Why go to all the agony of these two nasty ones if it might not work ? Further, at the time, these two amalgams seemed away from the oral galvanism that corrodes amalgam fillings and releases mercury.

The leap of faith obviously paid off. Mercury was clearly at the root of my health problems. My recovery from CFS is proof enough for me. Unfortunately, the belief that the two hidden amalgams were safe from corrosion and mercury release didn't hold up.

In June 1996 when I first started writing the account of my recovery, there were no longer any health complaints, just as I report.

In September I experienced a crushing headache that lasted a day. In the days that followed I noticed a slight return of my intestinal yeast. Most notably I once again became sensitive to sugar. Minor gas, bloating and cramping are the effects, but not a full return of CFS.

In June I could indulge sugar with impunity. In September I had a follow on DMPS chelation treatment. Again I cleared up.

Friday November 8, I had another all day crushing headache. I could not get out of bed the entire day. It was like a large hand was squeezing my brain and holding me down. I can now see that the yeast has returned one more time again.

As usual I had been very busy: work, family, web page. Now I can see that there is another problem as well. My jaw near the amalgam root filling has a low aching feeling. I believe it is either due to an immune response where the amalgam has direct tissue contact, or due to an accumulation of mercury that has escaped from these remaining amalgams.

I've been to an endodontist who says that the only way to get rid of the amalgam at the root tip and not leave any mercury behind is to do an extraction. I'm very distressed about it. After all of my suffering I had hoped to keep my teeth. Oh all right, my bionic, barely any actual tooth left, gold and porcelain chewing surfaces! But hey, they are me, and I self love them every one.

Now my dentist tells me that there may be more than one crown hiding an amalgam. If you've read my page on safe amalgam removal, then you know these are the nightmare cases for mercury exposure. My guess is that I'm getting some kind of periodic release out from under the crown(s), and this is what's giving me the headaches. Somehow I also get my yeast friends back way down in my gut.

Since there wasn't enough tooth there to hold a crown in the first place, there is little to no hope that the tooth can be reconstructed. Extraction may be the only way to be rid of this gold and amalgam, electro-chemical mercury ejector. Again, I'm extremely displeased with the available choices.

I've been talking with my long time dentist to develop choices for dealing with these teeth. He is distressed that I would even consider removing the teeth.

He obviously doesn't comprehend what it's like to have CFS for 11 years. I've heard people with CFS say intense statements like: "I would give up my left arm to be well again!". Surely choosing to lose a few teeth is not nearly so dramatic, and the reason for why they would have to go is very clear.

Talking to Hg it seems that I run a high risk of having recurring mercury release from the bone structure underneath these teeth. I need to have the area beneath properly cleaned out once the tooth is gone. They call these "cavitations".

They hold dead tissue and accumulated mercury that can foster serious infection as well as release more mercury into my active biochemistry. There are only a few surgeons in the US that know how to do this work properly. I'm not sure there is any in Portland, Oregon.

It's really a pickle. My mind is made up to have the teeth removed if need be. First I have to get to the bottom of just how many gold crowns are hiding mercury amalgam. Second I have to make sure that the surgeon that does the removal knows how to deal with the cavitations properly. This is not the kind of work you want to have done twice.

Meanwhile, the NAC is helping me to cope better than I expected. At present I'm taking 3 grams a day. There doesn't seem to be much point in having another DMPS chelation until I get the teeth removed, or I begin to feel considerably worse.

This web site is all about people being intellectually honest. We need to deal with all the facts, whether they agree with our opinion, they agree with what we want to believe is true, or not. I am still telling you wholeheartedly about my dramatic recovery, because my CFS is gone.

I need to also let you know about any set backs as my situation continues to unfold over time. I am not such a partisan that I feel compelled to lie or keep any deep dark secrets. My goal is to be completely well all the time, and to help as many others as possible do the same.

As for demonstrating cause, these new developments strengthen my case that the dental mercury amalgam in my oral cavity is the root of my health problems. Lets review the historical facts of my case.

