Dental Health

I recently went to my third class on Wholistic Rejuvenation. It was informative, fascinating and scary at the same time. One of the subjects hit far too close to home for my comfort.

When you think of dental health most of us think of keeping our teeth and gums clean, and very little beyond that. We hope when we go to the dentist we hope they don’t find any cavities and that the cleaning will go smoothly. Growing up cavities were a sign of dishonor and a filling was a badge of shame. Everyone knew when you had a filling because they were a dark silver color. Fast forward to the present. Now those ‘silver’ fillings are being called mercury fillings, and they are dangerous to your health. The funny thing is, if you have them removed wrong you could be causing more trouble than you are fixing. It seems that the removal process must be done correctly or you and the dentist both breathe in that poisonous mercury. There is even talk that some of the white fillings used can be dangerous as well. They are a plastic composite that contains BPA. BPA is a chemical in plastics that mess up your hormone system, especially in small children.

You might have heard a news article on the television about a year ago encouraging people to get their rotted teeth filled because the bacteria in the teeth have a direct route to the heart and can cause major health problems. It took my mind back to several years ago when I heard a speaker talk about the dangers of root canals. His bottom line was to have the teeth pulled. In his opinion it was better to live without the tooth than to live with the effects of having a dead tooth hanging around in your mouth. He talked about the link between root canals and cancer. He was a researcher. In all his research there was somewhere above a 90% chance that someone with a diseased tooth or root canal that they would develop cancer somewhere on the side of the body corresponding with the side of the mouth where the bad tooth was. Needless to say I was skeptical, and did not get the tooth with the root canal pulled.

This past weekend in the class the subject was brought up again. Not only have several scientists verified what this research doctor had discovered, but they have discovered the why behind it. They have also discovered there is a bigger problem that even he knew about. It seems that many modern dental practices, not just root canals can set you up for problems stemming from your mouth.

The problem occurs any time there is an injury to a tooth, or the underlying jaw. You have all heard of someone with a wound that starts to heal, then seems to get infected from the inside. This seems to happen a lot with surgeries. The outside skin heals faster than the inside layers. This causes the dead skin and bacteria from the unhealed portion to be trapped inside the body. Many times now after a surgery they won’t let the skin close. They will ‘pack’ the wound. This gives them an opportunity to clean out the wound, and for the body to heal from the inside out. Evidently the same thing can happen in the mouth.

Let’s look at root canals first, since we have already talked about those. In my case I bit down on something hard, I’m not even sure what it was, suddenly I had a throbbing pain in my mouth. I went to the dentist and he said I had cracked the tooth and exposed the nerves. The crack was so small it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, but showed up on the x-ray. The only solution I was given was a root canal. Since we didn’t have dental insurance that was an expensive meal, whatever it was. To accomplish a root canal a specialist opened up my tooth and dug out the nerves and blood vessels from the inside of the tooth. Then he put a crown on top of it to protect it. Now I am finding out that the process of digging out the nerves and blood vessels is imprecise, and usually leaves minute pieces behind. These are sealed into an air tight chamber by the process of capping the tooth. But no part of the body is completely isolated from the rest. Bacteria were trapped with that tissue. The bacteria fed of that tissue. In the process they produced waste products. Those waste products seeped into the surrounding tissues, part of which is the jaw bone. Those waste products are extremely toxic to the human body.

The same type thing happens when a tooth is pulled. Underneath the tooth is a sheath of tissue called the periodontal ligament. It protects the tooth and helps anchor it to the gums and jaw. When a tooth is pulled that ligament needs to be pulled as well. If it is not removed it can create a seal across the hole in the jaw, preventing it from healing. The skin of gums will grow faster than the jaw is healing, creating a sealed pocket of dead material and bacteria. These pockets are sealed away from the healing properties of your blood supply and your saliva, but your body is not sealed away from the toxins that the bacteria produce as they live and breed in that pocket. I have already mentioned cancer. Other illnesses that are beginning to be linked to these pockets are: anemia, angina, appendicitis, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, asthma, bronchitis, colitis, cystitis, diabetes, eczema, endocarditis, epilepsy, gall bladder problems, gout, heart disease, hypertension, hyperthyroid, iritis, migraine, nephritis, neuralgia, neuritis, sinus infection, tachycardia, tonsillitis, and varicose veins. As you can see this is not something we want to bury our head in the sands about.

Because the majority of these pockets are caused by deliberate acts at the hands of dentist the dental industry is very unreceptive toward these findings. This causes dentists to be very wary of admitting there is a problem, much less treating it. In fact there have been a lot of dentists taken to court over treating these problems. They can have their licenses taken away, be charged with practicing without a license as well as having malpractice suits brought against them. Because of this, finding a dentist that is willing to work with you, and truly understands the issues may be extremely hard. If you are suffering from facial pain, or an illness that just doesn’t want to respond to treatment it may be worth the effort of seeking out one of the pioneers in this area.

That is what I will need to be doing. Although at this point I do not have any unrelenting health issues I do have a mild jaw pain that I have been ignoring for years. Along with the one root canal I had many teeth pulled as a child. In my early years before my permanent teeth came in eight teeth were pulled to make room for the new teeth. As the new teeth were coming in four more were pulled. Then as a teenager I had my wisdom teeth pulled because they were messing up the expensive teeth straightening I had been through. For my own piece of mind I need to know that I don’t have any ‘holes in my head’ that could cause major problems down the line.

Some of you may be wondering why this is not better known. Why don’t more people have trouble? This can be looked at as another evidence for our amazing immune systems. The immune system knows those toxins coming from those holes are bad for the body. So it does everything possible to neutralize them before they have a chance to cause problems. Then an illness or injury occurs that stresses the immune system. At that point there just aren’t enough fingers in the dike and the floodgates of toxins come pouring forth. This is when degenerative disease caused by these toxins begins in the body. Personally I would like to investigate and if need be clear up the holes before they begin causing major issues with my health.