First of all, the big question: How is my health? Any problems? Any mercury symptoms creeping back in?

Nope, no problems at all. I am very happy to say that I am disgustingly healthy. I had a bit of a cough last week, that’s all I have to report in the sickness department. I have tons of energy, a clear head, zero emotional weirdness. It’s all good. I eat gluten pretty regularly, not every day, but plenty often enough to know that it has no effect on me now. My new favorite food is croissants. Croissants are heaven

As for my diet in general, I’ve been pretty much doing the Blood Type Diet that I wrote about here. I guess at this point, I could freestyle it when it comes to what I eat, but with everything I’ve learned, it seems kind of dumb not to optimize my health. Being on this diet makes me feel great, I love it. Plus I’m not very strict about it, so it’s not like I don’t get to eat trash every now and then. The only thing that’s still verboten is sugar. And I’ve been sugar free for so many years now, I don’t even miss it. Given my secretor status, I should probably never have been a sugar eater in the first place. Living without it is just the way things are meant to be for me.

Am I chelating these days?

Yes! I just finished Round 94 yesterday. I realize that I have been very lazy about chelation. After I finished the bulk of my recovery and stopped chelating regularly back in 2009, I never really got back into the swing of it. I’ve had whole years go by where I haven’t chelated at all. That’s just not cool. Given how seriously mercury toxic I was, it only makes sense for me to do my maintenance. And so I’ve gotten back in the saddle this year. The key for me this time around is taking it very easy. I only do a round once a month or so, and have cut my dose radically–from 100mg of ALA to 25mg. This makes the whole thing no big deal, and something I can do regularly for the rest of my life if I choose to. On this low dose, I don’t feel any effects from the chelator, don’t have any redistribution, so it’s easy as pie. And I take my supplements too, all the good stuff like Vitamin C, magnesium, Milk Thistle, probiotics, omega 3s to support me as I detox.

What else is going on?

Well, I’ve been having lots of fun musically. My latest adventure has been learning to play the drums. That has been fantastically wild fun. I’ve been taking lessons and practicing every day, and it’s so energizing and cool. I’ve also been singing and writing songs. Next week I’m going to be very brave and sing a song I wrote at a songwriter’s open mic that just started up in town. Wish me luck!

On the work front, I’ve been absorbed by the Enneagram teacher training program I’m completing. It’s kind of awesome to find something that fascinates me so completely at the ripe old age of 38. Nothing I’ve studied before has grabbed me like this, and I’m so glad that I have the brainpower and energy to throw myself at it completely.

Since I can’t help myself and just have to keep writing books, I’ve already gone and written my first book about the Enneagram. It goes on sale this week. It’s a collaboration with my friend Kelly Kingman who is a graphic recorder and illustrator. I wrote the words and she created the images for a simple and visually rich introduction to the Enneagram.

I am extremely proud of this little book, and know it won’t be the last thing I’ll ever write about the Enneagram.

So what’s next?

New horizons beckon. At this point, I feel that my work in the mercury toxic world is done. I haven’t been sick for years. I’ve forgotten what it even feels like to be sick. New people are rising up all over the internet writing blogs and providing support who are far more plugged into this world than I am. I feel very good about taking a step back, passing the torch on to those who are at the front lines of this issue.

So I won’t be posting here again with any frequency. Looking back over these two years of blogging, plus the years of sickness and detox that went before, I feel so grateful to all of the people I encountered on my road to health. Writers like Andy Cutler and Hal Huggins who pointed the way, all the people who set up websites and moderated forums so that I could find stories I could identify with and figure out what the hell was happening to me. All of my fellow mercury sufferers who offered support and advice online when there was no one in my life who could help me.

And then of course, all of my readers who bought my book and sent me such wonderful emails in response. It felt like a real risk to put my very personal story out there in the world, and getting constant feedback from people, letting me know how much it helped them, well that was just the best part. I feel honored to have been able to help such a brave posse of hardcore detoxers, whatever small part I got to play.

And of course the cherry on top of the sundae was getting to edit and publish Danny’s book The Mercury Diaries. Talk about a hardcore detoxer! I think he wins the prize there He inspired me all through my own detox journey and I’m so glad his book is out there so that he can continue to inspire people all over the world for years to come.

Okay, well that’s the end of my Oscar acceptance speech My heart feels very full as I walk away from this work and officially embark on the next leg of my journey as an Enneagram explorer. I wish you all the best, best of health. I hope you find all of the answers you are looking for, and that your recovery is as smooth and speedy as it can possibly be!

Good luck!

Just click on this link to enter

Good luck!

When Danny wrote the book, he made it very clear that he wanted his story to be applicable to anyone who wants to educate themselves about their health options. Even though it’s a book about mercury detox, the core of the story is universal to anyone who has been sick or who is searching for a deeper understanding of how their body works.

