An internist at Kaiser Permanente offered the following explanation after drawing two semi-circles on the examination table paper. “This represents your mouth” pointing to the first semi-circle. “We don’t know much about it. We pretty much leave it to the dentists. This is the rest of your body,” pointing to the other semi-circle. “This is what we know about.” How convenient. 60 to 80 percent of health is determined by what is going on in the mouth and mainstream medicine doesn’t have a clue or, more accurately, doesn’t want a clue. They are making too much money on the result.
Connecting the dots to the majority of health complaints is relatively simple. Although they look like solid structures, teeth are actually miniature organs having an integral connection to the rest of body. Various tooth charts are available on the internet. Even obesity has been linked to oral bacterial infections.
Amalgam fillings, root canals, fluoride, wisdom tooth and other extractions are the short list of health stealing dental practices. A small but growing group of dentists, identifying themselves as “biologic dentists”, attempts to take a holistic approach to oral health. A dentist acquaintance actually calls the term laughable since nearly 100 percent of all dental materials are toxic. One patient’s entire mouth erupted in sores after being fitted for a dental appliance. It wasn’t until it was completely removed that the culprit was proven to be one small drop of adhesive.
Out of curiosity, I asked an oncologist how many things in medicine they were doing today that are the same as before the Civil War. He couldn’t think of any. Yet, amalgam fillings were introduced in New York in 1833. The American Dental Association’s own website comments that “The Crawcours (two brothers from France) introduce amalgam filling material in the United States under the name Royal Mineral Succedaneum. The brothers are charlatans whose unscrupulous methods spark the ‘amalgam wars’, a bitter controversy within the dental profession over the use of amalgam fillings.”
Formed in 1840, The Society of Dental Surgeons, dentists with some actual medical training, forced their dentists to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t use this unsafe mercury substance. The ensuing controversy — since it was much simpler, cheaper and less painful than filling cavities with fillings made from hot gold — actually caused the collapse of that dental group. In 1859, a mercury amalgam promoting dental group was formed: The American Dental Association (ADA). Amalgam is a combination of 50 percent mercury, and lesser amounts of silver, copper, tin and zinc.
The amalgam war continues to rage. The ADA owes its very lifeblood to mercury amalgam, holding two patents on this toxic substance until 1994 and 1995. Although banned outright in many European countries and limited in use in Canada, the ADA continues to bamboozle dentists and the public into believing mercury amalgams are safe.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Alzheimer’s, autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and autism spectrum disorders are some of the symptoms of mercury poisoning, and that’s just the A’s. Safe amalgam removal is expensive and it is often difficult to ascertain a practitioner’s level of competency. Even dentists listed with the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), an organization dedicated to training dentists in safe amalgam removal protocols, have certificate holders lacking integrity and competency. Keep in mind that dentists have the highest rate of disability among professionals, often written off on disability forms as having a “non-specific neurological disorder”. The same Kaiser physician asked incredulously “they aren’t still using that amalgam stuff, are they?” According to the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, one million amalgam fillings are done each day in just the U.S.
In Europe, Sweden pays 100 percent of the cost for amalgam removal. The German government pays 75 percent of the cost. Both countries found that productivity went up and healthcare costs went down as a result. In the U.S. the ADA continues its stranglehold with most dental insurance companies covering the cost of mercury amalgam fillings and not the more expensive and safer composites.
The Florida Environmental Regulatory agency states that a tooth with a three gram amalgam filling thrown into a 10 acre lake contaminates the lake for fishing and swimming. How many are safe to have in your mouth? The prudent answer is none. Every dentist removes amalgam. However, most replace it with more amalgam. The formula in use today was tweaked during the 1970’s and is now called non-gamma or high copper fillings. The new ratio with more copper actually causes today’s fillings to release more mercury vapor creating worse symptoms in younger people who are receiving them.
Students at the prestigious University of Southern California Dental School are not allowed to graduate without writing a paper defending dental amalgam. There are only so many lies you can make up about mercury. This policy explains why today’s dentists all seem to use the same party line.
Ask any dentist how mercury amalgam arrives in his/her office. They will readily admit it comes in a biohazard container. Next, ask them how they dispose of it. Do they throw it in the wastebasket or down the drain? (No, they have a strict hazardous materials protocol they must follow.) Then ask, if it is a biohazard before it goes into your mouth and a hazardous waste when it comes out, what makes it safe when it is in your mouth? The Tooth Fairy, perhaps?
Putting metal braces on a child with any amalgam fillings should be considered orthodontic malpractice since other metals cause the filling to give off even greater amounts of mercury vapor. Adding a warm electrolyte such as saliva to those mixed metals actually creates a battery effect that increases the body’s electrical or galvanic current to the brain by as much as 100 times. A gold crown next to an amalgam has been demonstrated to do the same.
