Doug,

>Just a thought: A friend of mine goes to India each winter, &
>has some of his fillings removed & replaced with gold each time.
> He figures that what he saves on dental costs more than pays
>for his trips.  So you can get your teeth & your karma tuned up
>simultaneously.

Nice idea, but my mercury's already gone.  I forgot to mention I had to
educate myself pretty well about the toxicity of various alternatives to
mercury because the Dental School staff were not sensitizied to this
subject at all.  First I had to convince them to work on me at all, as it
is against their general policy to remove "sound" fillings.  I had to
sign waver forms and agree to read their "mercury is harmless" propaganda
before they would even take me as a patient.  Then I had to watch over
them like a hawk to make sure they didn't shoot up my cavities with
fluoride treatments or other noxious stuff.  But when I told them what I
wanted and didn't want, they were very cooperative.

>Getting back to what Michael said, I believe I have previously
>suggested that:  There are chelating physicians who work with
>progressive dentists, and they will start an IV of chelating
>solution (something which will latch on to the mercury which
>gets loosened up at the time of removal & help your body to
>harmlessly excrete it out in the urine) and then send you next
>door to the dentist for the removal.

I'm too chicken to do anything that invasive to myself.  They say the
chelating agents are harmless, but I dunno.  I'd rather let my body
handle it.

>Vitamin C is an outstanding chelator in itself, & anybody getting
fillings removed should be suffused with the stuff well before (I'm
>talking days anyhow), during & after the removal.  You should
>take it all the time anyhow, in my opinion, not just for its
>chelating abilities.  Bronson sells kilos for about $35:
>800-235-3200.  A gram tossed into a blended salad makes a nice
>tangy addition.

I'm up and down about vitamin C, right now down.  There's a certain
unbalancing effect that occurs when taking isolated nutrients that I
don't want my body to get too wrapped up in dealing with.  Vitamin C
requires B-vitamins and many minerals for its metabolism.  Unless you're
eating lots of greens and seaweed, you could get deficient in various
minerals (and B-12) hyping yourself up with C on a regular basis
(especially iodine I've noticed).  Right now my favorite supplement,
which I take at nearly every meal, is digestive enzyme powder.  (The
Magic Chain, out there on the Web, sells 1 lb powder for about $65.)  My
next favorite supplement, which I'm kind of sporadic about, is Coenzyme
Q-10; then vitamin C, which I tend to use only when a cold is imminent or
in progress, or when I'm drinking veggie juice (to preserve it longer in
the fridge).

>By the way,  I recently read something that suggested that even
>the non-metallic tooth bonding agents & fillers will leach some
>undesireable stuff, including aluminum (I think that some are
>made of a porcelain, which I guess is a clay & thus would have
>aluminum).

There are problems with all dental solutions.  It's definitely a lesser
of evils situation.  I chose mostly porcelain (a few composite and a
couple gold foil) as what I felt was the best bet.  Yes, porcelain
contains aluminum, but it is tightly bound up within the porcelain
material, and in the form of aluminum oxide, which is relatively inert.
Porcelain degrades over a 300-500 year timespan in the human mouth, which
is longer than any other material, including gold and platinum.  The main
downsides are its brittleness (may crack and have to be replaced ---
already happened to one of them when I bit down on a small stone
masquerading among my sprout seeds) and the bonding agents used to hold
them in place, which are petroleum-based priducts.

Bob Avery ([log in to unmask])