Teeth are a large part of the puzzle of health and disease. There are a number of scenarios in which teeth and the way dentists work with teeth can play a role in disease. The purpose of this article is to describe these different scenarios.
Metals
There are common metals utilized in dental work such as crowns, mercury fillings and implants. These metals, when placed in the mouth, sit in a medium of saliva, which turns the mouth into a charged battery. We call this charge Galvanic Toxicity. The Brain is a collection of millions of nerve fibers that is essentially a battery emitting electrical charges throughout the body.
Galvanic Toxicity in the mouth is bombarding and over-stimulating the brain. Common signs and symptoms of Galvanic Toxicity are a metal taste in the mouth, insomnia and an electric sensation handling utensils.
Root Canals
Bacterial toxicity is another root of disease. Teeth are similar to other organ systems in the body in that they also acquire a blood supply, lymphatic and venous drainage, and nervous innervations. Root canals are dead teeth. Root canals are one, if not the worst, source of chronic bacterial toxicity. If the heart or liver or any other organ in the body dies, it is removed otherwise bacteria and necrosis sets in and the patient can die. But teeth are commonly left dead in the body.
Teeth have roots with main canals and thousands of side canals and contained in those side canals are miles of nerves. When dentists perform a root canal, they remove the nerve from the main canals, however they do not have access to the microscopic side canals, which leaves dead nerves behind in those spaces.
Anaerobic bacteria, which do not require oxygen to survive, thrive in these side canals to grow and excrete toxicity from digesting necrotic tissue that leads to chronic infection. The blood and lymphatics that surround those dead teeth drains this toxicity and spreads toxicity throughout the body. This toxicity will invade all organ systems and can lead to a plethora of diseases such as autoimmune diseases, cancers, musculoskeletal diseases, irritable bowel diseases, and depression.
Gum Disease
Gum disease is another vehicle in which bacteria can spread throughout the body. Classic signs of gum disease are bleeding upon brushing or flossing the teeth, red and swollen gums, and bad breath.
The following is an actual case study from my office in which I saw a patient who presented for an initial dental visit. She related a three-year history of conventionally treated breast cancer. After her cancer recurred, she decided to seek alternative treatment rather than conventional treatment. She sought therapies for a period of five months by two well-known medical physicians practicing these therapies and they released her. She then followed up with my office to get a complete dental exam and diagnosis.
I took a thorough history and examined the patient. I discovered that since her initial diagnosis of cancer three years ago, all of the physicians, conventional and alternative, failed to ask or even consider her dental history as being a necessary part of her treatment and/or a possible association or connection to the root of her disease. It is not surprising that conventional physicians do not consider dental history during disease diagnosis - but it is certainly absurd that none of the alternative physicians failed to consider her dental history!
Upon my examination, there were several acutely infected teeth, a root canal and severe gum disease that had been totally missed. The conventional therapies and the alternative therapies that this patient received most likely failed as this patient continues to harbor infection in her mouth that has chronically compromised her immune system and has weakened her overall ability to eliminate toxicity and to heal as a whole. In reality, the toxicity that continues to thrive in her mouth is being carried by the blood and lymphatic system to all areas of her body and is contributing to her inability to fight the cancer.
We must look at our patients as whole beings and the mouth as a very important part of our overall health and to the contribution of disease. As a physician, conventional or alternative, or a dentist, we must include in our patient history a complete dental assessment knowing that it is a common area for harboring disease. Most conventional dentists fail to associate the above conditions with chronic problems. Our mission is to change this consciousness and work with our patients as a whole and provide treatments that focus on the above problems.