Symptoms of Heavy Metal Poisoning; I’m Dr. Carrie Lam and this is Dr. Michael Lam.
This is one of two part series of heavy metal poisoning.
Today we’re going to talk about the acute and the chronic symptoms because there is a difference.
So, what are some symptoms of acute heavy metal poisoning?
Yes, acute metal poisoning is a medical emergency in many cases.
Without a doubt, you have to visit the emergency room right away.
Memory loss, joint pains, bleeding, these are all signs of acute metal poisoning.
It can be very, very severe so make no mistake about that.
Meaning if you suddenly drink some water and you just feel nausea, vomiting, you have headaches that are really bad.
You’re breathing very abnormally. You’re confused.
Those can all be acute heavy metal poisoning.
Or maybe a child ate some paint off the wall or they were eating a toy that might have heavy metals in them.
Those are all symptoms that you should be on a lookout for,
especially if they have severe cramping or convulsions or seizure-like activity.
Bring them to the ER right away.
So, what are some other symptoms of chronic heavy metal toxicity?
Well, the number one symptom of chronic heavy metal is no symptoms.
This is why it’s so difficult to understand this concept because they accumulate so slow, so small,
and the body has a reservoir to be able to allow the metal to hide.
So, basically, you feel nothing until the symptoms appear.
By the time you actually feel symptoms, that is usually because the body’s very weak or the level is very high.
So, normal people go through their life and don’t feel it and this has been the biggest challenge.
But some people do feel little things like achy joints, type of a brain fog, right?
Yes, and these are the signals that the body sends you.
And you have to pay attention because these are so subtle,
so mild that it escapes most people’s common experiences.
So, as you mentioned, a little migrating discomfort—not even pain—that kind of moves around.
Sometimes you have floaters. Sometimes you have brain fog.
Sometimes you have gastric discomfort, but it kind of comes and goes.
You see what I’m saying?
So, it doesn’t point to anything specific, but these are alerts that your body’s sending you.
And it’s very hard for most practitioners to pay attention to this because it is chronic.
It is not obvious.
And so, we pay a lot of attention to this because in our NeuroEndoMetabolic stress response,
we help the body to overcome and rebalance.
We very, very, much so pay attention to the detoxification system of the body
because the body has a built-in detoxification system they try to handle.
But when you deal with these common heavy metals, they are so heavy it cannot be detoxed.
And that’s the way the body gets into congestion, liver congestion, gallbladder congestion, extracellular matrix imbalances.
The body becomes just kind of toxic.
You know, it’s nothing very serious but you can just feel it if the practitioner is very sharp.
So you have to find someone who really understands, okay.
So you’re saying that the heavy metals actually just kind of sit in your body and they don’t go anywhere
and that’s why you feel heavy and you feel like you can’t detox very well?
Yes. And sometimes when you detox or try to chelate
you can actually cause a retoxification reaction and make the whole body worsen.
You can trigger adrenal crashes. The body can be overwhelmed even in metals.
They can release fumes in the process that can overpower the brain
and cause people to have severe, severe brain fog and amnesia in the process.
Right. And so, that kind of segues to our next week series
about how to safely deal with heavy metal toxicities while you have adrenal fatigue.
And so, today we talked about the symptoms of acute and chronic heavy metal toxicity.
Hopefully you learned a lot and you stay tuned for next week.