My speech at FDA hearings in December 2010

Please forgive my stumbling and mispronouncing words in this presentation. I felt rushed knowing the FDA Chairwoman (woman in plaid jacket at 2:17) would break in at any time to announce the end of my allotted four minutes. I felt I didn't have time to correct mispronounced words, but only wanted to get through the speech.

Near the end I knew I wouldn't have time to finish, and knowing the FDA had "stacked" the panel with professors from dental schools, I decided to speak from my heart for all the people who have contacted DAMS' headquarters and me on the MercuryPoisoned.com website, with their horror stories related to mercury poisoning.

Everything I said after I stopped reading was what was festering in my spirit. Why hold back? The dental professors from the American Dental Association schools didn't want to hear me anyway.

However, there were good men on the panel like Dr. Suresh Kotagal (at 1:44, man in green jacket on the right), a pediatric neurologist from Mayo Clinic, who said there is "no place for mercury in children." At 2:32, you can see mercury free biological dentist Dr. Michael Fleming from Durham, NC.



Marie's Story (continued)

My muscles started aching in my back. I had chronic fatigue. My collarbone hurt, and my nose was so sore I could not stand to put on a pair of glasses. I started getting floaters in front of my eyes and my eyelids were twitching. My ears started ringing. I had increased tingling in my hands and feet. I started keeping a journal of all my symptoms, what foods I ate, and what I was allergic to. I started writing down dates of my all my doctors' appointments.

I saw two internal medicine doctors, two eye doctors, and one chiropractor who was going to test me for mercury toxicity but later dismissed me because he thought my case was too complicated for him. I saw a neurologist who said that "burning of the brain" was not a symptom of multiple sclerosis. I saw a doctor of osteopathy. A couple of these doctors wanted me to go to a psychiatrist when I mentioned that I had felt something "invade" my brain. I should never have used the word "invaded."

On August 25th I stayed up all night. I could not sleep because of the taste of metal in my mouth, and I felt nauseated. I called my dentist early Sunday morning and told him I thought I had been mercury poisoned. I called the emergency room to see if they could do a mercury test on me. They asked why I wanted a mercury test, and I told them I thought I had been poisoned by mercury from my dental fillings. They told me that dental fillings could not poison me, and that they did not do testing for it.

A few days later, I let my dentist put the permanent crown on my tooth. I had not done a mercury test, did not really know anything about mercury, and didn't know what else to do. By this time the metal taste was gone.

The dentist told me in his office that silver fillings were safe, and that we breathed more mercury in the air than what was in silver fillings. He told me nothing about mercury vapor coming from those fillings when a dentist drills into it.

My health continued to go downhill. I was very dizzy, disoriented, and confused and things did not "look real" to me. I could hardly remember anything. I wandered around from room to room, not remembering why I was in the room. I lost my car in parking lots because I could not remember to look at the number of the row where I parked when I got out of my car. I could not remember to buy the things on my lists when I went into town. I would have to list every stop to make, and then I would forget to do what was on my list. I could not concentrate or get anything accomplished. I was just so tired. I felt like my whole body had just been shut down. Every afternoon by 2 PM I had to go to bed and lie on a heating pad for hours at a time.

I started having emotional problems and was very angry. One Sunday morning I woke my husband up at 1 AM and screamed at him for an hour. I begged him to help me figure out what to do. I had started reading a book by Dr. Hal Huggins called It's All In Your Head, about the dangers of amalgam mercury fillings. My husband would not read very much of the information I found, and was just ridiculing my symptoms. He said I was just reading Quacks. I was begging him to help me, because I was so confused I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do next. I had forgotten to have the mercury test run by another physician after the chiropracter had dismissed me. Actually, I didn't know what kind of doctor could test me for mercury, and I had wasted a whole month without having it done. If my legs were broken I would have known what to do. But when the brain in affected, you can't function enough to figure out what to do.

That Sunday morning, I went to church and told my friend Susan that I was so confused that I had to have help, because I didn't know what to do next. I told her that my husband was not helping me figure it out. I was so upset that I got down on the floor and started bawling. The pastor had the women take me in a back room and pray for me. They told me a "spirit of fear" was attacking me. I knew about the spirit of fear. I had often taught about it in my Bible studies at the city jail. They were right. I realized that I had been thinking irrational thoughts, like my husband was going to put me in a mental institution. My husband doesn't even believe in psychiatrists, so that thought made no sense whatsoever.

