A Rabbit’s Tale a.k.a. Getting to the Root Cause!
An important tenet of Functional Medicine is that if you don’t address the root causes of a disease, it will keep coming back, no matter what treatments are given. Using medical drugs to suppress chronic symptoms is like putting sticky plaster over the warning light in a car. It postpones the day when the machine stops but does nothing to address the root cause.
The “root causes” of disease can be multiple: infections, toxins, chemicals, metals, radiation, pesticides and more. However, there is a much overlooked “root cause” that spreads disease among an unsuspecting population - a literal “root cause” perhaps sitting a few millimetres away from your brain right now - I am talking about the root canal filling that leaks toxins into your body 24/7.
A mummy in your mouth
Do you know if you have a root canal a.k.a. a mummy in your mouth? This is a common dental procedure to remove the pulp inside a tooth when it becomes infected or inflamed. The dentist then fills it with chemicals to preserve it, much like the ancient Egyptians preserved dead bodies by mummification. It is a dead organ. In fact, it is the only dead organ that the medical profession encourages you to hold on to. If you had an inflamed appendix, would your doctor suggest preserving it with chemicals? No, that would be nonsense and might even kill you. Why, then, should teeth be any different?
To understand this, we need to know some basic anatomy about jaws and teeth. A tooth is composed of an outer layer of enamel, a second layer of dentin, and an inner portion called the pulp chamber which contains the tooth’s nerve, blood vessels and lymphatics. The tooth is attached to the jawbone by intertwining fibres from both tooth and bone uniting to form something called the periodontal ligament.
It is important to realise that dentin, is not solid, but composed of tiny tubules that look like a honeycomb under a microscope. In an average sized tooth, if all these tubules were stretched end to end, they would extend over three miles long. A tooth has between one to four central canals. Picture the tiny tubules branching off from the central canals like the branches of a Christmas tree. It is what gets trapped in these tubules that can be so damaging to health.
Dental decay: the wrong flow
What is the cascade of events that causes a tooth to die and end up needing a root filling? A healthy living tooth cleans itself out via a mechanism by which fluid flows from the inside to the outside of the tooth. This is similar to the flow of fluids from inside to outside when you sweat through your pores. As fluid flows outwards from pulp through dentin, it washes away a lot of the bacteria that live on the surface of the tooth. Although enamel appears hard, is actually porous enough to allow fluids to move through and out of it. These fluids are responsible for nourishing all the parts of the tooth and keeping it alive.
However, when you eat too many refined foods and sugars, your phosphorous level falls. When phosphorous drops to below 3.4, you start losing minerals in your teeth and the fluid stops flowing from inside to outside and instead starts flowing in the opposite direction - from outside to inside. This is what starts the rot.
Every root canal not caused by direct trauma to the jaw, starts with a tiny bit of tooth decay. Now that the flow of fluid is reversed, it sucks bacteria sitting on the outside of your tooth, into the tooth. These bacteria then march right into the inner tubules of your tooth where they will find a nice comfortable home. In this way, you can see that refined sugar plays a major role in tooth decay but that it is not enough simply to clean your teeth after meals as the real rot starts from inside your body and tooth, not outside. This also shows that sugar does not have to be in direct contact with teeth to make them rot and that bad teeth originate from a bad diet. Therefore, tooth decay is a systemic problem.
A flawed procedure
Most root canals are expertly done by dentists today. There is a real drive to preserve teeth within the profession and dentists are set targets to do so. However, there is a fundamental flaw with the procedure itself. Remember the three miles of tubules branching off from the central canals? The problem is that it is currently impossible for any dentist to sterilise the tubules branching off from the main canals when performing a root canal. If a tooth is no longer able to cleanse itself from inside out, it will have bacteria living within its tubules. There is still no proven way that dentists can sterilise the tubules and kill the bacteria living in them. Various methods have been tried, including chemicals and lasers. The tubules remain sterile for only about 30 seconds and the problem with lasers is that they can’t go round corners (tubules are inconveniently curved). Therefore, once the tooth is sealed like the burial chamber in a tomb, the bacteria are sealed in with it.
