You can buy Cysteine in any health food store as a supplement.

I was advised to start detoxing mercury with cysteine. I took 3 little capsules of it in one day…….. all my symptoms flared up massively for 2 months and I was seriously ill for a long time.

Cysteine does not detox mercury in anyone. Not everyone will get screwed up even if they are mercury toxic, i.e. some people can handle it, but whatever…it does not detox mercury. In me it screwed me up big time.

Ditto NAC.

I don’t know if you know anything about mercury or anything about Andy Cutler? But he really knows his mercury and all the problems it causes. His word is one to trust.

Quote: Cysteine is harmful and inappropriate in all cases for heavy metal detox.
See following discussion - all I can say is I apologize for all us chemists
who didn't fail those pre-meds who didn't "get it" in freshman chem and let
them go on to become "alternative health care practitioners."

All forms of life contain the amino acid cysteine in proteins. Cysteine
having a thiol (-SH) group binds mercury more strongly than, say, sea water
or rocks. So does Chlorella. So does sea weed. So do human beings. So do
pork chops. This does not mean that eating cysteine, chlorella, seaweed,
pork chops or even engaging in cannibalism is effective for heavy metal detox.

Your body has a few hundred grams of cysteine running around in it. So what
happens when you eat one or two more? The cysteine you eat tries to grab
mercury from your body. More precisely, from the cysteine molecules that
are an integral part of your body. Unfortunately, since these endogenous
and exogenous cysteine molecules are evenly matched, the mercury is passed
back and forth in this tug of war, bounces madly around the body, and stays
in it due to the overwhelming numerical superiority of the endogenous
cysteines.

So taking exogenous cysteine increases the damage the mercury does and
accellerates the rate at which it concentrates in the most sensitive tissues.

Observations of the real patients of the physicians who advocate using
cysteine for detox indicates this is true - they experience increased
symptoms and usually get permanent neurological damage if they don't stop
taking chlorella/cysteine pretty quickly. Once they DO stop, their symptoms
subside quite a bit.

So while cysteine competes favorably in the competitive equilibrium with
seawater for mercury, it does not compete favorably in competitive
equilibrium with the human body. It is not a mercury detox agent and should
never be used as one - at least not by people who want to get better.

Please note that some mercury toxic people have too MUCH cysteine (as can be
determined in the Doctor's Data amino acid test, or in the Great Smokies
COMPREHENSIVE liver detox test, or alone by Great Smokies in a test on
plasma) and benefit greatly from restricting their dietary intake sharply,
others are low and need to eat a reasonable amount of it. Individual testing
or experiment is required to determine the appropriate (modest) intake level
for good health.

Andy Cutler


http://onibasu.com/archives/am/1880.html


Unquote

quote << Things like NAC, glutathione, cysteine, and "sulfur" foods are not
helpful since they are not chelating agents and are not able to successfully
grab the mercury away from all the sulfur atoms that are a natural part of
the biomolecules in the human body. They simply mobilize the mercury and
stir it around so it does more damage than it would if left to sit quietly
until chelated out. >>

What is your source for this info?

Legitimate chemistry textbooks and an understanding of chemistry and
biochemistry somewhat beyond the freshman level.
This contradicts just about everything I've read on the subject.

I really have to apologize on behalf of all chemists for the premeds we
should have failed in freshman chem and didn't.
I'd be interested to learn more about this.

In a nutshell it runs like this.

As is always discussed, mercury binds to the thiol groups in enzymes that
are a natural part of your body.

Which does imply thiol groups are a natural part of your body. in fact,
your body has quite a large number of these. A few percent of the amino
acids inside you are in fact cysteine/cystine and contain sulfur that binds
mercury quite strongly. So you contain a few hundred grams of cysteine and
related things, which is much more of it than you eat in a day even on a
"high sulfur" diet.

So you have proteins that have one or more thiol groups sticking out that
grab onto mercury.

You have things like cysteine, glutathione, etc. that you eat that have a
single thiol group sticking out that grab onto mercury.

The thiol groups in your body and the thiol groups in this food (much of
which ends up incorporated into your body and thus contributes to the thiol
groups there) pass the mercury back and forth because the food doesn't hold
onto it any more strongly than your body does. The mercury atoms bounce back
and forth a lot.

Since your body has a lot of thiol groups in it, eating more doesn't provide
a large excess of thiol groups to grab the mercury and carry it out - it just
provides some extra ones to stir the mercury up.

If you want the mercury out of there you need to eat something that holds
onto it more tightly than your body and that is excreted or accellerates
mercury excretion indirectly.

Since proper chelating agents have 2 thiol groups per molecule they do hold
onto the mercury more tightly than most of the biomolecules inside you, so
it doesn't bounce around as much on its way out.

Andy Cutler


http://onibasu.com/archives/am/1091.html


unquote

For lots more mercury info…….
http://home.earthlink.net/~moriam/ANDY_INDEX.html#sulfur


Are you mercury toxic? or are you just starting investigating to see if you are?

i can point you in the right direction if you want.

Sunshine