I'm a bit of a Luddite and I'm writing letters again. Real letters written on paper with fountain pens. Add a crackle glazed pot of chai tea, twinkling tree lights in the peripheral, and my winter heart sings.

Today a friend returned a letter. I don't recall exactly what I told her, but I had indicated that things were going well and I was content. I canceled our last meet-up. The night before I visited the emergency room. I was not well. In her letter she asked if I could pinpoint any one thing since the summer that prompted the change.

I can. In the beginning of September I started taking Zeolite Clinoptilolite and Chlorella. Within days I started noticing a change. My brain started working again and I had energy. I had the kind of energy that made me realized that I had been suffering from chronic fatigue. With my brain fog and fatigue in check, I was able to dig into research. Figuring out why I had felt so bad and why I now felt so good was (and still is) a priority of mine. There's a lot to unpack and a lot of layers to sift through.

Gradually, I was able to make extra changes. We filter our drinking/cooking water. I'm focusing on drinking more water. I grow my own broccoli sprouts. I'm trying to eat more vegetables. I bulk mix up and bake my own pumpkin bran muffins and bread. I'm trying to avoid glyphosate and eat more organic. I'm moving my body more and trying to sweat some every day.

In October, a pilates studio moved in across the street. I'm struggling to find the words to describe how mind blowing it is that I now do pilates. I do pilates about three times a week strengthening my core and building up my stamina. Miraculously, I'm more productive afterwards and able to make up for lost time. Earlier this year I needed a nap after just going to church on Sunday mornings. I couldn't have willed myself to start doing pilates this spring or summer.
​
It all started with Zeolite Clinoptilolite and Chlorella. I needed them to remove toxins from my body. I needed them to be able to think. I needed them before I could do research. They gave me the mental and physical ability to make healthier food choices. They gave me the energy to exercise and really sweat. I still have more room to improve, but I'm on the other side of the hill. It is a good place to be. 

It is Monday, a work day, and we are on our way to the Theler Wetlands. It is a perfect mid September day. The sun is out and I'm suited up in my railroad stripe overalls and a ribbed black crop tank. I am neither too hot nor too cold. It is some real Goldilocks weather out there. 

My husband is driving and as we snake along the waterfront with the windows down, a notification pops up on my phone. It’s a message from my son’s teacher. There was an incident in school today. He didn’t name names, but one student (who is already in a program to work on his social and emotional skills) attacked another student. There was very little provocation and the teacher had to pull the angry child off of the victim. The kids were evacuated from the classroom. All the right people came to the room in aid. The angry child had angry words and physically destroyed the room. 

My son had a little fever and cough so he didn’t go to school today. I got lucky, but not in the way you think. Yes, this was traumatic for the students. Some won’t be coming to school tomorrow. Some will come, but won’t feel safe. I am glad my son didn’t share in the experience.

I got lucky, because it wasn’t my kid that got angry. I’ve had several calls from the principal over the last few years. There were incidents on the bus, in the cafeteria, and on the playground. Each time it appeared that my son was the aggressor. I know my son. He is sweet, sensitive, and has a strong sense of fairness. But I have also seen him with his sister. I’ve seen him have his buttons pushed. It isn’t pretty. In the days following these incidents I could gradually tease information out of him. Each time there was more to the story. One time he was sure a kindergartener on the bus was sitting where she shouldn’t be. Another time he was quietly being verbally berated and the bully had insulted his mom. Were his responses appropriate in the situation? No. But I wasn’t surprised. 

I hope that the steps we’re taking now will prevent these incidents from happening again.  I can’t quite get him to eat all the fruits, vegetables, and fibers that would help his body remove toxins and heal his brain. But I can get him to take zeolite and chlorella and they are working. His brain is working better and we are on the right track.

I wonder if the parents of the boy today have tried everything they could. I wonder if they are suffering themselves. I wonder if they’ve had him tested for lead poisoning. I wonder if they even know that lead can cause or worsen cognitive and behavioral issues. I wonder if they know there is no safe amount of lead. I wonder if they know just changing their child’s diet can help. I wonder if they can afford the food. I wonder if they have the time and energy to cook it. I wonder if they google it and see that chelation is the treatment and that chelation can be dangerous.  I wonder if they will find the research about natural chelators like zeolite clinoptilolite and chlorella. I wonder if they will be misled by the dangers of the other kinds of zeolite. I wonder if they will think it’s just something for those crunchy people. I wonder if they will find out they are safe, cheap, and effective at painlessly removing lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and chromium. I wonder if they will ask their doctor about heavy metal poisoning. I wonder what their doctor will say. I wonder if they even have a doctor. 