• I develop CFS after 13 mercury amalgam fillings are drilled out and replaced with fresh amalgam.
• Following that event is 11 years of suffering from CFS, no cause no cure.
• I have 9 occlusal mercury amalgam dental fillings replaced with a non-heavy metal.
• Multiple DMPS chelation treatments are administered to me to excrete mercury during 1 year.
• I make a full recovery from CFS.
• Perfect health back slides 2-3 months after the last DMPS chelation, intestinal yeast returns.
• I take a follow up DMPS chelation and once again eliminate the yeast.
• Once again I back slide 2-3 months after chelation treatment.
• It is time to own up, and deal with the hidden mercury amalgam in my mouth......

My body burden of mercury has been cleaned up to the point of no symptoms twice in one year. There has been no opportunity for further mercury exposure from a source other than the hidden mercury amalgams.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Jeff Clark

11/29/96 - The Day After Thanksgiving

Well, I shouldn't have had that cheesecake yesterday. It's been a while since I've regretted eating anything this much. My head hurts this morning. Over the last week I've had a headache every other day. It looks like I will need to have another DMPS chelation soon.

The NAC and saunas have held back that constant icky feeling as long as possible. Now it wants to be with me all the time again. As I write this, I am fighting a brain fog and the pulling desire to just go stretch out on the sofa.

Progress has been made at the dentist office. Boy was he grouchy ! We determined which were the two most likely crowns to be harboring mercury. The youngest one is in my lower left jaw. This is the jaw with the low aching feeling.

Looking at the panorex X-ray, the amount of amalgam in this tooth looks huge! When I got home I saw in the mirror that this completely gold colored crown has a black line around the edge at the gum margin. It looks reasonable to attempt keeping the tooth. I'm having this one cleaned out first.

The other tooth with gold over amalgam looks worse, it's an old style root canal with "silver points". There is a greater risk of losing the tooth. If we attempt to keep it, it will require that the root canal be done over with resin replacing the current material in the roots.

On earlier conversation, the dentist was taking a strong stand against touching any of my crowns. My research turned up the following article, which I photocopied at OHSU, and passed on to him to read.

"Evaluation of the interactions between amalgam, cement and gold castings"; JP. Dewald, CJ. Arcoria, and VA. Marker; Journal of Dentistry, 1992, 20:121-127.

This research clearly shows that amalgam under a gold crown in a mouth is going to corrode, releasing mercury. M. Hanson and J. Pleva were much more explicit in their paper about the disaster resulting from this combination of amalgam under gold.

"The dental amalgam issue: A review"; M. Hanson and J. Pleva; Experentia 47, 1991.

My dentist believes that they used glass ionomer as the cement in my crowns. After 13 years in my mouth, I'm not sure it matters much which cement was used. The research report indicated a small advantage with the ionomer over 84 days. The conclusion was that both glass ionomer and zinc phosphate cements eroded, and the amalgam underneath corroded.

Having read all this, my dentist still shook his head irritatedly that he doesn't see how the mercury could get out from under the crown. It left me wondering if he expects to find a little pool of mercury when he lifts it open ?

Believe me folks, electricity exists, as do batteries, look around you! The same science that creates the electrical technologies we count on, also explains why amalgams corrode and release mercury into your body.

Bottom line, the dentist doesn't like it, but he will clean me out if I insist. The irrational part from me is why I keep going back to him. He only begrudgingly talks with me about my health. He is killing himself and polluting his patients with very poor mercury hygiene in his surgery.

Perhaps it's misplaced loyalty, perhaps it's a fear that my dental history will not be transferred well to another dentist, leading to mistakes. Irrational as it seems, I'm going to tough it out with him through the clean out of this first crown. The appointment is set for Monday.

Carmen is starting to see a truly mercury free dentist in Lake Oswego. This dentist has the cleanest mercury hygiene possible in his surgery.

She has avoided the dentist for a very long time. Consequently, all of her amalgams now need to be replaced, even by the ADA's standards. I thank God every day that she waited until now. We would have never made it this far if we both were suffering mercury poisoning at my level.

It troubles me greatly to imagine her having any increase of mercury exposure near the time of her pregnancies. Both our daughters have high immunities and seem as healthy and normal as can be.

My latest understanding of the mercury release from amalgams is leading to the notion that I should be collecting samples from my extracted amalgams starting now. I have lunch room access to some of the worlds best Ph. D. chemists, material scientists, and metallurgists at Tektronix Color Printers.

My intent is to have my recovered amalgam samples analyzed for residual mercury content. Perhaps data from such an analysis will be enough to have my current dentist reconsider his mercury practice. When I ask for him to retrieve samples, I'm sure he's going to think law suit. As of yet, I have not explicitly shared with him that I have no intent in going that direction.

