why we should not do root canals
Posted by kim on Sunday, March 25, 2012 Under: General Health
All about why we should not do root canals
Do you have a chronic degenerative disease? If so, have you been told, "It's all in your head?"
Well, that might not be that far from the truth… the root cause of your illness may be in your mouth.
There
is a common dental procedure that nearly every dentist will tell you is
completely safe, despite the fact that scientists have been warning of
its dangers for more than 100
years.
Every
day in the United States alone, 41,000 of these dental procedures are
performed on patients who believe they are safely and permanently fixing
their problem.
What is this dental procedure?
The root canal.
More than 25 million root canals are performed every year in this country.
Root-canaled
teeth are essentially "dead" teeth that can become silent incubators
for highly toxic anaerobic bacteria that can, under certain conditions,
make their way into your bloodstream to cause a number of serious
medical conditions—many not appearing until decades later.
Most
of these toxic teeth feel and look fine for many years, which make
their role in systemic disease even harder to trace back.
Sadly,
the vast majority of dentists are oblivious to the serious potential
health risks they are exposing their patients to, risks
that persist for the rest of their patients' lives. The American Dental
Association claims root canals have been proven safe, but they have NO
published data or actual research to substantiate this claim.
Fortunately,
I had some early mentors like Dr. Tom Stone and Dr. Douglas Cook, who
educated me on this issue nearly 20 years ago. Were it not for a
brilliant pioneering dentist who, more than a century ago, made the
connection between root-canaled teeth and disease, this underlying cause
of disease may have remained hidden to this day. The dentist's name was
Weston Price—regarded by many as the greatest dentist of all time.
Weston A. Price: World's Greatest Dentist
Most
dentists would be doing an enormous service to public health if they
familiarized themselves with the work of Dr. Weston Pricei. Unfortunately, his work continues to be discounted and suppressed by medical and dental professionals alike.
Dr.
Price was a dentist and researcher who traveled the world to study the
teeth, bones, and diets of native populations living without the
"benefit" of modern food. Around the year 1900, Price had been treating
persistent root canal infections and became suspicious that root-canaled
teeth always remained infected, in spite of treatments. Then one day,
he recommended to a woman, wheelchair bound for six years, to have her
root canal tooth extracted, even though it appeared to be fine.
She
agreed, so he extracted her tooth and then implanted it under the skin
of a rabbit. The rabbit amazingly developed the same crippling arthritis
as the woman and died from the infection 10 days later. But the woman,
now free of the toxic tooth, immediately recovered from her arthritis
and could now walk without even the assistance of a cane.
Price discovered that it's mechanically impossible to sterilize a root-canaled (e.g. root-filled) tooth.
He
then went on to show that many chronic degenerative diseases originate
from root-filled teeth—the most frequent being heart and circulatory
diseases. He actually found 16 different causative bacterial agents for
these conditions. But there were also strong correlations between
root-filled teeth and diseases of the joints, brain and nervous system.
Dr. Price went on to
write two groundbreaking books in 1922 detailing his research into the
link between dental pathology and chronic illness. Unfortunately, his
work was deliberately buried for 70 years, until finally one endodontist
named George Meinig recognized the importance of Price's work and
sought to expose the truth.
Dr. Meinig Advances the Work of Dr. Price
Dr. Meinig,
a native of Chicago, was a captain in the U.S. Army during World War II
before moving to Hollywood to become a dentist for the stars. He
eventually became one of the founding members of the American
Association of Endodontists (root canal specialists).
In the 1990s, he spent 18 months immersed in Dr. Price's research. In June of 1993, Dr. Meinig published the book Root Canal Cover-Up, which continues to be the most comprehensive reference on this topic today. You can order your copy directly from the Price-Pottenger Foundationii.
What Dentists Don't Know About the Anatomy of Your Teeth
Your teeth are made of the hardest substances in your body.
In the middle of each tooth is the
pulp chamber, a soft living inner structure that houses blood vessels
and nerves. Surrounding the pulp chamber is the dentin, which is made of
living cells that secrete a hard mineral substance. The outermost and
hardest layer of your tooth is the white enamel, which encases the
dentin.
The
roots of each tooth descend into your jawbone and are held in place by
the periodontal ligament. In dental school, dentists are taught that
each tooth has one to four major canals. However, there are accessory
canals that are never mentioned. Literally miles of them!
