ROOT CANALS POSE HEALTH THREAT

[Guest guest]

>

>ROOT CANALS POSE HEALTH THREAT

>Effective Non-Drug Non-Surgical Solutions for Chronic Illnesses

>

>Dr. ph Mercola

>1443 W. Schaumburg Rd.

>Schaumburg, IL 60194-4065

>'phone

>

>ROOT CANALS POSE HEALTH THREAT

>AN INTERVIEW WITH

>

>GEORGE MEINIG, D.D.S.

>

>

>HOME -

>

>Dr. Meinig brings a most curious perspective to an expose of latent dangers

>of root canal therapy - fifty years ago he was one of the founders of the

>American Association of Endodontists (root canal specialists)! So he's

>filled his share of root canals. And when he wasn't filling canals himself,

>he was teaching the technique to dentists across the country at weekend

>seminars and clinics. About two years ago, having recently retired, he

>decided to read all 1174 pages of the detailed research of Dr. Weston

>Price, (D.D.S). Dr. Meinig was startled and shocked. Here was valid

>documentation of systemic illnesses resulting from latent infections

>lingering in filled roots. He has since written a book, " Root Canal

>Cover-Up EXPOSED - Many Illnesses Result " , and is devoting himself to

>radio, TV, and personal appearances before groups in an attempt to blow the

>whistle and alert the public.

>

>MJ Please explain what the problem is with root canal therapy.

>

>GM First, let me note that my book is based on Dr. Weston Price's

>twenty-five years of careful, impeccable research. He led a 60-man team of

>researchers whose findings - suppressed until now rank right up there with

>the greatest medical discoveries of all time. This is not the usual medical

>story of a prolonged search for the difficult-to-find causative agent of

>some devastating disease. Rather, it's the story of how a " cast of

>millions " (of bacteria) become entrenched inside the structure of teeth and

>end up causing the largest number of diseases ever traced to a single

>source.

>

>MJ What diseases? Can you give us some examples?

>

>GM Yes, 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.

>

>Let me tell you about the research itself. Dr. Price undertook his

>investigations in 1900. He continued until 1925, and published his work in

>two volumes in 1923. In 1915 the National Dental Association (which changed

>its name a few years later to The American Dental Association) was so

>impressed with his work that they appointed Dr. Price their first Research

>Director. His Advisory Board read like a Who's Who in medicine and

>dentistry for that era. They represented the fields of bacteriology,

>pathology, rheumatology, surgery, chemistry, and cardiology.

>

>At one point in his writings Dr. Price made this observation: " Dr.

>Billings (M.D.), probably more than any other American internist, is due

>credit for the early recognition of the importance of streptococcal focal

>infections in systemic involvements. "

>

>What's really unfortunate here is that very valuable information was

>covered up and totally buried some 70 years ago by a minority group of

>autocratic doctors who just didn't believe or couldn't grasp - the focal

>infection theory.

>

>MJ What is the " focal infection " theory?

>

>GM This states that germs from a central focal infection - such as teeth,

>teeth roots, inflamed gum tissues, or maybe tonsils - metastasize to

>hearts, eyes, lungs, kidneys, or other organs, glands and tissues,

>establishing new areas of the same infection. Hardly theory any more, this

>has been proven and demonstrated many times over. It's 100% accepted today.

>But it was revolutionary thinking during World War I days, and the early

>1920's!

>

>Today, both patients and physicians have been " brain washed " to think that

>infections are less serious because we now have antibiotics. Well, yes and

>no. In the case of root-filled teeth, the no longer-living tooth lacks a

>blood supply to its interior. So circulating antibiotics don't faze the

>bacteria living there because they can't get at them.

>

>MJ You're assuming that ALL root-filled teeth harbor bacteria and/or other

>infective agents?

>

>GM Yes. No matter what material or technique is used - and this is just as

>true today - the root filling shrinks minutely, perhaps microscopically.