When the root canal is placed, the oxygen is sealed off. What is the problem if bacteria can’t get oxygen? Don’t they die in an area of no oxygen? Unfortunately not.
It was once assumed that the bacteria inside the dental tubules needed oxygen to survive. Now we know that is not true. Studies have firmly established that the bacteria in dead teeth are very hardy beasts that are predominantly anaerobic i.e. don’t need oxygen to survive. It has also been known for some years that bacteria can mutate to suit their living conditions. Trapped inside their honeycomb tomb, bacteria become smaller in size and number, but more virulent. Like any living creatures, they pee and poop toxins. Without oxygen, these toxins become more toxic, even carcinogenic.
Focal infection
Even if bacteria can survive can survive in their sealed tomb, surely they or their toxins can’t escape? If you look at the anatomy of a tooth, you will see that there is not only a main canal, but also lateral accessory canals branching off from the main canal. These are like the secret passages in pyramids which tomb robbers used to access and plunder burial chambers. Bacteria and their toxins can escape through the accessory canals into the bony network that holds the tooth in place in the jaw, known as the alveolar process. From here, they can hitch a ride via the superhighways of blood vessels and lymphatics to any organ, gland, tissues that offer a comfortable home. This migration of infections is known in the medical profession as “focal infection.”
This is not new information. Scientists, doctors and dentists have written about it for over 100 years. One of the leading pioneers of how root canals cause seemingly unrelated diseases was dentist, researcher and nutritionist Dr. Weston A. Price, a man who was curious enough to wonder why many of his patients suffered with chronic, debilitating conditions for which the medical profession seemed to offer no solutions. Dr. Price was used to placing root fillings in patients since the early 1900s but had become suspicious that they remained chronically infected.
A pioneering rabbit
One day, he determined to put this to the test with one of his female patients. This lady was crippled with arthritis and had been confined to a wheelchair for six years. She had a root filling which seemed fine, but Dr. Price advised her to have it removed as he felt it held a clue to her chronic suffering. She consented and immediately Dr. Price had extracted the tooth, he implanted it under the skin of a rabbit. Within two days, the rabbit developed the same kind of crippling arthritis suffered by the patient and died after 10 days. The patient made a successful enough recovery to walk without a stick and take up fine needlework again.
Like the start of many great scientific discoveries, the success of this initial experiment led to a meticulous 25 year research project during which Dr Price repeated his initial experiment hundreds of times, removing root-filled teeth from sick patients and implanted them under the skin of rabbits (chosen because they have similar immune systems to humans). In almost every case, the rabbits developed the same or similar disease as the patient and died within three to 12 days. His research discoveries are recorded in two large volumes, published in 1923, which can still be read on the internet. In them, Dr. Price documents case after case of different diseases (heart, kidney, nervous system, arthritis, gastro-intestinal, mental, and more) where patients got well after root canal extraction and rabbits contacted similar diseases after tooth implantation and died. Dr Price describes the suffering of his patients from diseases caused by infected root fillings as “a living death more horrible than any inquisitor’s rack.”
Additionally,Dr. Price cultured the fluids from infected root fillings and implanted these only under the skin of rabbits with the same decline in health, showing that toxins from dental bacteria also cause disease. Dr. Price also implanted healthy teeth that had been removed from patients due to overcrowding, under the skin of rabbits. In these cases there was no decline in their health. Dr. Price also implanted coins under the skin of the rabbits - with no resulting decline in health.
Dr Price demonstrated the ease with which cultures taken from dental infections can produce significant changes in blood chemistry. These involve changes in clotting function or in the walls of the blood vessels, resulting in multiple haemorrhages in specific tissues or throughout the body. In one case, Dr. Price injected a rabbit with a culture from the teeth of a patient suffering from inflammation of the heart muscle and secondary haemorrhages. The rabbit died 12 hours later from spontaneous haemorrhages. Dr. Price records that “the patient was changed from a distressed invalid to a comparatively normal man by the removal of the dental infections.”
