..:: Teeth - The Root of Most Disease ::..

TEETH - The Root of Most Disease?
By Thomas Levy, MD, FACC
Colorado Springs, Colorado
EXTRAORDINARY SCIENCE - APR/MAY/JUN 1994

Stopping Mercury Amalgams - Europe takes the lead

In February of this year, Sweden decided to ban the further use of mercury amalgam dental fillings in children and young adults, effective in June of 1995. It was further declared that all Swedish citizens would be protected from any further amalgams as of January, 1997. The Swedish government had actually done its own research on this subject, concluding that 250,000 Swedes had immune and other health disorders felt to be directly related to their amalgams. They stated the simple purpose of this ban was to protect the people and the environment. Even more recently, Denmark decided to ban amalgam, effective in January of 1999.

Approximately three years ago the German Health Ministry recommended to the German Denial Association that no further amalgam restorations be placed in children, pregnant women, and individuals with kidney disease. In December of 1993 this proposal was extended to include all women of child-bearing age, pregnant or not. The Association, in a most interesting response to the Ministry, then replied that if any further limitations on the placement of amalgams were suggested, it would simply have to advise its members to stop using amalgams completely due to the increasing chances of legal action being brought against any of them. Such legal concerns must have had Degussa, Germany's largest producer of amalgam and the world's largest producer of metals for dentistry, already in a similar frame of mind as that of the dental association, as it completely shut down its amalgam production earlier this year. Degussa took the posture that it would reinitiate such production when mercury was proved to he safe in the body.

While not nearly as broad in scope as the above European initiatives, the United States does have Proposition 65 in California as a start. This was initially passed by California voters in 1986 to provide information to consumers on chemicals that can cause birth defects and reproductive problems. The Environmental Law Foundation in Oakland, California, in San Francisco County Superior Court on December 14, 1993, reached a settlement with Jeneric/Pentron Inc. of Wallingford, Connecticut (one of the nation's largest manufacturers and distributors of mercury amalgam dental filling material) after legally contesting the purported safety of amalgams. In compliance with the spirit of Prop 65, Jeneric agreed to send warning signs to all California dentists who purchase its mercury amalgam products. The warning signs, earmarked by an inverted yellow triangle, and to be displayed prominently in the dentists' offices, will state:

WARNING: This office uses amalgam filling materials which contain and expose you to mercury, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects and other reproductive harm. Please consult your dentist for more information.2, 3

Recently as well, the California State Board of Dental Examiners, by unanimous vote, approved a two-page document entitled "Dental Materials Fact Sheet." The purported intent of this document is to encourage discussion between patient and dentist in the selection of denial materials best suited to the patient's dental health, and it will be made available to all licensed dentists in California. The Board agreed that elemental mercury is a toxic substance, and it acknowledged that research has shown that free mercury can escape from amalgam filling and be absorbed by the body. The document even states:

Some elements contain in composites have been determined to be cytotoxic and carcinogenic.4

Amalgam Isn't Safe?

It would he wonderful if it were. It is, in fact, an inexpensive and durable substance whose properties allow for a technically quick and relatively easy placement in the mouth. And, as all its proponents are quick to point out, it has been in use in this capacity for over 150 years now. Were it not so cheap and easy to use, its profoundly toxic effects on general health would have been very apparent long ago, but since such a large percentage of the civilized population have them in place, there's been no "control" population with which to readily compare differences in health.

In the early 1800s the National Association of Dental Surgeons actually advocated the elimination of mercury amalgam, but its cheapness kept many dentists using it in spite of its toxicity. This Association disbanded several decades later, and the precursor to today's American Dental Association (ADA), the National Dental Association, came into being, proclaiming amalgam's safety, although this was just a political statement then, as it is now, For the longest time, it was simply asserted by the ADA that the mercury amalgam (composed of approximately 50% mercury, along with copper, tin, silver and zinc) was a tightly bound chemical complex that would not permit any leakage or release of mercury. This was proved conclusively wrong by Vimy and Lorscheider in 1985 when they demonstrated that the air inside the mouth with amalgams continually contained elemental mercury vapor, and the dynamic of chewing increased this vapor level substantially.

They further concluded that the amount of mercury released daily in patients with 12 or more amalgams either exceeded or comprised a major percentage of the maximal permissible dose of mercury from all environmental sources, as established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1972 (although it's highly debatable whether a heavy metal as toxic as mercury should really have a politically derived, "permissible" dose). The most acceptable exposure would be the one most closely approximating zero. Gay, et al, published similar conclusions on amalgam mercury leakage even earlier in the Lancet medical journal.5, 6 Faced with this information, the ADA smoothly shifted gears and asserted that, although mercury was slowly released from the amalgams, the amounts were too small to matter, completely ignoring the significance of the data and findings of Vimy and Lorscheider.