>Further and this is key - the bulk of solid appearing teeth, called the

>dentin, actually consists of miles of tiny tubules. Microscopic organisms

>lurking in the maze of tubules simply migrate into the interior of the

>tooth and set up housekeeping. A filled root seems to be a favorite spot to

>start a new colony.

>

>One of the things that makes this difficult to understand is that large,

>relatively harmless bacteria common to the mouth, change and adapt to new

>conditions. They shrink in size to fit the cramped quarters and even learn

>how to exist (and thrive!) on very little food. Those that need oxygen

>mutate and become able to get along without it. In the process of

>adaptation these formerly friendly " normal " organisms become pathogenic

>(capable of producing disease) and more virulent (stronger) and they

>produce much more potent toxins.

>

>Today's bacteriologists are confirming the discoveries of the Price team of

>bacteriologists. Both isolated in root canals the same strains of

>streptococcus, staphylococcus and spirochetes.

>

>MJ Is everyone who has ever had a root canal filled made ill by it?

>

>GM No. We believe now that every root canal filling does leak and bacteria

>do invade the structure. But the variable factor is the strength of the

>person's immune system. Some healthy people are able to control the germs

>that escape from their teeth into other areas of the body. We think this

>happens because their immune system lymphocytes (white blood cells) and

>other disease fighters aren't constantly compromised by other ailments. In

>other words, they are able to prevent those new colonies from taking hold

>in other tissues throughout the body. But over time, most people with root

>filled teeth do seem to develop some kinds of systemic symptoms they didn't

>have before.

>

>MJ It's really difficult to grasp that bacteria are imbedded deep in the

>structure of seemingly-hard, solid looking teeth.

>

>GM I know. Physicians and dentists have that same problem, too. You really

>have to visualize the tooth structure - all of those microscopic tubules

>running through the dentin. In a healthy tooth, those tubules transport a

>fluid that carries nourishment to the inside. For perspective, if the

>tubules of a front single-root tooth, were stretched out on the ground

>they'd stretch for three miles!

>

>A root filled tooth no longer has any fluid circulating through it, but the

>maze of tubules remains. The anaerobic bacteria that live there seem

>remarkably safe from antibiotics. The bacteria can migrate out into

>surrounding tissue where they can " hitch hike " to other locations in the

>body via the bloodstream. The new location can be any organ or gland or

>tissue, and the new colony will be the next focus of infection in a body

>plagued by recurrent or chronic infections.

>

>All of the " building up " done to try to enhance the patient's ability to

>fight infections - to strengthen their immune system - is only a holding

>action. Many patients won't be well until the source of infection - the

>root canal tooth - is removed.

>

>MJ I don't doubt what you're saying, but can you tell us more about how Dr.

>Price could be sure that arthritis or other systemic conditions and

>illnesses really originated in the teeth - or in a single tooth?

>

>GM Yes. Many investigations start with the researcher just being curious

>about something - and then being scientifically careful enough to discover

>an answer, and then prove it's so, many times over. Dr. Price's first case

>is very well documented. He removed an infected tooth from a woman who

>suffered from severe arthritis. As soon as he finished with the patient, he

>implanted the tooth beneath the skin of a healthy rabbit. Within 48 hours

>the rabbit was crippled with arthritis!

>

>Further, once the tooth was removed the patient's arthritis improved

>dramatically. This clearly suggested that the presence of the infected

>tooth was a causative agent for both that patient's and the rabbit's -

>arthritis.

>

>[Editor's Note - Here's the story of that first patient from Dr. Meinig's

>book: " (Dr. Price) had a sense that, even when (root canal therapy)

>appeared successful, teeth containing root fillings remained infected. That

>thought kept prying on his mind, haunting him each time a patient consulted

>him for relief from some severe debilitating disease for which the medical

>profession could find no answer. Then one day while treating a woman who

>had been confined to a wheelchair for six years from severe arthritis, he

>recalled how bacterial cultures were taken from patients who were ill and

>then inoculated into animals in an effort to reproduce the disease and test

>the effectiveness of drugs on the disease.