I am very much enjoying reading the reviews that people are posting on Amazon. People are getting so much from the book, learning a lot, and at the same time, really enjoying how Danny writes. One reader hits the nail on the head when she says Danny tells his story “…in a style so engaging you feel as though you are sitting with him face to face.”

Anyway, check out his book on Amazon, and I hope you all have a great December!

This has been a really fun year. Over the summer, on a lark, I joined a Rock Band Boot Camp in my town. My friend Paul suggested it. He had never played the bass before, and I had never sung with a band, but it sounded like so much fun to try it out, it really didn’t take much for him to talk me into it.

The Rock Band Boot Camp lasted eight weeks, and something magical happened over the course of those weeks. The five of us who turned up just to play at being a band for the summer really clicked. We became a real band. We had an awesome first gig as a part of our Boot Camp experience, and then we rented a practice space and now meet once or twice a week to work on new material.

The other really fun experience I’ve been having this year is my Enneagram teacher training program. Last month, I went to the Enneagram Institute for a weeklong training, and as part of the discussion of Type Seven: The Enthusiast, our teacher suggested that one of the things we could do to contact the positive energy of Type Seven in ourselves is to repeat the phrase, “I am grateful for this life.”

Now I’m not a big fan of ‘positive thinking’, I think it’s used to cover all manner of sins, but this was something I could genuinely get behind. Because I am wildly grateful for what I have today in my life.

Let’s just take last night as a random example:

After dinner, I walked from my house to the practice space my band rents in the old high school, it’s about a ten minute walk from my house. When I got there, we started working on a new song that our guitar player Ben suggested. I am always my own best advocate in brain-activity-heavy situations, so before we started, I made it clear to Ben that I wouldn’t be able to sing the song and play the unfamiliar chords on the keyboard. Not simultaneously, at least not until I’d had a chance to practice a lot at home.

But as we worked on the song, with just a tiny bit of coaxing from Ben, I found myself doing it: hitting the right chords on the keyboard, singing the right melody, reading the right lyrics off the sheet, doing it all at once without smoke coming out of my ears. A tiny miracle moment brought to my band courtesy of my post-mercury-detox brain.

When I think about it, another miracle followed when we were done practicing: we stood around planning when our next two gigs should happen.

Let’s think a minute about where I was four years ago, literally in the middle of my two-year mercury detox.

If you’d said to that 2008 version of me that I would one day in the not-so-distant future stand around casually discussing doing a gig as the lead singer in a rock band, I would have laughed in your face!

Impossible! Rock stars have to stand up for the whole of their performance! They have to memorize lyrics! They have to sing with vigor without becoming lightheaded! They have to communicate in non-verbal ways with the musicians in their band! They have to manage stage fright! They have to have a stage presence that is coherent and lively enough to be placed in front of an audience! And most impossible of all, they have to have enough extra energy lying around in their days and weeks to burn it up in all of the endless hours of rehearsal that precede a show!

Four years ago, none of this could have happened. My imagination couldn’t even encompass the kinds of things I’m doing today. Frankly, I would have been happy with the idea of being able to walk ten minutes to the practice space and back again without collapsing in exhaustion afterwards.

I can’t believe how much I have!

I have a brain and body that are not only healthy right now today as I type these words. They’re so healthy, I can bank on them to perform optimally on any given day in January when I’m required to give a full-on rock star performance. And I can bank on them to perform optimally at all the two- or three-hour rehearsals that will happen between now and then.

It’s a goddamn miracle.

Rocking the song King of the Road with Paul and the other members of Odd Man Out. Photo courtesy of Nicole Romano Ashey.

So yes, I am grateful. Grateful for the people in my life, the wonderful things that surround me, the pets, all of nature, fun times, community, music. But most of all, I am grateful for my detoxed mind and body that let me really be here for all of that.

I am so happy to announce the launch of Daniel Forsyth’s memoir The Mercury Diaries, now on sale in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon.com:

To see the paperback click here

For the Kindle edition click here

Readers outside the USA should note that the book will be available on all Amazon sites worldwide in approximately a week or so–this applies to both Kindle and paperback editions of the book.

From the back cover:

“People would look at me and instinctively know something was deeply wrong. I felt and looked like the life had been sucked out of me.”

Danny was just your regular London city bloke—until his health mysteriously went straight down the toilet. He did what any normal person would do: he went to see a doctor. And another doctor, and another, followed by tons of specialists. He asked them all the same question: Why? Why did his back hurt so much that he couldn’t even bend down to pick up his baby daughter? Why did he have ten days of heartburn if he ate anything besides salad? Why were his mind and body crumbling? Why was he so sick his life was falling apart?