Mercury's Widespread Toxic Effects

Mercury is the most toxic (nonradioactive) inorganic heavy metal known to man. Its effects are enormously widespread and really leave no part or system of the body untouched. Exposure to mercury through its numerous industrial and commercial uses accounts for significant accumulation in our bodies. The added load arising from amalgams often tips the scales in favor of toxicity.

The previously noted elemental mercury vapor that emanates from the amalgams is almost completely inhaled, little of it being lost outside of the mouth and body. Such inhalation allows for a rapid and complete absorption across the alveolar membrane in the lungs. This mercury easily crosses the blood/brain barrier (the brain and nervous system's natural defense against many toxic substances) subsequently binding very strongly to the sulfur containing proteins of the nervous tissue.

This same affinity for binding sulfur allows its deposit in virtually all of the body's other tissues and organs. In fact, the much-maligned scapegoat in today's health, cholesterol, appears to actually afford a protective mechanism against the slow and insidious release of mercury into the bloodstream by binding it up and allowing it to be excreted before it gets its grips into any of the body's tissues. High cholesterol levels may represent just a healthy metabolism doing its best to neutralize the continual release of a toxin.7 Patients who undergo amalgam removal consistently show shifts of their cholesterol into or toward the normal range, often within days of such removal.

Investigators have noted that low cholesterol levels, or sudden drops in cholesterol, appeared to cause an increase in the incidence of homicides, suicides, and accidents.8 Sudden fits of uncontrolled anger and temper, severe depression, and loss of coordination and motor control are some of the most common manifestations of chronic mercury poisoning. Perhaps, then, cholesterol drops give the newly released mercury the "edge" in a body that already has significant mercury stored in its tissues. For those who may still doubt that mercury is really accumulating in their bodies from their amalgams, cadaver examinations have conclusively demonstrated that the greater the number of amalgams, the greater the amount of mercury found in the brain tissues. Just five amalgams increased brain mercury levels threefold over controls.9

Mercury and Pregnancy

Mercury is even less considerate to the unborn. Methylmercury, the organic form of mercury that forms after oral ingestion of mercury, is 100 times more toxic than the previously mentioned elemental mercury. This form of mercury quickly and easily passes the placental barrier and builds up to 30% higher red blood cell levels in the fetus than in the mother.10

Stillbirths are significantly correlated with maternal blood mercury levels, and, as might be expected, mothers with larger numbers of amalgams tended to have higher maternal blood mercury levels.11 Depending upon the degree of Methylmercury exposure to the fetus, the damage rendered can range from death (stillbirth) to mental retardation to an apparently normal birth, but sometimes such seeming normalcy at birth is followed by psychomotor and behavioral disturbances as the nervous system attempts to mature in the growing child. Such disturbed children had significant increases in hair mercury and lead levels.12, 13 Even after birth, the blood mercury levels were higher in the infants than in their mothers for the first four months. Furthermore, these elevated levels were supplemented by the mercury transmitted through breastfeeding.14

Official ADA Stand

Presently, in the ADA "Code of Professional Conduct," it states:

Based on available scientific data, the ADA has determined through the adoption of Resolution 42H-1986 that the removal of amalgam restoration from the non-allergic patient for the alleged purpose of removing toxic substances from the body, when such treatment is performed solely at the recommendation or suggestion of the dentist, is improper and unethical. (emphasis mine)

In other words, the ADA is telling the dentists of America that they don't have the right to counsel their patients regarding the poisonous effects of mercury, unless, of course, they don't mind losing their licenses to practice dentistry. Patient beware!

Unless the patient is an active advocate for the health of himself and his family, constantly researching the medical facts for himself, it can't be expected that his dentist will share the truth about mercury, unless the patient asks first. After all, the dentist has to feed his family, and his talents aren't really directly applicable to much of anything else. Sadly enough, more than a third of dentists in a survey published in the December 1989 issue of Dentist magazine believe that all silver (mercury) alloy fillings should he removed and replaced with composites. Exactly what the ADA's true intents and goals are is hard to fathom, but it's hard to conceive that patient welfare is very high on their agenda, if, indeed, it's on the agenda at all.

After CBS-TV ran a 60 Minutes segment on the amalgam issue in December of 1990, the Washington State Dental Association, amazingly, promptly informed its members that their patients did not have a right to know that their "silver fillings" contained mercury.15 Moreover, that segment purportedly received the highest viewer response ever, but it's never been repeated, despite the fact that other episodes are frequently rerun. Is there another unknown agenda here?