>

>With this thought in mind, although her (root filled) tooth looked fine, he

>advised this arthritic patient, to have it extracted. He told her he was

>going to find out what it was about this root filled tooth that was

>responsible for her suffering. " All dentists know that sometimes arthritis

>and other illnesses clear up if bad teeth are extracted. However, in this

>case, all of her teeth appeared in satisfactory condition and the one

>containing this rootcanal filling showed no evidence or symptoms of

>infection. Besides, it looked normal on x-ray pictures.

>

> " Immediately after Dr. Price extracted the tooth he dismissed the patient

>and embedded her tooth under the skin of a rabbit. In two days the rabbit

>developed the same kind of crippling arthritis as the patient - and in ten

>days it died.

>

> " ..The patient made a successful recovery after the tooth's removal! She

>could then walk without a cane and could even do fine needlework again.

>That success led Dr. Price to advise other patients, afflicted with a wide

>variety of treatment defying illnesses, to have any root filled teeth

>out. " ]

>

>In the years that followed, he repeated this procedure many hundreds of

>times. He later implanted only a portion of the tooth to see if that

>produced the same results. It did. He then dried the tooth, ground it into

>powder and injected a tiny bit into several rabbits. Same results, this

>time producing the same symptoms in multiple animals.

>

>Dr. Price eventually grew cultures of the bacteria and injected them into

>the animals. Then he went a step further. He put the solution containing

>the bacteria through a filter small enough to catch the bacteria. So when

>he injected the resulting liquid it was free of any infecting bacteria. Did

>the test animals develop the illness? Yes. The only explanation was that

>the liquid had to contain toxins from the bacteria, and the toxins were

>also capable of causing disease.

>

>Dr. Price became curious about which was the more potent infective agent,

>the bacteria or the toxin. He repeated that last experiment, injecting half

>the animals with the toxin-containing liquid and half of them with the

>bacteria from the filter. Both groups became ill, but the group injected

>with the toxins got sicker and died sooner than the bacteria injected

>animals.

>

>MJ That's amazing. Did the rabbits always develop the same disease the

>patient had?

>

>GM Mostly, yes. If the patient had heart disease the rabbit got heart

>disease. If the patient had kidney disease the rabbit got kidney disease,

>and so on. Only occasionally did a rabbit develop a different disease - and

>then the pathology would be quite similar, in a different location.

>

>MJ If extraction proves necessary for anyone reading this, do you want to

>summarize what's special about the extraction technique?

>

>GM Just pulling the tooth is not enough when removal proves necessary. 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 (which is always infected with toxins produced by

>streptococcus bacteria living in the dentin tubules) and the first

>millimeter of bone that lines the socket (which is usually infected).

>

>There's a whole protocol involved, including irrigating with sterile saline

>to assure removal of the contaminated bone chips, and treating the socket

>to stimulate and encourage infection-free healing. I describe the procedure

>in detail, step by step, in my book [pages 185 and 186].

>

>MJ Perhaps we should back up and talk about oral health - to PREVENT

>needing an extraction. Caries or inflamed gums seem much more common than

>root canals. Do they pose any threat?

>

>GM Yes, they absolutely do. But let me point out that we can't talk about

>oral health apart from total health. The problem is that patients and

>dentists alike haven't come around to seeing that dental caries reflect

>systemic - meaning " whole body " - illness. Dentists have learned to restore

>teeth so expertly that both they and their patients have come to regard

>tooth decay as a trivial matter. It isn't.

>

>Small cavities too often become big cavities. Big cavities too often lead

>to further destruction and the eventual need for root canal treatment.

>

>MJ Then talk to us about prevention.

>

>GM The only scientific way to prevent tooth decay is through diet and

>nutrition. Dr. Ralph Steinman did some outstanding, landmark research at

>Loma University. He injected a glucose solution into mice - into

>their bodies, so the glucose didn't even touch their teeth. Then he

>observed the teeth for any changes. What he found was truly astonishing.

