Another not-so-fun result in my last blood work and another call for help in interpreting while doing my own research too.
I turned to have ~400x the normal value of Nickel (409 for <1 ug/l) ! Unfortunately this is the first time I test (in serum) whilst I did check for other metals in other tissues (hair, urine).
The LC community has been looking at metals in great details but I could not find much on Ni. Harkijn pointed me to a detox program by John McLaren-Howard on a thread on the neurological impact (here)
Have you ever met Nickel and have suggestions please? I will post also here what I find.
So far I will call for a retest in blood + an urine excretion test which is possibly more sensitive to exposure by inhalation. As urine, blood serum as well is also sensitive to specimen collection procedures. Not following procedures might generate misleading results. Also scheduling a new hair test (previous tests show nothing abnormal though).
My first tentative reply and the reason I asked for the test is I am bringing since about 8 years (not every night though) a dental device, a mandibular traction to manage mild sleep apnoea and snoring. So I am checking the device Ni percentage and absorption % in human to have a clue. This is my first serious suspect candidate.
I do not smoke but facing secondary smoke sometimes and traffic pollution but like everyone else. Not really industrial environment exposure. Smoking carry the most dangerous form of Ni compound (nickel carbonyl).
I have no known Ni-containing supplements, while of course I have been eating foods having "large" Ni content (particularly rich sources are chocolate, nuts, legumes, grains and grain products). I have recently increased sulfur containing supplements (such as NAC) for specific reasons. I am checking for possible positive or negative interaction with sulfur.
I am quite skeptic, assuming the result is real (I think so), supplements, foods, water can explain a 400x factor also accounting for say a 20 – 30% absorption of the daily intake. So my first hypothesis is the dental device. I do also have dental amalgams, typically containing largely mercury and others such as of silver, tin and copper, hence I kept tracking particularly mercury. I might be changing to ceramic.
Stainless steel cooking hardware might leak nickel but could this show up so high in blood? E.g. see here.
Other more recent changes include the usage of a bronchodilator (tiotropium bromide monohydrate and olodaterol hydrochloride) for a specific condition plus hypersaline 3% inhalations plus yearly flu shots.
A couple of links I am checking specifically on Ni:
https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-catalog/Clinical+and+Interpretive/8622
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8a5b/14077da5c39096dff40d6177314538153b85.pdf
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jbcpp.ahead-of-print/jbcpp-2017-0171/jbcpp-2017-0171.xml?format=INT
Any comment is highly appreciated! Thank you !!
