gland accumulations. These disruptions help bring on the cycling energy levels, fatigue, mind fog, short term memory loss, concentration problems, and headaches. People can lose their sense of balance. Women can develop early menopause and endodemitriosis from loss of proper hormone regulation.

Candida's flame can focus on any subsystem or part of the body. If the accumulation is preferential to the immune system, an AIDS without HIV can occur. If the brain is the focus, CFS and all sorts of mental disorders can occur. Mercury poisoning was once diagnosed as "Mad Hatters Disease". If accumulation is preferential to the liver or kidneys, acute diseases can occur there. In muscles fibromyalgia. In joints arthritis.

These genetically determined preferential storage variations explain the bewildering array of inconsistent symptoms people with CFS experience. These inconsistencies add to the confusion over CFS cause. It appears that there must be many different CFS causes to explain all of these varied symptoms. Methyl mercury poisoning has the ability to explain them all.

CFS has been correlated and uncorrelated with several viruses. With immune dysfunction, and macrophage impairment, both opportunistic and preexisting viruses claim their freedom adding to CFS symptomology.

Extinguishing Candida's Fire

There are saving graces. Mercury release rates from amalgam fillings are in micrograms per day. Candida only methylize's a portion of the mercury at a time. The body can suffer a long time under these chronic circumstances before serious consequences or a cause of death occur.

Many people find coping power and relief by combating the yeast. Yeast thrive on sugar and simple starches. Yeast struggle in environments low in these fuels. Mercury ingestion is an accident that costs the yeast resources too. Methyl mercury release is how the yeast cope with mercury, lest they become poisoned and die.

Effective systemic yeast killers have returned many to a seeming state of normalcy. These liver toxic drugs can temporarily quell Candida's fire, and clear up Candida infections throughout the body.

Yeast are versatile, changing forms to weather adverse conditions. If a person doesn't restore their immune system, enzymatic processes, and thoroughly rid themselves of mercury, Candida's fire will return when yeast killers are discontinued.

The best strategy for recovery depends on the person. A nutritional approach would seem the safest and surest for all. Vitamin E and selenium greatly reduce the damage done by methyl mercury. Free amino acids, with emphasis on NAC antioxidant and GSH production, bypass disrupted digestion and metabolic processes.

GSH and NAC fuel mercury excretion and Nuetrophil function. B vitamin coenzymes provide metabolic hardware required for the body to metabolize and rebuild itself.

The most severely ill may need to receive these nutrients from a needle to restart their systems. Electrolytes and trace minerals need to be added to replace those robbed by Candida, and spilled from the digestive loop.

Controlling Candida is a must. Step one is to avoid all sugars and follow the yeast free diet.

Yeast killers are problematic. Some strains of yeast such as C. tropicalis require 10X the nystatin to control them as does C. albicans.

Ketazonacal, and other related drug variants are highly effective, but add a serious additional toxin stress to the mercury loaded liver. Not all of these drugs work on the full spectrum of Candida strains. C. tropicalis for instance, lacks the disruption site required for Ketazonacal to work.

Nystatin is probably the safest yeast killer since it is topical, and adds little to the systemic poisons of the already distressed human. If you can have your yeast assayed, an effective protocol can be developed specific to the Candida strains burning within you.

Nystatin takes many weeks of dosing along with the yeast free diet to gain an effective control over Candida growth in the GI.

Acidophilus reinoculation from powder or yogurt needs to be constant, and unrelenting. Restoring these healthy GI inhabitants will help change the pH of the bowel away from what the yeast desire. Until your Nuetrophil's are working properly again, the friendly bacteria, pH levels, and nystatin are all you have to control Candida yeast.

Mercury exposure has got to stop. Occasional, effective whole bowel cleansing will move out unabsorbed inorganic mercury, larger yeast colonies, and amalgam particles. The surface areas and mucous of the intestines are enormous, trapping inorganic mercury and metal particles.

Avoid fish and seafood. Get rid of all the mercury amalgam in your teeth as quickly and safely as you can afford.

Total mercury detoxification will take a long time to accomplish by whatever protocol used. Mercury excretion is facilitated by sulfhydral containing proteins. Glutathione (GSH) is formed within the human from the amino acids cysteine, glycine, and glutamic acid.

DMPS, DMSA, EDTA, and sulfhydral poly resin are synthetic proteins. All of these are effective at excreting mercury through the liver and kidneys. Only self made GSH is without known adverse side effects. The amino acid N-acetyl L-cysteine (NAC) is another effective mercury binder and excretion facilitator. NAC is a highly effective precursor to intercellular GSH.

Be Patient, Be Persistent, Never Give Up Hope!

Expect total mercury detoxification to take years.

Fortunately, the mercury disruptions in volatile enzymes and hormones can be cleared quickly under a sound detoxification and nutrition protocol. Clearing these important body proteins speeds recovery by restoring effective digestion, metabolism, and essential compound synthesis within the body.

Some mercury bindings and damage may be irreversible. The 1970's acute methyl mercury literature reads this way. However, none of these reports speak to a long term nutritional approach to recovering from mercury poisoning.