Hal Huggins, DDS, pioneered the safe removal of mercury amalgams. Suffering from multiple sclerosis due to his own mercury exposure, he now manages his symptoms with diet and lifestyle changes. It’s All In Your Head is just one of his books exposing the health destroying effects of dentistry.
Although mercury amalgam is perhaps the dental toxin with the most public awareness, root canals and tooth extractions comprise another entire level of health devastation. George Meinig, DDS helped develop the procedure, trained others and performed over 1000 root canals himself. After retirement, he set out to read all 1174 pages of Dr. Weston Price’s 25 years of impeccable research on the subject. Shocked by Price’s research, he wrote the book, Root Canal Cover-Up Exposed. Price’s definitive study showed that a tooth with a root canal posed a tremendous health risk even if the tooth itself was symptom-free.
The bottomline is that a tooth that is a candidate for a root canal is a dead tooth. Endodontists euphemistically refer to dead teeth as “non-vital”. Rather than have the tooth extracted, dentists play to most patients’ desire to save the tooth. Most of us wouldn’t consider keeping a dead kidney in our body or a gangrenous limb. However, a tooth seems innocent enough if it’s not creating pain. However, a dead tooth is always shedding harmful bacteria. The bacteria in turn give off a toxin called a thiol. Thiols are actually more responsible for damaging your health than the bacteria These strains of streptococcus, staphylococcus and spirochetes bacteria and their thiols silently wreak havoc in their unsuspecting hosts. Dr. Meinig states that, “Price found a high percentage of chronic degenerative diseases can originate from root filled teeth. The most frequent were heart and circulatory diseases and he found 16 different causative agents for these. The next most common diseases were those of the joints, arthritis and rheumatism. In third place but almost tied for second were diseases of the brain and nervous system. After that, any disease you can name might (and in some cases has) come from root filled teeth.” Thiols are actually as damaging as mercury in creating the diagnostic hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Price’s first case was a woman with severe, crippling arthritis. After removing the suspect root canal, he placed the tooth under the skin of a rabbit. The rabbit developed the same type of crippling arthritis and died ten days later. The patient went on to recover, walking without a cane and even doing needlework again. These experiments were refined and repeated with the same outcome for 25 years.
Anecdotally, a woman went to the hospital to have a thermography scan for a tumor in her breast. She had just come from the dentist office where she’d had a root canal tooth removed. The doctors were puzzled to see a line on the thermographic image running from where the tooth had been, down her neck to the tumor and then to her stomach. They were, for the first time, clinically observing an energy meridian. They decided to postpone the surgery and take a wait and see approach. The tumor went away on it’s own. Hal Huggins and others have many similar stories about cancer and other diseases resolving after the offending dental procedure is removed.
Just removing the tooth is not enough. Most oral surgeons’ education and professional pride actually keep them in the dark about proper tooth extraction. As Meinig stated, “Dr. Price found bacteria in the tissues and bone just adjacent to the tooth’s root. So we now recommend slow-speed drilling with a burr, to remove one millimeter of the entire bony socket. The purpose is to remove the periodontal ligament (PDL) ...and the first millimeter of bone that lines the socket (which is usually infected). ... Treating the socket to stimulate and encourage infection-free healing.”
Oral surgeons like to argue erroneously that the PDL takes care of itself when actually not removing it sets up a jawbone cavitation or osteonecrosis. Any tooth extraction including wisdom teeth involves the same bio-mechanics. The wisdom teeth are on the heart meridian. The increase in heart disease has been linked to the prevalence of wisdom tooth extractions done improperly.
Weston Price traveled extensively studying 14 primitive cultures. Despite the absence of toothpaste, toothbrushes or dental floss, their teeth were virtually cavity-free. Although their diets varied greatly, they had perfect dental health and no degenerative diseases. The common denominator was their diet of whole, unrefined foods.
A landmark study at Loma Linda University highlights this point. Glucose was injected into lab mice, never touching their teeth. The mice all developed severe tooth decay. The glucose actually caused the normal flow of fluids into the teeth to be reversed. Another dental researcher, Dr. Gerald Judd, identified sugar and white flour as the two substances creating this dangerous bio-environment.
Judd also advised against toothpastes with glycerin stating that it interferes with a tooth’s ability to re-enamalize. Nearly all store-bought toothpaste contains glycerin. Instead, a healthy and even tasty toothpaste can be simply made from refined coconut oil, aluminum-free baking powder, a small amount of healthy salt, stevia or xylitol to taste and an essential oil such a peppermint. My favorite flavor is anise. Mixed together into a soft consistency, it’s like brushing your teeth with Sambuca frosting. Magnesium oil is a supplement that also helps re-enamalize and strengthen teeth.
Understanding that your health depends on healthy teeth and gums, it is prudent to adopt a diet and oral hygiene that keeps you from being dependent on excessive dental care and treatments.
For further research, we recommend visiting the following websites:
www.mercola.com/article/dental/rootcanal/root_canals.htm
www.hugginsappliedhealing.com
www.flcv.com/indexa.html