Sulfur Sensitivity And How To Fix It

There’s no doubt the world’s full of toxins.

Chemical sanitizers, car exhaust, and even metal from the pennies you handle can get into your system and damage sensitive balances. But often unmentioned is the widespread use and abuse of sulfur compounds.

Especially recently, thousands of people in the US are diagnosed with sulfur allergies and sensitivities every year, and they don’t have anyone to turn to for advice.

Allergies in particular are treated as though they have no origin and no cure, but is that really the case?

In traditional medicine, acquired allergies and hypersensitivities have both an origin and a cure. In this article, we’ll take a look at just one of them – the sulfur sensitivity – and discuss where it came from and how it can be managed or even abolished entirely.

First ask yourself the question, “did I always have it?”

If your answer is yes, don’t immediately resign yourself to woe and defeat, because being born with an illness does not by any good logic mean you have to keep it until you die. While genetic problems might not respond to the therapies coming up, they’re also vastly over-diagnosed. Even infants can acquire disease, and new research indicates that gene expression isn’t as simple as we once thought.

True mutations in the genes responsible for sulfur metabolism are very rare, after all, so this treatment is for almost everyone with a sulfur metabolism problem.

And if you answered no to the above question… well, you’re in luck!

Following is what I’d like to call the Sulfur Control Protocol.  Natural treatment for sulfur sensitivity goes like this, in order:

1.  Eliminate high-sulfur foods, other than meat. Even healthy foods like spinach and kale fall under this heading. A diet of staple grains like rice, oats, and quinoa is good for the time being. Most fruit is fine. Vegetables should be limited to things like corn, cilantro, parsley, Jerusalem artichoke, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams. Absolutely no fast food or restaurant food should be eaten during this time. Because of how sneaky and pervasive sulfur preservatives are, it’s also recommended to avoid packaged, processed foods in general, even organics. Molasses, gelatin, caramel color, brown sugar, “mineral water,” dried/preserved fruit, wine, and pharmaceuticals are all suspect; most of the time these contain high levels of the type of sulfur that will set you off. Other consumables that are not directly treated with sulfur may have high enough levels to cause a problem, because they’ve been packaged or processed in the same facilities.
2. Eat high-zinc, high-copper, high-iron foods, and consider supplementing with any of these you feel are especially low. Try to buy chelated and food-derived products if you use a pill. This step is important, because molybdenum supplementation later on may affect your ability to absorb these nutrients from food temporarily. (Though I’ve yet to see a problem when the molybdenum is taken apart from meals.)
3. Cleanse the bowels thoroughly. You can find reliable information on colon cleansing here. Avoid expensive, ineffective pill products. 
4. Purchase a good, chelated molybdenum supplement (like this one) and a food-derived vitamin C (for example: camu-camu powder, acerola cherry powder, amalaki, or rose hip powder/decoction).
5. For a period of 1 week, take 1,000 to 1,500mcg (1 to 1.5mg) chelated molybdenum per day, in one complete dose. At the same time, use generous amounts of your vitamin C. Drink plenty of water. At the end of the week, take a 3 day rest, eat extra, and exercise.
6.  For a period of 2 weeks, take 1,000 to 1,500mcg (1 to 1.5mg) chelated molybdenum, twice a day, making two complete doses. Even more vitamin C should be used. Note that a high amount of vitamin C may cause bowel flushing, and this will pass eventually. If it becomes too much of a problem, lower the dose of vitamin C until your bowels can tolerate a higher dose. When two weeks are up, take a 3 day rest and assess how you feel. Most people will need to do this step several times over, but some will find complete relief even after the first week.

By following the above schedule faithfully, people with sulfur sensitivities can get relief from their symptoms. And just in case you’re not sure if this is your problem, here’s a brief “how and why” with a list of symptoms:

Do You Have A Sulfur Sensitivity?

For people with sulfur sensitivity (that is, to sulfa drugs, garlic, sulfites, etc): there are two things to cover. Sulfur toxicity can arise due to pharmaceutical drug use, sulfur poisoning, and sulfur food abuse.

If this toxicity is not corrected, your body will both suppress its handling of sulfur via excretion and use up its stores of the dietary mineral molybdenum. Molybdenum is abundantly stored in not only the kidneys and liver, but also the teeth, bones, and ultimately everywhere else.

If you have a long standing sulfur metabolism issue, you’ll likely see this reflected in your liver and kidneys, as they’re slowly poisoned by overwork and sulfur compounds that can’t be moved out properly.