I'll continue to let you know how it goes.

Jeff Clark

Monday 12/2/96 - Back From the Dentists Office

Well it's done. The first crown is removed, and the amalgam extracted. It was huge ! He said it was at least two capsules of Dispersalloy in the filling. The filling was the majority of the tooth. He had to add a titanium post as a form of rebar to help support the polymer replacement filling.

His mood was quite good today. He accommodated me in taking samples of the amalgam for analysis. The sample came in two forms. First he was able to pick some off the top surface.

Second he formed a core as he drilled away the material. This core he was then able to pull free. It looks big enough to analyze with an SEM-ED anyway. The flakes look very different from the core. The core is heavy, bright and shiny. The flakes are more porous appearing. He didn't give me any amalgam from the margins near the crown, this piece was shaved all the way around by his drill.

He also sent me away with the crown. I guess he figures I'm paying for it either way.

The crown itself looks very interesting. There are black signs of corrosion all around the margin interfacing the gum. There is a black spot the size of three pencil leads on the inside of the crown. All of these look like contact points for electrical corrosion. After I SEM it I will consider putting up images somewhere.

By inspection he believes that it was the glass monomer cement. My first impression is that this filling had a lot of mercury to give. It may well be that it was just starting to react, and that the cement indeed kept the metals insulated except for the contact points. The SEM-EDX will see what the eyes cannot, so no need for wild speculation. Though I am a little troubled not having any from the margin with the crown. I'm just glad it is gone!

I'm feeling strange right now. I just took vitamin E, vitamin C, and NAC with milk to help my body excrete any Hg vapor that entered my bloodstream, tissues, etc. during drilling. I'm feeling lightheaded, even a little woozy. My favorite bowel was doing spasms in the dental chair this afternoon. I guess this is what I get for unprotected mercury amalgam drilling. The real question is how will I feel in the morning.

Until next time,

Jeff Clark

p.s. As the evening wore on, I started developing sweats. After I took a sauna, I developed a headache, which I am currently experiencing as I write this postscript. Tomorrow morning will be the real test of my foolishness.

Tuesday 12/3/96 - In My Pickup Outside of Cascade Health Group

I just got the double hip injections of DMPS. Yesterday I wasn't willing to note it, but I thought I detected heart palpitations along with my suddenly spastic colon.

Today there is no doubt. At work I sit in front of a 19" computer screen which I hook up to my laptop. I was responding to some work e-mail when my heart started going nuts! I started to feel faint. It really felt like I was going to have a heart attack! As I leaned toward the screen the palpitations increased. I leaned back and the intensity of the spasms decreased.

I called the clinic and they told me I could come over at 12:00. Thankfully, I had a meeting to attend. Saved by a meeting! Unbelievable. This whole thing just goes to show, no matter how much you know better, you can still act stupidly.

The real issue with my dentist is becoming obvious to me. I'm avoiding firing him. Because as soon as I go somewhere else, I'm not going back. He will have to forward on the records, x-rays, etc..

My previous comments that he is ruining himself and polluting his patients is crystal clear. If I live through the next few days, I can't do this again. Okay I admit to melodrama in the last statement. The heart palpitations scared the hell out of me! Mercury free for me!

Time to drive.

Jeff Clark

Thursday 12/5/96 - The Dogged end of DMPS Chelation

The distress on my heart cleared up the afternoon of the DMPS injections. My urine was full of frothy, shiny bubbles the next two times I went.

What I experienced after the amalgam drilling was much different than my chronic illness. As I reported, it was frightening! I became very agitated, and felt nervous reactions throughout my body. Including spasms in my bowel and my heart.

Nova Caine was not a part of the experience. I had no injections when we removed the filling. I did it with a clear mind, and no numbing, and no doubt about which chemical agents were at work on me.

My chronic health problems have always been fatigue and a mental stupor, plus other lesser complaints.

I'm hypothesizing the difference in experienced symptoms is due to differences in the nature of the mercury. Clearly the drilled out amalgam contained inorganic or elemental mercury. This view is well established, that is what was put into the amalgam in the first place.

My gut, the yeast, and the chronic illness lead me to suspect a methylization process occurs in my body. Methyl mercury is 50 to 100 times more toxic than elemental mercury, this point is also well established.

