Heavy Metal
Mercury in the Mouth and the Coming Crisis

by Russ Tanner

Once in a great while, you stumble upon something that changes your life—
but the world won’t even admit it exists.

Before The Fall
I played racquetball almost daily, lifted weights about 4 days a week, and enjoyed biking on occasion. Kneeboarding and tubing behind a boat on the Gulf of Mexico was the best way to unwind. But gradually, things began to change, forcing me on an adventure that I never would have willingly chosen.

Aging
In 1998, I began to catch the first glimpse of the decline of my health. As my overall energy fell, it became harder to get to sleep, and I began to have digestive problems. I assumed that these changes were the natural effects of aging. I started taking vitamins and herbal supplements, and my health immediately began to improve. I was thrilled and believed that this would be a new lifestyle—a side-effect of aging that I would have to incorporate into my daily life in order to stay healthy.

After about a year of experiencing health improvements and then a plateau, the old symptoms returned and rapidly brought with them a shocking number of new symptoms. I began to gain weight that I could not lose, which was very unusual for me. I began having issues with temperature, especially when sleeping. I was forced to install a window A/C unit in my bedroom that had to be set to its coldest setting so I could sleep comfortably. Just getting to sleep became a nightly two-hour struggle.

As months rolled on, my digestive system slowed down considerably. I frequently had tingling in my arms, hands and feet, as if they were “falling asleep”. I began grinding my teeth while sleeping. My heart actually felt as if it skipped a beat several times every day and I would get very light-headed when I stood up.

My immune system weakened. I knew this because when I worked out, I would feel flu-like symptoms the next day. I craved sweets constantly, and when I ate some, redness and burning would appear under my arms.

I eventually fell into periods of deep depression. Later I put it together that those depressed days followed immediately on the days that I ate sugar. I began asking myself why I worked so hard, and doubted that my work would ever make any difference in the world. I frequently contemplated suicide. My ears were ringing constantly and louder than they ever had.

By 2000, my hair was thinning to a point where I saw a visible difference each week. This really shocked me into realizing that what I was going through was not natural. I’m well aware that nothing “just happens,” that everything has a cause. I knew that something specific was causing this decline in my health.

In that same year, my short-term memory quickly deteriorated. Remembering someone’s first name became impossible. Strangely, I noticed that I became very tired when I ate and that after a meal, I would have pain in my joints and in my head. Through a little experimentation, I determined that my body seemed to have become unable to handle fats in my diet. Fats in the blood cause red blood cells to stick together, making them unable to pass through small capillaries and causing the surrounding cells to suffer oxygen deprivation, which causes localized pain.

My tongue became swollen and it became increasingly difficult to speak normally. I salivated so much that I had to swallow every minute or so when speaking. I also salivated in my sleep. I began feeling so nauseous after each meal that it took all the strength I had not to vomit, plus, there was a growing metallic taste in my mouth.

Finally, my energy levels were so low, that I could only work 4 to 6 hours per day. I also had to nap after dinner daily. Fortunately, I owned my own business, which allowed me to get away with this, but not without consequences.

Daily I woke up more exhausted than when I went to bed. Desperate and losing hope, I resolved somewhere in my mind that I would never find the cause of all this and would probably spend the final years of my life in bed, exhausted and unable to be productive.

Stumbling Upon Something
The answer came to me one night—I consider it one of the most important nights in my life. I was working together with Amy, a brilliant girl we were contracting with to help us design websites for our clients. During a break, we were talking casually and I related to her a strange and disturbing thing that had happened to me the night before. While grinding my teeth in my sleep, one tooth had moved out of place—one on the top, just left of my two front teeth. It had actually shifted 2-to-3 millimeters forward. I was horrified. My teeth had always been straight and in excellent condition, until now.

Amy looked at me with her typical calm demeanor and asked, “Do you have a filling in that tooth?” I poked around with my tongue at the back surface of the rogue tooth and felt a small, round bump in the otherwise smooth enamel. Curious and intrigued, I answered, “Yes.”