>The glucose reversed the normal flow of fluid in the dentin tubules,

>resulting in all of the test animals developing severe tooth decay! Dr.

>Steinman demonstrated dramatically what I said a minute ago: Dental caries

>reflect systemic illness.

>

>Let's take a closer look to see how this might happen. Once a tooth gets

>infected and the cavity gets into the nerve and blood vessels, bacteria

>find their way into those tiny tubules of the dentin. Then no matter what

>we do by way of treatment, we're never going to completely eradicate the

>bacteria hiding in the miles of tubules. In time the bacteria can migrate

>through lateral canals into the surrounding bony socket that supports the

>tooth. Now the host not only has a cavity in a tooth, plus an underlying

>infection of supporting tissue to deal with, but the bacteria also exude

>potent systemic toxins. These toxins circulate throughout the body

>triggering activity by the immune system - and probably causing the host to

>feel less well. This host response can vary from just dragging around and

>feeling less energetic, to overt illness - of almost any kind. Certainly,

>such a person will be more vulnerable to whatever " bugs " are going around,

>because his/her body is already under constant challenge and the immune

>system continues to be " turned on " by either the infective agent or its

>toxins - or both.

>

>MJ What a fascinating concept. Can you tell us more about the protective

>nutrition you mentioned?

>

>GM Yes. Dr. Price traveled all over the world doing his research on

>primitive peoples who still lived in their native ways. He found fourteen

>cultural pockets scattered all over the globe where the natives had no

>access to " civilization " - and ate no refined foods.

>

>Dr. Price studied their diets carefully. He found they varied greatly, but

>the one thing they had in common was that they ate whole, unrefined foods.

>With absolutely no access to tooth brushes, floss, fluoridated water or

>tooth paste, the primitive peoples studied were almost 100% free of tooth

>decay. Further - and not unrelated - they were also almost 100% free of all

>the degenerative diseases we suffer - problems with the heart, lungs,

>kidneys, liver, joints, skin (allergies), and the whole gamut of illnesses

>that plague Mankind. No one food proved to be magic as a preventive food. I

>believe we can thrive best by eating a wide variety of whole foods.

>

>MJ Amazing. So by " diet and nutrition " for oral (and total) health you

>meant eating a pretty basic diet of whole foods?

>

>GM Exactly. And no sugar or white flour. These are (and always have been)

>the first culprits. Tragically, when the primitives were introduced to

>sugar and white flour their superior level of health deteriorated rapidly.

>This has been demonstrated time and again. During the last sixty or more

>years we have added in increasing amounts, highly refined and fabricated

>cereals and boxed mixes of all kinds, soft drinks, refined vegetable oils

>and a whole host of other foodless " foods " . It is also during those same

>years that we as a nation have installed more and more root canal fillings

>- and degenerative diseases have become rampant. I believe - and Dr. Price

>certainly proved to my satisfaction - that these simultaneous factors are

>NOT coincidences.

>

>MJ I certainly understand what you are saying. But I'm still a little

>shocked to talk with a dentist who doesn't stress oral hygiene.

>

>GM Well, I'm not against oral hygiene. Of course, hygiene practices are

>preventive, and help minimize the destructive effect of our " civilized " ,

>refined diet. But the real issue is still diet. The natives Dr. Price

>tracked down and studied weren't free of cavities, inflamed gums, and

>degenerative diseases because they had better tooth brushes!

>

>It's so easy to lose sight of the significance of what Dr. Price

>discovered. We tend to sweep it under the rug - we'd actually prefer to

>hear that if we would just brush better, longer, or more often, we too

>could be free of dental problems.

>

>Certainly, part of the purpose of my book is to stimulate dental research

>into finding a way to sterilize dentin tubules. Only then can dentists

>really learn to save teeth for a lifetime. But the bottom line remains: A

>primitive diet of whole unrefined foods is the only thing that has been

>found to actually prevent both tooth decay and degenerative diseases.

>

>

>

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