Over and over again, Danny was given fistfuls of drugs and no answers. Fed up with this, he decided to take charge of his own health and his own destiny. He opened the door and crossed the threshold into the mysterious world of alternative healing. Danny swore that he would try everything until he got his health back.

This book is the chronicle of Danny’s adventures in the world of alternative healing. With wry humor, his search brings us through his first Alexander Technique session, his first herbal parasite cleanse, and his visits to a practitioner known only as ‘the muscle tester dude’.

The pieces of the puzzle finally come together when Danny finds the online forums where the mercury toxic folks hang out. Discovering the many and varied symptoms of mercury poisoning—an exact mirror of his own health problems—it becomes blindingly obvious that he has mercury poisoning too.

Danny embarks on mercury detox using the Cutler protocol, along with herbal cleanses and special diets. He climbs the long ladder out of mercury hell, and back into the land of the living. A changed man, glad to be alive, he shares his roadmap back to health so that others can find their way too.

The final edits have been made, the Kindle version has been formatted. That means that in just a matter of days, The Mercury Diaries will be unleashed upon the world

Sitting in front of me on my desk is a shiny new copy of the book–the very first copy ever printed, the one the printers sent out to me to make sure that every last i was dotted, every t crossed. And let me tell you that it looks beautiful. Looking through it, I am so proud of the job Danny did. Not just in writing this book, but in cheerfully doing all of the grueling rounds of edits I insisted on! This book is a smooth and stylish read, with so many laugh-out-loud moments, and every paragraph imbued with Danny’s deeply authentic voice and experience.

I truly can’t wait until everyone else gets to read this book. I am hovering over my computer, waiting for the moment when the paperback goes live on Amazon.com.

As soon as it does, I’ll let you all know…..!!!

It’s exciting times around here in this one-woman micro publishing house I run known as Capsule Press! Daniel Forsyth’s recovery memoir The Mercury Diaries is in the final stages of editing and will be unleashed onto the world in just a matter of weeks. This book has been a long time coming: I saw the first draft of these early chapters, what, three, four years ago? I loved them then and knew that the world really really needed to see them. And you know what? They’re even better now.

I truly cannot wait to share this book with you.

So I’m not going to. Wait, that is. I’m giving you a little peek of the opening chapters, just so you can get a taste of the treat you have in store for you.

Click on this link to read and enjoy

And don’t forget to post this on your Facebook page, let everyone know that a really awesome and important book is coming their way soon!

I was very interested to meet Don and talk to him, not just to discuss the Enneagram, but because we had another very big thing in common.

We both had heavy metal poisoning.

Don had been quite public about the fact that he suffered from arsenic poisoning. It started in 2007 when he was traveling in China and ate some contaminated fish. As is common with large, one-off heavy metal exposures, the arsenic attacked his peripheral nervous system and he suffered from neuropathy that turned to paralysis. He was hospitalized and almost died. What saved him was round-the-clock chelation treatment, and he made it through, even regaining some of his mobility.

When I met him, what struck me most was his serenity in the face of this horrible ordeal. Me? I’m angry at mercury. It’s my enemy and I want to fight back. Don was in a much more peaceful place. He talked about what it was like to almost die. How he surrendered to the process and just accepted it, and even had moments of joy while his life was hanging by a thread.

During that training, Don taught us for part of the time, and though he was having a hard time getting around, it was clear that his mind was clear as a bell. I really enjoyed spending time with him, hearing his quiet and gentle observations that were sharp as a tack.

I saw him as someone I could learn from on so many levels–yes as a teacher, but also as a person. We are both Enneagram Type Fours, both writers. Talking to him over lunch about writing, I felt like I was getting a free master class on how to really go about being a non-fiction writer in the smartest and most fabulous way possible. I was looking forward to coming back to Stone Ridge this October for Part II of my training and talking to him about it some more.

It really bothered me, what one student randomly said during that class. He was looking at Don struggling to get out of his chair, and he said, Well, I guess he won’t be with us for much longer.

I held my tongue, but I wanted to snap back that he should shut the hell up, because a) saying something like that was extremely rude, and b) he didn’t know a damn thing about heavy metal poisoning, it didn’t kill people, it just left them injured and in pain for decades.

But I guess I was understandably in denial about the gravity of Don’s condition. He passed away last week, dying in the end of metastasized cancer.

Here’s what Andy Cutler has to say about Arsenic in Hair Test Interpretation:

Arsenic is a well known carcinogen. Having had cancer or being at risk for it is a good reason to check for it and other heavy metals. (Pg 92)

I know that a lot of people will look at Don dying of cancer at the age of 66 as one of those random tragedies that happen all the time for no reason.

I take it a bit more personally.

I devote quite a bit of my time to fighting the good fight against heavy metal poisoning, and goddamn it, my teacher, one of the writers I admire most in the world got taken from me by arsenic.