With the cool calm of a poker player with a full house, she said, “Your body is rejecting the mercury in the filling and it’s causing your teeth to shift.” Staring intently at her, I asked what had brought her to that conclusion.

Amy quietly began telling me how she had become bedridden following a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. After years of being prescribed one pharmaceutical drug after another, she finally decided to do her own research on her illness. Amy eventually concluded that the underlying cause of her disease was mercury leaking out of her amalgam (a.k.a. “silver”) dental fillings. She learned that mercury was highly toxic and causes a wide variety of neurological, immune, and emotional diseases.

After saving enough money to have a few of her fillings replaced with a safer substance, her health improved considerably. When she had a few more replaced, her health improved to the point that she was able to return to work and live a normal life.

Her answer hit me like a book. A spark of hope engulfed me as my mind ran the scenarios, testing the possibility that my health symptoms might be caused by mercury from my dental fillings. It more than made sense. I intuitively believed this was the answer I had been searching for.

Research
The next day, I started searching the web for information about mercury poisoning from dental fillings, and to my surprise, found numerous websites and personal testimonies specifically about mercury poisoning, both from amalgam fillings and from vaccines. Finally I found the website of Dr. Hal Huggins who, in addition to offering numerous resources on this subject, even had a phone number I could call for referrals to dentists who had been specially-trained to remove mercury safely.

I called Huggins’ office and explained my situation to the receptionist. She strongly suggested I get a copy of Huggins’ book before calling any dentists. She said this was a complicated subject and that people needed to be fully-informed before making these kinds of decisions. I located a copy of his book and took the next two days off work to read it cover-to-cover.

The receptionist at Huggins’ office was right—it IS a complicated subject. You have to make numerous decisions, including what safety protocols you want your dentist to follow, what dental material you want to use to fill your teeth with, how you want to detox, and many other things.

Taking Action
Reading Huggins’ book confirmed my hope that I had found the answer to my health issues, so I decided to take a chance. The cost of replacing all my fillings would be high, but I now believed the cost of not replacing them to be incalculably higher. I quickly convinced my open-minded business partner, Laura, to have her fillings removed as well. We began to search for the right dentist.

Huggins’ office gave us a list of dentists specially trained to perform mercury removal in my area. I phoned several of them and quickly narrowed the search to two candidates. After several long phone calls and countless questions, we decided to have Dr. Behm in Clearwater do our dental work.

We set up an appointment for consultation and X-rays for Thursday, July 13th, 2000. We were able to get an appointment for the actual removal on Sunday, the 16th.

The consultation was like no other dental appointment I’d had before. Dr. Behm narrated us through his entire initial inspection of my mouth, explaining strengths and weaknesses, as well as the causes and solutions. He brought things to my attention that I’d never been aware of.

Next, he took voltage readings on each filling using a Rita meter. He explained that various materials in amalgam fillings interact and generate measurable electrical voltages, much like a battery. This is a natural result of mixing various metals, like those in an amalgam filling: mercury, tin, zinc, copper and silver. The dentist recorded the voltage between the surface of each filling and the gum, then used this to determine which quadrant of the mouth would have the fillings removed first, second, and so on. The currently-accepted practice is to have the quadrant with the highest sum of negative readings removed first. According to Huggins’ research, this method gives the patient a significantly better chance of entering a natural “detox mode,” although Huggins honestly states that he doesn’t know why. This observation was simply a result of his clinical experiences.

When the body enters this natural detox mode, which is usually 24 to 48 hours after the removal of the last amalgam, mercury urine levels shoot up dramatically indicating that the body is beginning to naturally “dump” its mercury stores.

After consulting with Dr. Behm, we chose to have all our amalgams removed in a single visit. By the time we left his office, we were confident we had chosen the right dentist.

The Procedure
When we arrived, the dentist informed us that he would completely finish both of us that day. We decided I would go first.