I want to know how to tell them that there’s one more thing to try. I want them to spend time with their son tonight and read to him and hug him. I don’t want him to be punished. I don’t want this to be anyone’s fault.

Our teachers are burning out. Administrators are overwhelmed. Our doctors can’t see what is happening in our homes and in our schools. Parents are exhausted. Our children know trauma. 

We are exposed to far more toxins than our parents were. They are collecting in our bodies. They are damaging our DNA. They are breaking us.

​Rebecca Brown

“Would you like a warm blanket before I leave for the night?” a woman asked in a clear soft voice. We sat in the emergency department waiting room people watching. I was consumed with worry that something terrible was wrong with me. I’d been tired. So tired and I was starting to look about 22 weeks pregnant. But the HCG blood tests results I’d received earlier that day were negative. I couldn’t be pregnant. So what was growing inside me? One of my panic attacks crept in on me and as my habit was, I called in my sister. She let me talk her into going to the emergency department.

My blood work looked good. They didn’t find anything emergent to explain my “growth”, just a bunch of adipose tissue. I was fat. Incidentally, they found an adrenal adenoma that shouldn't be causing me any problems. But they did refer me to a general surgeon. By the time Monday rolled around, the internet had taught me this adenoma might or might not be causing my problems. The general surgeon said I’d been referred to the wrong place; try a nephrologist. It was a logical place to go because the adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys. But they said I needed an endocrinologist. Before we could have the adrenal adenoma removed, we needed to prove I had hormone problems. Additionally, those hormone problems needed to only come from the adrenal gland with the adenoma. It was 7 weeks before I could see the specialist.

While I waited for my appointment, I started talking to people about my problem. After all, now I was no longer just tired and fat. I had a growth. It wasn’t my fault that life was hard. It wasn’t my fault that I preferred to stay home, away from people, surrounded by my puzzles and art supplies. It wasn’t my fault that I needed a nap after spending a day sitting at my desk working. It wasn’t my fault that until I found the right SSRI I had nearly daily panic attacks accompanied by hypertensive crisis. It wasn’t my fault that I fought food cravings and kept gaining weight. At least, I hoped it wasn’t my fault… I still didn’t know for sure. 

A week later at church, Pastor connected me with another member. She had some sort of adrenal/pituitary gland problem too. She was a newer member and I knew she was sick. If she came to church, it was with the aid of a walker or a trekking pole. I remember talking to her at a Crafternoon event months ago and we bonded over our fatigue. We both knew what it meant to have to budget our energy. I couldn’t spend the morning cleaning and still expect to be able to go on an outing with the kids in the afternoon. If I wanted to host family dinner on Sunday, I needed to relax and puzzle the rest of the day… maybe even skip church in the morning. 

Mental and emotional tasks were worse. For a day job I manage the office at my family's appliance repair company. This current life and a previous life as a DVSA advocate are eerily similar. I listen. I educate. I manage expectations. I coach people in crisis through the repair vs. replace decision making process. The stakes aren't as high, but forgetting to warn people of all the right things still leads to stress. When your husband and dad are the techs, workplace stress is family stress.

My sister needed a break from teaching middle school so we decided to share my job. We had kids. We had doctor’s appointments. We needed to take care of ourselves. The relief of being replaceable at work was palpable. And it is good that we did bring her on two years ago because working less has allowed me to keep working at all.

You see, life has felt like a sine wave slowly drifting below the x axis. Like the frog gradually being heated up to boiling, it is hard to pin down when things started. But eventually I had a new reality. Too many work days, I would need a nap instead of cooking dinner. An upset customer would send jolts of adrenaline through my body and leave me exhausted. My sister always seemed to be twice as productive as I was.

My new church friend has Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and probably something else. She’s been struggling for years and while she can no longer work, she desperately misses being able to. Parenting her 3 kids, each with their own high needs, takes all that she has. She hasn’t found the cause for her chronic illness, but she is learning more ways to manage it. She has impressive appetite for information and reads as much as she can. So with her health such a mystery, her face lit with excitement for me and my seemingly treatable endocrine problem. I mean, you can just go in and cut out a broken adrenal gland and improve almost instantly.

The instagram gods pumped my feed full of posts for people with chronic illness. They mingled with the influencers embracing/coping with their and/or their kid’s ADHD/ASD/PDA. The information on instagram… isn’t vetted. So sorting out the gems from the jello is a little tricky. And people are selling things. I don’t trust people who are selling things. Then there was a woman that popped into my feed. She was spraying a tasteless liquid into the mouth of her small child several times a day.  She claimed it transformed them. Their speech finally started to develop. Their meltdowns melted away. I needed that. I needed parenting to be easier.