You also might see signs of molybdenum deficiency in your teeth, which will be prone to pitting, discoloration, cavities, and sensitivity.

Your sleep patterns will be disturbed, possibly full of dreams but lacking in refreshment, and because your kidneys are always at work getting rid of the steady trickle of transformed sulfates, you might even notice that you need to urinate during the night, even frequently.

More symptoms:

The tops of your eyes may feel inflamed and sore, with bags or blue and black rings underneath. Headaches may also be common between the eyes (at the pinch of the brow), along with emotional disturbances that range from anger and irritation to remorse and depression. If you’re one of these people, molybdenum supplementation and high-molybdenum foods are required before you’ll make any headway with depression. As science currently understands it, your problems are due to molybdenum co-factor deficiency. The blame is often put on genetic problems, even though the disease has been developed.

Science today overlooks the fact that a simple molybdenum deficiency can be necessarily long-term, because of building deficits requiring more and more each time molybdenum is re-introduced. In other words, remedial amounts of molybdenum in a time of need will make the patient feel better, but not fix the problem, because what they actually require is a much higher dose over a longer period of time.

The problem has two faces: a severe molybdenum deficiency caused by pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food abuse, as well as molybdenum shortage in commercially raised edibles; and a sulfur deficiency resulting from the previous, because what the body can’t control metabolically it views as a toxin. Thus the joints don’t heal properly, cells are not accepting nutrients efficiently, teeth are porous, myelin nerve tissues are incomplete, wounds heal slower, blood sugar is less stable than it should be, and small issues plague the sulfur patient.

Validating the above, Bernard Jensen, Ph.D., says: “Sulphur-deficiency symptoms resemble those of sulfur excess.”

In truth, your body needs dietary sulfur, because all tissues depend on it to maintain their structure. Much of your body is built on proteins, and they can’t form properly without sulfur. When a toxic nature depletes molybdenum, making it hard to control sulfur, proteins malfunction, metabolism of carbohydrates and fats is made more difficult, and “excess” sulfur is excreted from the body. The latter eventually results in sulfur deficiency – but you wouldn’t know it, because by all reckoning your body is averse to dietary sulfur. This isn’t truly the case, but can lead to a lot of confusion. For example, toxic, molybdenum-deficient people might experience increased sensitivity to sulfurous tastes and odors, even taking offense to them.

While this would normally be assumed as a “hypersensitive aversion,” it could also be the case that a person’s sense of smell during a sulfur sensitivity increases their ability to detect it, and they themselves make up the offense.

In Ayurvedic medicine, sulfur “heats” and “softens” the body’s tissues.

With a dietary overdose of sulfur, the body is being “burned,” and immediately cools itself down to manage the intense heat. Thus, as long as there’s sulfur intoxication, symptoms of an overly “cool” or “cold” body (like depression, congestion, sluggishness, constipation, anxiety, very deep or very light sleep, joint problems, brain fog, memory problems, and ADD) will be prevalent, with symptoms of overheating (like anger, frustration, indigestion, diarrhea, liver problems, and skin blemishes) sometimes mixed in. During sulfur deficiency, the body is overly “cool” or “cold,” but if the deficiency is being caused by molybdenum depletion, there will also be a lack of control of heating substances in the body, including sulfur, which means that slight amounts can start a metaphorical wildfire in the body, eventually resulting in symptoms of an “overheated” nature.

So as you can see – and this is the case for all toxicity and sensitivity issues – the problem is not the substance, but the body’s ability to handle it.

Sugar can feed the body or kill it. Guns are useful for hunting, though you might shoot yourself or someone else. Not unlike sulfur, fire can keep your body from freezing and cook your food, spark passion and dissipate fear, but can also burn your house to the ground.

Molybdenum – the campfire ring, the oven mitt, the torch, the furnace – is meant by your body to transport sulfur – the fire – and protect you from burning yourself.

I hope this article’s been helpful! I can’t stress enough how crucial balanced nutrition is to our health. So for those of you who didn’t know anything about trace elements or the role they play in disease prevention, now you’ve had your introduction!

References:
-The Chemistry of Man (Bernard Jensen, Ph.D.; quote from pg. 353 “Signs of Sulfur Deficiency”)
-Charaka Samhita (Atreya, Agnivesa, Charaka, and Drdhabala; Vol. I & II translation by P.V. Sharma, edited by Gabriel Van Loon)