Just
as your body has large blood vessels that branch down into very small
capillaries, each of your teeth has a maze of very tiny tubules that, if
stretched out, would extend for three miles. Weston Price identified as
many as 75 separate accessory canals in a single central incisor (front
tooth). For a more detailed explanation, refer to an article by Hal
Huggins, DDS, MS, on the Weston A. Price Foundation website.iii
(These images are borrowed from the Huggins article.)
Microscopic organisms regularly move in and around these tubules, like gophers in underground tunnels.
When
a dentist performs a root canal, he or she hollows out the tooth, then
fills the hollow chamber with a substance (called guttapercha), which
cuts off the tooth from its blood supply, so fluid can no longer
circulate through the tooth. But the maze of tiny tubules remains. And
bacteria, cut off from their food supply, hide out in these tunnels
where they are remarkably safe from antibiotics and your own body's
immune
defenses.
The Root Cause of Much Disease
Under
the stresses of oxygen and nutrient deprivation, these formerly
friendly organisms morph into stronger, more virulent anaerobes that
produce a variety of potent toxins. What were once ordinary, friendly
oral bacteria mutate into highly toxic pathogens lurking in the tubules
of the dead tooth, just awaiting an opportunity to spread.
No
amount of sterilization has been found effective in reaching these
tubules—and just about every single
root-canaled tooth has been found colonized by these bacteria,
especially around the apex and in the periodontal ligament. Oftentimes,
the infection extends down into the jawbone where it creates
cavitations—areas of necrotic tissue in the jawbone itself.
Cavitations
are areas of unhealed bone, often accompanied by pockets of infected
tissue and gangrene. Sometimes they form after a tooth extraction (such
as a wisdom tooth extraction), but they can also follow a root canal.
According to Weston Price Foundation, in the records of 5,000 surgical
cavitation cleanings, only two were found healed.
And all of this occurs with few, if any, accompanying
symptoms. So you may have an abscessed dead tooth and not know it. This focal infection in the immediate area of the root-canaled tooth is bad enough, but the damage doesn't stop there.
Root Canals Can Lead to Heart, Kidney, Bone, and Brain Disease
As
long as your immune system remains strong, any bacteria that stray away
from the infected tooth are captured and destroyed. But once your
immune system is weakened by something like an accident or illness or
other trauma, your immune system may be unable to keep the infection in
check.
These
bacteria can migrate out into surrounding tissues by hitching a ride
into your blood stream, where they are transported to new locations to
set up camp. The new location can be any organ or gland or tissue.
Dr.
Price was able to transfer diseases harbored by humans to rabbits, by
implanting fragments of root-canaled teeth, as mentioned above. He found
that root canal fragments from a person who had suffered a heart
attack, when implanted into a rabbit, would cause a heart attack in the
rabbit within a few weeks.
He
discovered he
could transfer heart disease to the rabbit 100 percent of the time!
Other diseases were more than 80 percent transferable by this method.
Nearly every chronic degenerative disease has been linked with root
canals, including:
· Heart disease
· Kidney disease
· Arthritis, joint, and rheumatic diseases
· Neurological diseases (including ALS and MS)
· Autoimmune diseases (Lupus and more)
There may also be a cancer connection. Dr. Robert Jones, a researcher of therelationship between root canals and breast
cancer, found an extremely high correlation between root canals and breast cancer.iv He claims to have found the following correlations in a five-year study of 300 breast cancer cases:
· 93 percent of women with breast cancer had root canals
· 7 percent had other oral pathology
· Tumors, in the majority of cases, occurred on the same side of the body as the root canal(s) or other oral pathology
Dr.
Jones claims that toxins from the bacteria in an infected tooth or
jawbone are able to inhibit the proteins that suppress tumor
development. A German physician reported similar findings. Dr. Josef
Issels reported that, in his 40 years of treating "terminal" cancer
patients, 97 percent of his cancer patients had root canals. If
these physicians are correct, the cure for cancer may be as simple as
having a tooth pulled, then rebuilding your immune system.
Good Bugs Gone Bad
How are these mutant oral bacteria connected with heart disease or arthritis? The ADA and the AAE claim it's a "myth" that the bacteria found in and around root-canaled teeth can cause diseasev.
But they base that on the misguided
assumption that the bacteria in these diseased teeth are the SAME as
normal bacteria in your mouth—and that's clearly not the case.
Today, bacteria can be identified using DNA analysis, whether they're dead or alive, from their telltale DNA signatures.
