Still More Mercury Revisited – The Impact of Alpha Lipoic Acid On Mercury Metabolism

INTRODUCTION A short time after finishing the last Mercury Revisited newsletter, I had an interesting telephone conversation with a clinician who felt very strongly that alpha lipoic acid (ALA) supplementation is extremely important for optimal mercury removal. However, as with the other chelation agents I have discussed (e.g., DMSA, DMPS), this clinician suggested that use of ALA with mercury burdened patients could have detrimental effects when used incorrectly. Of course, while I had great respect for this clinician’s personal opinion on this subject, I found that I was becoming increasingly uneasy with some of the comments. Why? First, his heavy emphasis on the use of ALA with mercury burdened patients seemed to be at odds with the opinion of many researchers and clinicians who, as I have outlined in this series, seem to rarely mention ALA, and instead emphasize DMSA, DMPS, or micronutrients other than ALA. Second, many, if not most of his comments seemed to be contrary to what I had learned previously about the relationship between ALA and mercury. Therefore, I found myself in the somewhat uncomfortable situation where I had to confront the question of whether the claims being made were totally inaccurate based on current scientific and clinical knowledge, whether I knew much less about the subject than I had assumed previously, or some combination of the two. As an initial effort to resolve this quandary, I inquired if his opinions had solid support from either the scientific literature and/or well known practitioners and researchers in the area of heavy metal toxicology. In response to this inquiry, the clinician emphatically stated that all of his claims about the role of ALA in mercury toxicology are both elaborately explained and well documented in the text Amalgam Illness: Diagnosis and Treatment by Andrew Hall Cutler, Ph.D, PE.