This summer our 10 year old had finally gotten his ASD Level 1 diagnosis. This was years into sensory processing difficulties, executive functioning deficiencies, social anxiety, pathological demand avoidance, and the associated meltdowns that came with it. Our almost 5 year old had big feelings and was on track to have her own sensory issues. She would wake up in the morning and before interacting with anyone she'd cry out, “Why does everybody hate me!” It was constant for her to meltdown out of frustration for what seemed like no reason at all. She would pull me aside to tell me earnestly, “I’m just having a hard time,” and, “Every day is a hard day.” She needed all the cuddles all the time. In fact it was a common occurrence for both children to need to cuddle me at the same time on the recliner. And they would squabble over who got to put what arm where. And as if I didn’t already feel like a piece of meat, our cat would dive into the pile and start kneading my neck with her claws. I felt loved, but the love was a little exhausting.

I can’t seem to find that initial instagram post, but I did figure out that she was spraying zeolite into her child’s mouth. I did some quick internet searching to find out if the stuff was safe. I also contacted a friend of mine who is “crunchy”, has kids, and used to work in a functional medicine doctor’s office. She asked the extended crunchy community to find out what supplements they trusted. I looked to see if the supplements would interact with our medications. I got the green lights I was hoping for and ordered zeolite for me and chlorella for the kids. Should I have vetted these supplements more? Absolutely, but as I already said, I was tired. 

I felt like I could see results in the kids after just a few days. It was easier to get my son to come out of a meltdown. Meltdowns still happen, and during the midst of one we had him take a shower to get ready for bed early. Then after that he just started to teach his little sister to play chess. I walked back to my husband in the office to say “What the f*** is happening right now? Who are these children?”

I am wary of the placebo effect, but I was feeling results too. I had energy. I wanted to work out. My food cravings were gone. This tension/pain that coated my whole body had lifted. Working wasn’t so hard. Tasks that I’d put off because they felt impossible were now getting done. My brain was just working better and I realize now that I’d been suffering from what people call brain fog. 

Then about a week into zeolite, I had a massive panic attack. It came on fast. So fast that I didn’t have a chance to get my “as needed” anxiety med on board before I started vomiting. I hadn’t had one in a while because my SSRI managed them pretty well. Was the zeolite causing problems? The next night I had another one, but this time I was able to get the “as needed” in my system before I turned into a complete dizzy, nauseous, adrenaline-leg-twitching mess. 

I dug into zeolite a bit deeper and found some products advise you take your normal medications and then wait two hours to take the zeolite. The zeolite reduces the acid in your stomach which prevents your body from absorbing your medications. I cut my zeolite down to a night time only dose and continued to take my SSRI in the morning. My body can feel that the zeolite was cut in half. I’m just a bit more sore. However, the brain fog is still gone and I still have energy. The SSRI is working again too. 

This brings me to you. As soon as I my brain started to really work again, I started doing research. I kept finding scientific studies that found correlations between heavy metals and chronic health conditions. Nearly every time I googled “_____ chronic health condition and heavy metals” another study would pop up demonstrating correlation, if not causation. There were articles that studied heavy metals in our food, in the air, in the water, and the list went on. There are many studies evaluating strategies for heavy metals abatement. Even if you don’t want to or can’t use a supplement, there are so many foods that either prevent absorption of heavy metals or remove them. There are ways to decrease your exposure to heavy metals. I may have a tendency to hyper-focus and my brain is exploding with information. Despite desire, we just can’t implement all the scientific advice overnight. However, we did start filtering all the water we drink and cook with (our galvanized pipes are old). I've also started a daily practice I call Sweat For Five; trying to capitalize on the detox benefits of exercise. I already loved fruit, but I’m incorporating wheat bran and broccoli sprouts into my diet.

This heavy metals rabbit hole has left me feeling convicted. I can’t just fix myself and then silently stand by and watch my friends and family suffer from / cope with depression, anxiety, Vitamin D deficiency, gallbladder inflammation, asthma, thyroid problems, arthritis, fatigue, ADHD, ASD, Alzheimer’s disease, and more. The very least I can do is organize my thoughts and the research in a way that is both easily absorbed and demonstrates all the science other people have done. I already had a website where I’ve created somewhat of a portfolio of my creative work and sell my wall calendar. So why not just make another website? If this site is able to help even one person suffer from chronic illness less, it has been completely worth my time. I know that if every one removed the heavy metals from their bodies, we would still have chronic illness. It won’t fix us all. But now, when I see someone suffering, I wonder… what if…

​Rebecca Brown