At the end of the service, I was in the back of the church talking to the pastor and his wife. I mentioned something about mercury to them and the pastor started to say something about "imagining things in our minds." Then my husband spoke up and said, "She is just imagining all this." I let him have it! I stood in the back of the church yelling at him in front of the pastor and his wife while the congregation was leaving! And we were supposed to be ministers! That is another symptom of mercury toxicity - rage.

At other times, if my husband would dare to disagree with me, I would pick up a ceramic flower pot off of the table and throw it at him or hit him with a lamp. We kept my husband's 83 year old mother in our home and I was her caretaker. When I threw the flower pot at my husband and it came crashing to the floor, she cried and said, "I can't live like this."

I finally heard from a friend about an alternative doctor two hours from my home and made an appointment to go see him. I knew about Mount Rogers Clinic because I had seen it on the Internet. I tried calling the number, but could not remember to use the area code, so the number did not go through. The clinic was located in Troutdale which would make it a long distance number for me to call. However, I kept confusing the word TROUTDALE with the word TROUTVILLE, which is near my home, and TROUTVILLE would NOT need an area code. Then finally one day my foggy head cleared up enough so that I was able to make the distinction between the two places. So then I used the area code, and the call went through.

The day before my appointment at the Mount Rogers Clinic, I tried to get prepared. But I could not get my paper work, my tests, lab work and such together without loosing the papers. I would put the papers on my desk right in front of my nose and I would still loose them! I was loosing my glasses every 5 minutes. I finally punched holes in my paperwork and stuck it in a notebook and I tied my glasses around my neck with an eyeglass cord. I struggled to put the papers in chronological order and even though I was a former schoolteacher, I had great difficulty in spelling that day.

I needed to do my laundry in the basement before going to this appointment. I also needed to do chores upstairs. So I handed my mother-in-law a list of things for me to do when I returned from doing the laundry in the basement. I said, "Grandma, please give me this list when I come back upstairs." If I had laid the list on the kitchen table I would not have been able to find it!

My alternative doctor gave me a heavy metals test from King James Medical Laboratory and my level for mercury was listed as H for high. Numerically the number did not seem so high, but mercury researcher Dr. Boyd Haley says there is no safe level for mercury in the body.² King James Medical Laboratory says that mercury is not an essential element and is considered potentially toxic at all levels. Dr. Haley says that having other heavy metals in the body intensifies the toxicity of the mercury level in the body. Very high levels of thallium and aluminum also showed up. My doctor realized my symptoms were caused by mercury, especially after I was able to put the dates together concerning my visits to the dentist and the symptoms appearing shortly after my visit. It took me a couple months to put all those dates together because of the confusion in my brain. He gave me a prescription for natural hormones that helped me to begin thinking better. He gave me supplement packets that contained vitamins and minerals, fish oil, primrose oil, and probiotics that would put good bacteria in my stomach and build up my immune system. Since mercury disrupts the enzymes in the GI tract, he gave me an amino acid dietary supplement powder containing glutamine and other bowel flora. He gave me a prescription of anti fungal medication because mercury causes an overgrowth of yeast in the body.

I am better able to function now. My thinking is better, as long as I take my hormones. Mercury attacks the endocrine system, so it messes up your hormones and thyroid. According to my doctor thyroid tests are not even accurate when you have been exposed to mercury. Test results can all be normal, therefore traditional doctors will do nothing to help you. They either do not believe that you can be poisoned from dental fillings, or that it just happens to sensitive people.

After much prayer and research, I finally found a good biological dentist who took the mercury out of ten teeth. He replaced my fillings and crowns with dental materials that were shown by a Dental Compatibility test to be compatibile with my body and not cause an allergic reaction. This dentist told me he had seen other people in his office with mercury in their brains. I had to drive four hours each way for my dental revision. A family member always went with me to my appointments because I was too physically and mentally exhausted after a day of drilling to drive myself home.

