I am 19 years old and i have CFS. my life is being ruined, i can no longer enjoy my youth like my friends do. I have constant kidney pains and muscle ache, my head feels like it is in a haze all day, i am constantly exhausted and have irritable bowel syndrome. My doctor tells me there is nothing he can do and i'll have to wait a couple of years to see if it "wears off". Does anybody have any suggestions as to how i can help my condition without having to get a prescription. e.g. diet changes. Thank You. You can E-Mail me at the rather strange address of morrisisbent@hotmail.com

Do you have a mouth full of mercury-silver dental amalgams (i.e, "silver" fillings)? Your symptoms are similar to one having chronic poisoning from mercury, although 19 seems young for poisoning such as that to develop from dental amalgams. Usually the mercury toxicity from dental amalgams builds over the years, but each individual can be more sensitive to this than others. Generally it gets worse in time, as the mercury levels build....

Also you might check and see if you have other toxins within you like lead, for example. You could verify this with your doctor and see if they could do a hair test, and urine and blood analysis. Or maybe they have other diagnostic equipment or procedures for this, as well.

I write about this, many times, because my headaches, back pain, urinary problems, muscle/joint pains, and chest pains etc. are nearly completely gone after having these mercury-silver dental amalgams removed. It's a story that spans decades.

I can't say if this is your problem, but I thought that I would mention it, so that possibly you could investigate it further. This is controversal because some say mercury is safe in our mouth, but others say no. For me, I know that once I was very ill....now those horrible pains are a thing of the past.

I can fill you in with more details, if you want. I have researched this for years.

Also I can tell you the dietary changes that I made that helped some before I linked all of this to my mercury-silver dental amalgams. I was so sick, and the doctors couldn't help either, so I found comfort with herbal therapy too. I was trying to find some natural way to cure this. It took years of experimentation and reading....

Just let me know, if you want to know what these were that helped.

Thank you for your reply rhody, i'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply to you but i was away. I do indeed have a number of fillings, 5 in fact. I've had some of them for over 6 years. Would that be long enough for the poisining to take place? I would be interested in any information you would have on this and the diet changes you mentioned.

It is really hard to evaluate whether your mercury-silver dental amalgams could do that to you. But since I've heard that even young children have had problems from mercury-silver dental amalgams, I suppose that it is possible. From what I've read, various people have different sensitivities to it. That's what makes this so difficult.

I was fortunate to have my tooth break and expose the mercury-silver dental amalgam, and my pains got worse about 8-1/2 years ago. That's what gave me the clue. Plus my symptoms were so much the same, as what I had read had happened to other people. Putting "two and two together", I just decided to have them removed for cosmetic reasons (now I have white fillings). I was fortunate to have gotten better afterwards.

You might want to read about it. You can check the internet, for starters, by typing in the search words "amalgam" and "mercury". And then you could have a doctor do some tests, if you wanted. You could be allergic or have trouble with other things too that they could find.

Not all doctors are knowledgeable about this. I don't know how they feel about this where you live in Ireland. Here in the US, it's quite a controversy. But, I point it out, in case that you might be one of those rare individuals that might be suffering needlessly at such a young age (especially if the doctors you see, can find nothing else wrong with you).

It's possible some other things are causing this. So, it's a matter of doing lots of research and depending on medical professionals that are willing to explore other things for you.

I could write for "ages" on this thing, but I'll stop as you should be able to see so much about this on the internet. If you have any questions, please let me know. I hope you can find what is troubling you, and get better. I think about that all the time, when now I can run and hike sometimes for more than 24 miles (38 kilometers) a week as I did this week, where before I could only walk for short distances at times with pain. It's a motivation for me to keep writing and let people know.

The diet changes that I made first about 1983 or 1984, was to eliminate all "sweets" like cakes, cookies, donuts, ice cream, and pastries etc. This was way before I had any idea that my dental amalgams were giving me all these troubles. At that time the doctors could not help me, so I decided to get my act together and start eating right. I also stopped drinking sodas and beer. I've read so much about the chemicals that they put in these sodas, that I dropped those out. Slowly, I noticed some improvement with my muscle/joint pains. Over the years, I experimented and found that raw spinach was wonderful. I often had salads and raw broccoli too. When I was real sick I used to make a green "mush" with my food processor of these raw vegetables. That helped so that I could run some.

To make a long story short, I now avoid process foods in addition to sodas, alcoholic beverages, and "sweets". I stay away as much as possible from refined carbohydrates, found with store-bought bread, noodles, and pasta etc. I eat wholesome millet, whole wheat, flax seed, and brown rice on a regular basis. Those four that I mention are whole grains. Check the internet about whole grains too.

I know changing a diet to such a healthy one may seem extreme to some, but when you are sick, sick as I was, and as sick as you describe, then it is worth it to try. Check with your doctor to see if it would be OK. You might try it in the meantime to see if it makes a difference. The purpose of eating healthy, is to give the body sources of nutrients so that it can heal itself.

Drinking lots of water is good too. Some recommend drinking eight glasses of water a day, but I find that that could be excessive for people that live in cold weather climates. It depends where you live, how active you are, and how much you perspire etc. But for me, I try to drink at least 4 glasses of purified water a day as a minimum. Of course, the days that I exercise, I drink more. Water helps clean out the system.

Also, I studied herbs. That helped too. One of the first herbs that helped greatly, was just some store-packaged ginseng tea in tea bags. Later, if you want, I can tell you more about that.