In a continuation of Dr. Price's
work, the Toxic Element Research Foundation (TERF) used DNA analysis to
examine root-canaled teeth, and they found bacterial contamination in 100 percent of the samples tested. They
identified 42 different species of
anaerobic bacteria in 43 root canal samples. In cavitations, 67
different bacteria were identified among the 85 samples tested, with
individual samples housing between 19 to 53 types of bacteria each. The
bacteria they found included the following types:
· Leptotrichiabuccalis
Are
these just benign, ordinary mouth bugs? Absolutely not. Four can affect
your heart, three can affect your nerves, two can affect your kidneys,
two can affect your brain, and one can infect your sinus cavities… so
they are anything BUT friendly! (If you want see just how unfriendly
they can be, I invite you to investigate the footnotes.)
Approximately 400 percent more bacteria were found in the blood surrounding
the root canal tooth than were found in the tooth itself,
suggesting the tooth is the incubatorand the periodontal ligament is the
food supply. The bone surrounding root-canaled teeth was found even
HIGHER in bacterial count… not surprising, since bone is virtual buffet
of bacterial nutrients.
Since When is Leaving A Dead Body Part IN Your Body a Good Idea?
There
is no other medical procedure that involves allowing a dead body part
to remain in your body. When your appendix dies, it's removed. If you
get frostbite or gangrene on a finger or toe, it is amputated. If a baby
dies in utero, the body typically initiates a
miscarriage.
Your
immune system doesn't care for dead substances, and just the presence
of dead tissue can cause your system to launch an attack, which is
another reason to avoid root canals—they leave behind a dead tooth.
Infection,
plus the autoimmune rejection reaction, causes more bacteria to collect
around the dead tissue. In the case of a root canal, bacteria are given
the opportunity to flush into your blood stream every time you bite
down.
Why Dentists Cling to the Belief Root Canals are Safe
The
ADA rejects Dr. Price's evidence, claiming root canals are safe, yet
they offer no published data or actual research to substantiate their
claim. American Heart Association recommends a dose of antibiotics
before many routine dental procedures to prevent infective endocarditis
(IE) if you have certain heart conditions that predispose you to this
type of infection.
So, on the one hand, the ADA acknowledges oral bacteria can make their way from your mouth to your heart and cause a life-threatening
infection.
But
at the same time, the industry vehemently denies any possibility that
these same bacteria—toxic strains KNOWN to be pathogenic to humans—can
hide out in your dead root-canaled tooth to be released into your blood
stream every time you chew, where they can damage your health in a
multitude of ways.
Is
this really that large of a leap? Could there be another reason so many
dentists, as well as the ADA and the AAE, refuse to admit root canals
are dangerous? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Root canals are
the most profitable procedure in dentistry.x
What You Need to Know to AVOID a Root Canal
I strongly recommend never getting a
root canal. Risking your health to preserve a tooth simply doesn't make
sense. Unfortunately, there are many people who've already have one. If
you have, you should seriously
consider having the tooth removed, even if it looks and feels fine.
Remember, as soon as your immune system is compromised, your risk of of
developing a serious medical problem increases—and assaults on your
immune system are far too frequent in today's world.
If you have a tooth removed, there are a few options available to you.
1. Partial denture: This is a removable denture,
often just called a "partial." It's the simplest and least expensive option.
2. Bridge: This is a more permanent fixture resembling a real tooth but is a bit more involved and expensive to build.
3. Implant:
This is a permanent artificial tooth, typically titanium, implanted in
your gums and jaw. There are some problems with these due to reactions
to the metals used. Zirconium is a newer implant material that shows
promise for fewer complications.
But just pulling the tooth and inserting some sort of artificial replacement isn't enough.
Dentists
are taught to remove the tooth but leave your periodontal
ligament. But as you now know, this ligament can serve as a breeding
ground for deadly bacteria. Most experts who've studied this recommend
removing the ligament, along with one millimeter of the bony socket, in
order to drastically reduce your risk of developing an infection from
the bacterially infected tissues left behind.
I
strongly recommend consulting a biological dentist because they are
uniquely trained to do these extractions properly and safely, as well as
being adept at removing mercury fillings, if necessary. Their approach to dental
care is far more holistic and considers the impact on your entire body—not JUST your mouth.
If you need to find a biological dentist in your area, I recommend visiting toxicteeth.orgxi,
a
resource sponsored by Consumers for Dental Choice. This
organization, championed by Charlie Brown, is a highly reputable
organization that has fought to protect and educate consumers so that
they can make better-informed decisions about their dental care. The
organization also heads up the Campaign for Mercury-Free Dentistry.
In : General Health