If you have followed my saga, you know my experiences heavily implicates mercury as the root cause of my illness. My suspicion now is that the yeast themselves may be chelating the elemental mercury drizzling out of my fillings.

They do this primarily as their own defense from mercury toxicity. In order to excrete the toxin, any organism must first bind it to a molecule it can excrete. Waste output from the yeast is available for absorption into my blood stream through the wall of the gut.

Yeast are known to take on a hydra from that perforates the gut lining. This perforation is how "leaky gut" and massive food allergies come about. It would also be a fantastically efficient way to deliver methyl mercury to my blood stream.

Here is my wildest speculation. The yeast could be handing this deadly excretion off to my nuetrophil's and other macrophages that come to roust them out. Not only does the yeast excrete poison as protection for it's own viability, it uses the excretion as a weapon against my bodies living defenses.

Mercury then would first be a threat to the yeasts survival, that is then transformed into a tool for it's further survival. Mercury buildup and exposure correlate to yeast growth in me. I've been through it enough times now that the relationship is very clear by observing symptoms.

Enough for today.

Jeff Clark

12/6/96 - Back From Vitamin IV Refill

The good old V&M's are bringing me back up to speed quickly. Had some excellent discussions with a dental assistant, and two nurses also ending a DMPS chelation cycle.

My lack of study in organic chemistry is a disadvantage in reading a number of the research papers that I've found. These nurses had no problem understanding some of the worlds worst writing. As Dr. Ali relates, there seems to be a competition on how to obfusticate everyday ideas in as much obscure Latin as possible.

My thoughts from yesterday led me to search medline last night. I wasn't able to substantiate the wildest speculation. What I did find supports the role of yeast all the way up to my wildest speculation.

"Transformations of inorganic mercury by Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae", Yannai S; Berdicevsky I; Duek L; Applied Environmental Microbiology; 57:245-7.

A double blind controlled in-vitro experiment with yeast. Controls were allowed to culture and grow. Subjects were cultured the same but then were exposed to measured levels of mercury-chloride.

Mercury chloride is what happens to pure elemental mercury that passes through the hydrochloric acid in the stomach. The literature continues to call mercury-chloride inorganic mercury. Here is the central quotes from the conclusion of the abstract. I will be picking up the full paper next time I go to the medical library.

"C. albicans was the more mercury resistant species". "The amounts of organomercury (methyl mercury) produced by the two species were proportional to the amount of HgC12 (mercury-chloride) added to the medium. In all cases C. albicans produced considerably larger amounts of methyl mercury than S. cerevisiae."

So my postulation yesterday is now backed by a compelling study that would be easy for any credible health researcher to repeat and confirm at low cost.

Whatever the amount of elemental mercury, Candida can make it many times more poisonous by transforming it into methyl mercury. All you CFS people with chronic Candida in the gut and amalgams take note !

Until next time,

Jeff Clark.

12/28/96 - Christmas is Over, and I'm Writing Again

Last Monday I went back to my dentist and had the new gold crown installed. He is at an interesting point. He has another patient who is going through the same thing I did. He admitted that I looked much healthier now, than I did just one year ago. He asked if I would contact this patient to share experiences, and where to get chelation. I guess it's about time to lay Ziff's book on mercury free dentistry on him.

If my dentist becomes mercury free, then my foolish suffering will have been for a larger purpose than just demonstrating to me the difference between an inorganic mercury rush, and what I experienced as a CFS sufferer.

Now that the new crown is in place, the tooth with the apical amalgam (that's at the root end) is starting to really act up. My understanding leads me to believe that the apical amalgam is now the anode of least electrical resistance. With a fresh new gold crown in my mouth, the electrical potential differences are at their highest.

I read a really interesting dental article on two cases where an apical amalgam was the anode in a galvanic series with some oral cavity gold crowns. They even went so far as to change the amalgam at the surface of the tooth to a special blend with lots of zinc mixed in. They did this to alleviate the amalgam at the root by redirecting the electricity. It seems the gum would never heal because of galvanic corrosion in the apical amalgam.

Their method was not without precedence. Puget Sound boaters put "zincs" along the hull to keep their propeller and other hardware from being the anode in a galvanic series using salt water as the electrolyte.