Dr. Behm applied topical painkiller to make sure the local anesthesia shot did not hurt. He injected the local anesthesia quickly and I didn’t feel a thing. Fortunately, I had been following the protocol that includes eliminating vitamin C for 24 hours before the procedure, because vitamin C interferes with the effectiveness of local anesthesia.

Kristen, his assistant, fitted me with an oxygen source and then prepared the rubber dam that fits over the mouth. Certain teeth are pushed through holes in the rubber so the dentist can work on them without accidentally dropping materials or toxins into your mouth. Kristen also placed some green-tinted plastic glasses on me, followed by a surgical mask over my nose to protect me from the mercury vapor that would be emitted during the excavation. Finally she placed a small towel over the mask that covered most of my face from the nose up. Meanwhile the dentist activated a very powerful air purification system in the room. Then Dr. Behm lifted up the rubber dam and poured an ounce or two of chlorella and activated charcoal under it. He explained that this would help absorb the mercury, should I some get in my mouth. My research had taught me that chlorella is a naturally chelator (binding agent) for mercury and other heavy metals.

Now the fun began! Much to my surprise, not one time during the drilling process did I feel pain. The worst parts for me were the noise of the drill so close to my ear and the boredom of being confined to a chair for 4 hours.

When I was finished, Laura spent 7 hours in the chair while I watched educational videos the dentist made available in a special viewing room. I then fell asleep on their sofa until Laura was done. Exhausted, I went home to bed.

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I never had before. It was as if the weight of all the worries accumulated in a lifetime had completely evaporated. Laura experienced exactly the same thing. Even during this “euphoria” experience, I was walking on eggshells wondering how long it would last.

The answer came two days later when I woke up and began to feel some of the old mercury symptoms mildly return. Day after day, the symptoms increased until they seemed to plateau at some low point that was still far better than before the removal.

Detox
Immediately after the removal, we began detoxing by taking supplements that bind to and remove mercury from the body. Whey protein drinks are among these types of supplements because they contain sulphur, which binds aggressively with mercury. Algin is possibly the most important supplement because it helps prevent mercury that has already been moved into the colon from being reabsorbed back into the body and redistributed—one of the most dangerous issues related to mercury detox. We also continued taking protective supplements, such as vitamin C, vitamin E with selenium and CoQ10, which is very beneficial for the heart.

Over the next several months, we experienced what we call the roller coaster ride. We experienced good days and bad days but the trend line always was up. We learned that this roller coaster effect is caused by the body’s natural detox process—mercury is pushed into the bloodstream as it is expelled from body tissues where it has been stored for years.

The amazing and wonderful conclusion to this story is that I no longer suffer from any of the symptoms that I mentioned earlier, with rare and subtle exceptions. This dramatic and life-changing difference was well-worth everything it cost me, considering the likely outcome had I continued down the road I was on.

Relentless
Mercury is inimical to human health. Despite the institutional denial of government and industry, I believe that pharmaceutical companies profit incalculably by continuously treating, but never curing, the symptoms whose causes are rooted in the destructive action of mercury in the body.

If you have amalgam fillings in your mouth, mercury is leaking out of those fillings 24 hours every day, accumulating in your body tissues, destroying cells one-by-one, and relentlessly creating and exploiting physiological weakness.

With well over a million amalgam fillings being placed in the U.S. every week and thimerosal-laden (mercury-containing) vaccines being promoted like pharma-candy to young people from infancy, mercury poisoning will be the health issue to watch for the next decade.

Russ Tanner is originally from Jamestown, New York, and grew up in a medical family in New Port Richey, Florida. He spent much of his time studying space sciences, computers, electronics and music. Russ holds a degree in Electronics and is president of Herb Allure, Inc., a company that compiles scientific research about herbal medicine and natural supplements.

You can follow his continuing story at www.HerbAllure.com/mms. He can be reached at russ@herballure.com