This gentle and sensitive man died because he ate the wrong piece of fish.

What the hell are we doing in this world? Really? Letting corporations run wild, filling up the ocean with toxins of all kinds, burning through every ounce of coal on this Earth to make more, more, more electricity, releasing all kinds of toxins into the air that settle on the sea and make their way into all of us in the end.

I mean is it really necessary? Does every man, woman and child on the planet need to have an iPad, a smartphone and high-speed internet access every nanosecond of their lives? Is all of that worth it, when the price we have to pay is autism, cancer, misery and people like Don Riso dying before I got a chance to hear everything he had to teach me?

Yes, I’m angry.

You bet I’m angry. From what I hear about his death, I don’t even think Don was angry when he died. He was smarter than me, he accepted that this is just how things are.

Most of the time, I accept it too. I know that people die in their millions in every era for senseless reasons at the hands of those in power. This is just how it goes now, at the beginning of the 21st century. This is how the weak are sacrificed these days.

Oh, but I don’t want it to be like this. Can we turn back the clock, take all the evils in the world and stuff them back in Pandora’s box? If I throw away my smartphone, can I have Don Riso back?

But unlike other chelation blogs, this isn’t a live round-by-round account of a parent’s struggle to recover their child. It’s more like a retrospective–Rebecca’s daughter recovered years ago; she’s a neurotypical 6th grader now.

With the distance and perspective that only time can give, Rebecca tells the story of her daughter’s autism and recovery in beautifully written installments. I highly recommend that you start with the post Autism Is Like an Amusement Park Ride and read the posts sequentially by clicking on ‘next’ to get the full story. It really is remarkable.

Rebecca is one of the authors of the book Fight Autism and Win, a guide to treating autism using Frequent Dose Chelation. Maybe you’re like me, and you read the book and wondered, But who is Rebecca Claire and why is she writing this book? Well, this blog is the perfect complement to the book and will answer all your questions about what Rebecca had to go through to get to that place of hard-won wisdom and expertise.

Read and enjoy!

Turns out Dr. Peter D’Adamo, author of Eat Right for Your Type was a pretty interesting guy.

I posted last time about the fact that I’m a non-secretor. I’d never heard before that an aspect of your blood type could compromise your ability to fight candida, and increase your likelihood of getting dental cavities. Reading that there was a connection between these two very significant issues for me–the dental cavities that started my mercury journey and the fungal rash that lingers after its end–really rang a bell for me. Would D’Adamo be able to explain why I can’t shake this fungal rash? Or would he shrug and offer another prescription antifungal that would screw up my liver and make me miserable?

My visit to his office began with a very interesting series of diagnostic measurements. My fingerprints were examined, the length of my legs were compared to the length of my torso, a strip of paper was placed on my tongue and I was asked how it tasted (my answer was “nasty!”) All of these measurements and more were plugged into the computer to come up with my individual dietary plan that is a lot more refined than the basic blood type A diet. If you would like to duplicate this process at home, a simplified version of the test appears in D’Adamo’s book The GenoType Diet.

After my individual diet plan and recipe book were printed up, I got to ask Dr. D’Adamo my three big questions. How exactly did being a non-secretor cause my fungal rash? Would I have to stay on Nystatin for the rest of my life? Would I ever be able to eat sugar?

Question 1 brought on a tidal wave of seriously scientific terms that I had never heard of before and couldn’t begin to absorb. I told him to slow right down, and to spell this one: myeloperoxidase deficiency. As a non-secretor, I just don’t make enough of this enzyme and can’t control fungal infections as easily as secretors do.

As for question 2, would I have to stay on Nystatin forever? No, of course not. I just needed to take a supplement that would increase my myeloperoxidase instead. I have to say, I really liked that answer. I don’t like to have to take a drug, even one as mild as Nystatin. Taking a supplement that addresses the root cause of a problem rather than putting out the fire after it has started is a much more comfortable option for me.

We discussed some other supplements I could try to boost my immune function and help heal my digestive tract, but always with the goal in mind to let my body heal and find its balance eventually with diet alone. D’Adamo’s approach is to always let the body find its natural healthy balance, not to fine-tune an unhealthy system to try to erase symptoms.

This all brought me up to question 3–if I was going to be on this diet for the long haul, what were D’Adamo’s views on cheating? Would I ever get to eat a bite of birthday cake, or would that erase all of my good work?

“Cheating is encouraged,” D’Adamo said. “We find that people who follow the diet 80% of the time do better than those who follow it 100% of the time.”

Nice.

But of course the proof is in the pudding–will this dietary shift and these supplements clear up my fungal rash and let me quit Nystatin?

Apparently this whole thing takes six months to a year to really work–so stay tuned. I’ll be checking in and letting you know…