The anode gives up the electrons and corrodes. Placing zinc in the environment protects the other metals because it gives up electrons the easiest, and electricity always follows the path of least resistance.

So the apical amalgam was spared and the surface amalgam was heavily corroded and pitch black in one years time. The necrosis around the apical amalgam healed, and the patient got a belly full of mercury and other metals. What a deal!

A very nice dentist sent me e-mail tonight. He was concerned that my writings implied that all root canals had apical amalgams and that all gold crowns had amalgam posts.

He points out that in current practice, dentists don't usually do either of those placements anymore. They have polymers; and titanium and stainless steel posts. Therefore, amalgam in these situations is not a sure thing.

Before jumping to any conclusions about your own situation, be sure and check your dental records. If they are unclear, as mine were, then try to find out the normal practice of the dentist who did the work at the time. With metal crowns especially, x-rays are not going to help much.

The other thing I promised him I would tell you is that as of yet, I haven't had any teeth removed in order to eliminate the amalgam.

What to do about the apical amalgam, and another crown with amalgam beneath it, including "silver points" in the roots, is still unresolved in my case.

I'm very concerned about having any amalgam accidentally embedded in my gum. As my full immune system comes back on line, I expect it's going to have a real hard time forgetting about mercury.

The tooth with the silver points is a can of worms, and it still may not be possible to gain freedom from mercury and save it too.

The only thing that is certain is that I cannot let mercury continue to reside within my mouth, or my body.

I've been to OHSU twice this holiday week. While there I've burnt up 2 twenty dollar bills on 10¢ a page photocopies of journal articles. Much of the basic mercury research was done in the '70's.

The main library only holds back to 1982. So now I have to wait until Monday to get into the "old" library where they have the rest of their holdings. There is at least another twenty in dimes waiting for me there.

Yeast not only methylize mercury, they also collect it, bind it in their cell walls, and hold it within themselves. A fine feast for a human killer cell. Killer cells go dysfunctional and even die from ingesting both inorganic and methyl mercury.

My thinking is that GI yeast are a major path into the body for mercury both by excreting methyl mercury which is rapidly absorbed, and by being consumed by the killer cells attempting to roust them out.

The current CFS research literature is clear on three important points. All the currently identified suspect viruses are secondary, opportunistic infections. Killer cells, and their support cells are selectively dysfunctional, which also gives the viruses their opportunity. High tech diagnostics indicate the central nervous system is involved in causing CFS symptoms.

Folks, there is not a single CFS symptom that isn't explained by methyl mercury poisoning or the yeast mercury pathways into the body.

methyl mercury has even been demonstrated to cause auto immune disease. I have found 3 independent reports on this point. All make it clear that the mercury induced auto immunity is genetically selective.

Only those predisposed get the self attack. Now let me see, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus are all self attacking immune cell problems, aren't they ? They also are conditions heavily dominated by women sufferers aren't they ?

There is a very excellent study done by a scientist in Denmark which shows methyl mercury retention occurs 2:1 in females over males of the same genetic strain. His study was empirical only, reporting what he observed, offering no theories as to why.

Finally, there is an article by an MD that reports of clinical work where 84% of 1100+ CFS sufferers saw significant alleviation of symptoms by taking the systemic yeast killer ketazonacal.

How significant ? Before treatment there were over 600 with full time disability. After treatment only 12 remained disabled. Interestingly, they didn't claim that they had cured anyone, only alleviated them.

Too bad they didn't do it as a double blind experiment. Their data, while being numerically significant from a statistical point of view, is suspect from a mainline medical point of view. It will never get published because of this flaw. Even now I can hear old "CFS is all in the head" at the NIH in Baltimore, MD, proclaiming the following:

"How can we know that those 84% of people, who only imagine they have CFS in the first place, didn't just wish themselves well via the placebo effect ? If not that, then how can we know that 84% of 1100 people didn't just spontaneously get way better for some other reason ? No controls, no validity!"

I don't know how you view such a hard line on what is admissible data. After 11 years of trying every plausible remedy on God's green earth to kick CFS; the placebo effect, and spontaneous recovery; are two things I'm sure won't give 850 people long term relief.

Got to go, so continue to check in on the rest of my new writings as they come up. I hope 1997 turns out to be great year for you, full of health and happiness, and no mercury or CFS.

Jeff Clark