Breaks in immune defence
Did Dr. Price advocate the removal of root fillings in all patients? No, not if they were healthy and had no chronic diseases or family history of chronic disease.
Dr. Price maintained that patients got sick and tragedy struck when they didn’t have enough immune defence to ward off the invading infection. This could be because of genetic predisposition to certain illnesses, nutritional deficiency, toxic overload, or the strength and amount of toxins. He used the terminology of war to describe this process. The individual may be able to keep the infection and its effects successfully at bay for many years until the patient is subjected to some additional stressor. And then disaster strikes. Dr. Price lists these stressors as influenza, pregnancy, breast feeding, malnutrition, exposure to cold, grief, worry, fear and age. One extra stressor that we have today which wasn’t around in Dr. Price’s day is wifi radiation!
As with many great medical discoveries, Dr. Price’s discoveries were sidelined and buried for many years due to the same old reasons - money and vested interests - of a few unscrupulous rivals at that time. A few decades later, root canal specialist Dr. George Meinig decided to read Dr. Price’s research papers - something he had never had time to do when he was working as a dentist! What he read astonished and shocked him so much that he immediately came out of retirement and published the book Root Canal Cover-Up in 1993, a summary of Dr. Price’s research on root canals.
The modern technology of DNA testing now fully confirms Dr. Price’s research about pathogens inhabiting root canal treated teeth. Scientific experiments have now confirmed the variety of pathogens that set up home in dental tubules - staph, strep, Lyme, Coxsackievirus, Bartonella etc. Dr. Johann Lechner in Germany is one of the leading researchers in this area.
The solution
Don’t antibiotics kill the invaders? No, as they don’t penetrate the dental tubules. What about white blood cells - our defence army against invaders? No because they are just too big to get inside the tubules. Fortunately, there is a solution to the problem - extraction. But it must be done thoroughly so that all residues of infection in underlying bone and periodontal ligament are removed. As most modern dentists have never heard of Dr. Price and his research, you need to make sure you go to a dentist who has done his root filling research and can address the issues properly. This is usually a Biological dentist registered with the IAOMT (International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology). The choices for filling the gap are denture (which can look very good nowadays, not like the ill-fitting contraption granny used to have in her glass at night) or implant. If opting for the latter, please select zirconia over titanium (the subject of another Newsletter).
Overcoming barriers
Unfortunately, there may be considerable barriers to overcome. Some people have irrational but very real fears that can prevent them from sacrificing a diseased tooth to save a diseased body. These can include memories of toothless granny and her ill-fitting dentures, previous painful experiences in the butcher’s (I mean, dentist’s) chair, and fears of losing one’s looks when losing one’s teeth. This is especially true for women. Counselling, homeopathy and education can help in these situations. When people visit the dentists I recommend, they realise that Biological Dentistry is a much nicer experience than the Drill, Fill and Bill variety. Cosmetic dentistry means that no one needs to go around toothless any more (another Newsletter on safe cosmetic dentistry!).
Some people are concerned about ‘getting on the wrong side of’ their dentist if they visit another one for specialist work (is their dentist Ronnie or Reggie?) Others tell me their dentist is a ‘really lovely man’ (knowledge and expertise, not loveliness are required). Others are worried about the cost (I have seen patients pay more to be poisoned by one root filling than for three to be taken out safely).
Education is key
If chronically-ill patients can get over their very real and understandable dental phobias, and get their infected root fillings safely removed, this can herald a real turn-around in the progression of their disease. I have seen it happen many times in clinical practice. This is an area where I encourage people to do their own research. Getting rid of a tooth is an irreversible step (at least as I write). A good place to start is by looking at Dr. Blanche Grube’s Patient Education series on Youtube. At the end of the day, the choice between your tooth or your life is one which only you can make.
If you would like to discuss any of the above issues or find out where you can visit a Biological Dentist, please email the Good health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com or ring on 07836 552936.