When my general dentist put the crown on the tooth, he placed it over top of a mercury filling that he had only partially removed. When my biological dentist removed the crown and the mercury filling under it, he told me there was decay underneath the mercury filling. My biological dentist told me that a crown should never be placed over a mercury filling. That is why I was up all night tasting metal and sick on my stomach. The combination of metals (probably nickel) in the inferior grade of the porcelain crown was interacting with the mercury that the general dentist left in the tooth. The "patching" material that was placed on the tooth in TN dentist's office also contributed to the reaction between the different materials. It caused a chemical and electrical reaction that made the tooth start decaying very fast. Thus large amounts of mercury started being released from the mercury filling underneath, and caused me to feel very sick.

It is now over one year later and I am still in the process of going through detoxification, known as chelation (key lay' shun), with low doses of the prescription drug called DMSA. It is made especially for me by a compounding pharmacist. It grabs hold of the mercury in my brain and pulls or chelates it out of my body's tissues and into my urine. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom because when mercury is leaving your body your frequency of urination is very much increased. I can feel the DMSA "pulling" in my brain. I also felt it pulling the mercury out of my eyes. That was the reason that I had all those floaters. I do not know how long it will take for all the mercury to leave my body.

Don't rush out and have your mercury fillings removed before doing research and getting educated about the dangers involved. If you allow a regular dentist to remove the fillings, you could be worse off than leaving the fillings in your mouth. The dentist should believe mercury is dangerous and toxic. An alternative source of air must be provided for the patient to breathe while the old fillings are drilled. Large amounts of water should to be used to cut down on the vapors being released. A dental dam, a piece of latex, should be placed in your mouth to catch the mercury particles as he is drilling it out. This will keep the mercury from falling under your tongue, where you might swallow it. A large high powered vacuum hose is used near the head of the patient to remove vapors while the mercury is being drilled out.

I mentioned above that I became chemically sensitive. Do not consider chemical sensitivities unimportant. One woman, with whom I have become acquainted, who was poisoned with mercury and lead, smelled Lysol at a large university where she was pursuing an advanced degree. She went into convulsions and a coma. She almost died.

Another lady in Virginia had sores in her mouth that would not heal because of the interaction of the stainless steel in her bridgework with the mercury in her fillings. (Stainless steel contains nickel.) The sores developed into cancer on her cheek that had to be surgically removed.

There may be mercury-free dentists in your city, but mercury-free does not mean he will safely remove existing mercury. Mercury free dentists simply do not add any new mercury to your teeth.

I would encourage everyone to thoroughly research the links on this site before having an emergency situation. For example, a crown should not be placed on top of mercury. Dentists usually use crowns made from porcelain, but inferior quality porcelain crowns may also have metals like nickel in them. When the nickel is placed over a mercury filling, it may start a chemical reaction in your mouth. It causes mercury to start leaching out of your fillings faster. Some dentists use gold crowns over mercury. This also causes mercury to start leaking. You do not need different types of dental metals -such as gold, copper, nickel, and mercury, in your mouth. They interact with one another and cause much illness. When the metals are interacting is when you taste metal in your mouth. That is why you need a biological dentist to remove the mercury before you have crowns added. Many persons start becoming mercury poisoned when crowns are first introduced into the mouth.

Also beware of putting metal braces in your child's mouth if he has mercury fillings! Talk to a biological dentist for advice about safe materials for braces and about the removal of the mercury from the fillings before the placing of braces. Biological dentist Dr. Jerome Mittelman, has written a book called Healthy Teeth for Kids A Preventive Program: Prenatal through the Teens. He offers a simple, effective program to safegard your child's teeth and gums-starting before birth and continuing throughout the teen years.

The main symptom from mercury poisoning is the attack on your immune system. Root canals also cause horrible infections in the body and pull down your immune system according to Dr. Hal Huggins. Read the book The Root Canal Cover-up by George Meinig. You can check the web and get lots of information.

If you are seriously ill with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, neurological diseases, or other chronic conditions or allergic reactions in your body, you will need to do dental biocompatibility testing to see what materials would be safe to put back in your mouth after the mercury is taken out. Do not take the mercury out and just put anything back in. Dr. Huggins calls this "jumping from the frying pan into the fire." If you are sick, you need to find an alternative doctor to help you build up your immune system BEFORE you start the dental revision. A good place to start getting educated about this dental issue is to read the book It's All in Your Head by Dr. Hal Huggins. And if you are fighting periodontal disease you need to know that mercury in your fillings is one reason people have periodontal disease and bad breath.