This week has seen a couple different changes to my DMSA regimen:

1. I now source my DMSA from Living Supplements. They not only offer a wider variety than most from a strengths perspective, they also have a compounding pharmacy that can create custom strengths, if needed. Compared to the price my own compounding pharmacy charges, Living Supplements’ prices are incredible.

2. I increased my dose strength from 25mg to 37.5mg, with the intention of landing at 50mg in the next four-weeks. I haven’t increased the strengths of ALA or DMSA in a long while and decided now was as good a time as any to do so.

I wish that I could write more, but I am feeling a little more brain fog than normal on this round and feel the best option for me is rest and relaxation. Now if only the muscle spasm in my right arm would give it a rest!

Just as we had seen in 2009, the FDA again has declared DMSA to not be a supplement, halting U.S. citizens ability to source it over the counter (OTC) at home. In June, the FDA warned against the use of OTC chelation supplements because there are no FDA approved OTC chelator agents. A check at Vitamin Research Products (VRP) no longer lists DMSA as an available product, and those U.S. based sites that resold DMSA also list the products as out of stock.

Last time we met, I was posting about the preparation time for round 15:

Without further ado, here are tonight’s numbers:

I find it quite interesting how the same amount of overall time was spent for both preparations, yet the individual times do no match up. I was fortunate this week to not have to open new supplements, but that gain was lost when I ventured downstairs to find a new bottle of DMSA. Once I found it, I was greeted by super-glue level adhesive blocking me from accessing the capsules.

Next week I titrate the ALA up to 18.75 mg per dose instead of 12.5 mg. While I am looking forward to the next increase, I am trying to determine how I can fit 25 mg of DMSA and 18.75 mg of ALA in the same capsule. I may need to just accept the fact that I will need to start taking two capsules every four-hours.

As I do (almost) every week, I’ll first start off with the times for the previous round preparation, round 14:

And here are tonight’s numbers:

The increase of three-minutes for the supplements preparation can be attributed to the fact that I exhausted six different supplements mid-fill and had to open new bottles. An average of 30-seconds per bottle isn’t bad, considering the manufacturer makes them more than merely tamper proof. I swear, they use super glue on these things.

I am happy to shave six-minutes (~21%) off of my ALA / DMSA preparation time. The quick reference matrix is really paying off. While I would like to relish this small victory, I have to be realistic and realize that any further improvements for this specific dosage won’t come anywhere close to this. I would not be surprised if I am now over the hump and fighting against the law of diminishing returns.

Par for the course, first off are the times for round 13:

And here are tonight’s numbers:

Looks like I made positive strides for both preparation regimens. The biggest surprise was the two-minute (or 18%) improvement in the supplements preparation time. I figured that would’ve stayed at ~10-minutes, so a reduction of two is a pleasant surprise. The ALA / DMSA preparation time was something I expected to improve this round, seeing as I created a matrix to help improve my efficiency from last week. What I didn’t take into account was the need to modify a tool I use, so I believe that next week’s results should show additional improvement.

Round 13 has brought another change to my regimen, the introduction of Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA). With this change comes the need to once again pack my own capsules, since I need to start with 12.5mg of ALA per dose, yet the capsules come in 25mg. It’s been a while since I recorded my preparation times, so here are the times for round 9:

Since I no longer needed to split DMSA capsules the time dropped from 11-minutes to one. This, of course changed when I started splitting ALA capsules. Here are tonight’s numbers:

Yes, you read that correctly, it took me 41-minutes to pack my ALA/DMSA capsules. This is in large part to having to do math for each capsule weight, leading to an insane amount of time in between each two capsules being filled. I plan on creating a matrix (much like I have done for DMSA) to alleviate this slowdown and get it back (hopefully) to where I once was.

It’s time to prepare my supplements and DMSA for the week. Last week’s numbers:

With my titrating up to 25 mg per dose of DMSA, I no longer need to pack my own pills. Yay time savings for me! Tonight’s numbers:

Even with an increase of one-minute preparing supplements, I still come out nine-minutes ahead. That’s nine-minutes I can use typing up this post.

It’s Sunday night, so that can mean only one thing: time to prepare my supplements and DMSA for the week. Last week’s numbers:

Somehow I managed to knock another minute off of my supplements preparation time tonight:

If all goes well, week eight should be the last week where I take 18.75 mg of DMSA. Starting with week nine, I intend to titrate up to 25 mg. Not only is this the next increase in strength (nearly my half-way point for DMSA strengths), I also do not need to create my own DMSA capsules for the next few rounds.

Last week was a surprise, seeing as I came in with a whopping four-minute improvement. Last week’s numbers:

Not only was I unable to best last week’s time, but tonight’s exercise came in with an additional minute of work:

The extra minute shows up in supplements packing, which makes sense. I had to open three new bottle of supplements, which is more than I had to do last week (two, I believe).

At this point I am splitting hairs, but it’s something to make the process fun; a challenge I face each week while I patiently wait for the symptoms to start subsiding. Could I attribute it to OCD? Sure, but if that’s also linked to mercury poisoning then this exercise will hopefully fade away in the future, even while I am still chelating.

Continuing the competition, I timed my Sunday night ritual tonight to see how it compared to last week’s time; my personal best. Here are last week’s numbers:

And here are the new numbers from tonight’s exercise:

Amazingly enough, my overall time hasn’t budged a bit since last week. I did manage to save a minute when preparing my supplements, only to lose it when I created my DMSA capsules. I am surprised that it only took me a minute longer to create the DMSA capsules when compared to last week; after all this is my first time creating 18.75 mg capsules and I created 20 instead of 18.

Now comes the fun part: taking 18.75 mg doses this round in place of 25 mg. I’ll find out soon enough how I fair with the increase. If everything goes fine, you’ll hear about it Wednesday night at the earliest.