In April, 1994, the Journal of the American Dental Association, in an analysis of a review of the benefits and risks of dental amalgam conducted by the US Public Health Service (USPHS) and published in 1993, made prominent note of the estimated costs for replacement of dental amalgams in the entire country. It was stated that one-time replacement of all existing amalgams in permanent posterior teeth would cost 248 billion dollars. It was further pointed out that the increased cost in 1990 had alternative restorative materials been used instead of the amalgams that were placed in the 96 million treated teeth would have been 12.4 billion dollars.16 Money usually talks, and that's a lot of money.

Multiple Sclerosis - Predominantly A Dental Disease?

In his classic original description of multiple sclerosis (MS) around the mid-1830s Cruveilhier attributed the disease to suppression of sweat, and according to the Fifth Edition of the Principles of Neurology (1993) textbook, "since that time there has been endless speculation about the etiology.''17 It is very interesting to note that the first mercury fillings were placed in unwitting mouths in France shortly before Cruveilhier's observation.

Specifically, around 1826, M. Taveau in Paris began promoting simple silver/mercury paste fillings. Additional amalgam components to this paste followed shortly thereafter when patients consistently demonstrated fractured teeth due to expansion of the paste after setting.18 For the first reported appearance of MS to appear only a very few years after the first insertions of dental mercury should be hard to completely ignore for even the most ardent of the remaining amalgam advocates. Furthermore, Cruveilhier's initial observation that the disease seemed to relate to sweat suppression actually meshes nicely with today's knowledge that sweat induction (as in a dry sauna) is still one of the best ways to eliminate mercury from the body's stores.

Early in the course of the disease, and often when the diagnosis is not yet secure, MS will have characteristic fluctuations in symptom severity, but when the motor (muscle) weakness progresses to the point of requiring a wheelchair, remission is all but out of the question, unless amalgam removal is undertaken. Dr. Hal Huggins, a dentist in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been consistently witnessing improvement in MS patients undergoing amalgam removal for many years now, seeing clear symptomatic and laboratory test improvement in 80-85% of them presently, and often even seeing wheelchair patients who had not been wheelchair-bound for too long, walk again. If these results are to be written off as "anecdotal" or "placebo effect," then Dr. Huggins certainly has the largest collection of sustained recurring anecdotal placebo responses of MS patients to amalgam removal in the world today. Witnessing such a response first-hand in a friend or relative is all the scientific literature that most people, including medical professionals, need.

Your Mouth Is Wired

The brain and central nervous system (CNS) are also strongly affected by the electrical current present in all mouths containing metal. This phenomenon is called oral galvanism. These currents can be measured very easily with a probe and a microammeter. Amalgams, metallic crowns, and braces generally all register from 1 to 100 microamperes of current in a positive or negative polarity. The natural currents found in the brain are in the range of 7 to 9 nanoamperes, making the mouth currents anywhere from 100 to 10,000 times more powerful (and the base of the brain is roughly only an inch away from the upper teeth).19 Small wonder, then, that so many MS and miscellaneous neurological patients will demonstrate an immediate improvement in clinical status, often manifest as improved muscle strength and coordination. Similarly, removal of highly electrical dental material has shown occasional immediate effects on diverse other symptoms such as severe migraine headaches, chronic cough, jaw pain, muscle cramping, chest pain, energy level, and even depression.

It's also very important to note at this juncture that when Dr. Huggins first began removing mercury amalgams in 1973, he was only successful in improving the clinical status and abnormal laboratory findings in approximately 10% of MS patients. His success rate reached about 60% in 1979 when he realized the importance of sequential removal of the amalgams according to the amount of current measured on each one, removing the ones with the highest negative current first.

About this time as well he realized the paramount importance of proper nutrition and supplementation of vitamins and minerals specifically based on each patient's laboratory profile. It was unfortunately too common for a patient to resolve almost completely clinically, later disregard the dietary and supplementation recommendations, and come "crashing" back to his pre-amalgam removal clinical status months or even years later. Even after amalgam removal, it was clear that all of the MS patients, even the ones with apparent complete recovery, would be walking a tightrope for the remainder of their lives, due to their remaining high total body stores of mercury and the frequently noted secondary immune reactions seen after amalgam removal, debilitating them whenever their bodies encountered more mercury, either environmentally or through ingestion, as in fish and seafood (foods extremely high methylmercury content).

Other non-mercuric toxins need to he avoided as well to maintain an acceptable clinical status. As an example, fluoride in all its forms needs to he scrupulously avoided by such patients, as it can also retard clinical progress or even promote frank clinical relapse. (Huggins himself is all too keenly aware of the nuances and persistence of MS as a disease, as he has had it for many years now, but keeps the symptoms largely in check by following the lifestyle modifications, diet, and supplementation regimens strictly.) Finally, in the mid-to late 1980s Dr. Huggins came to appreciate the importance of chronic dental infections, as seen in virtually all root canals and cavitations (healed over holes at the sites of previous extractions). When these teeth were removed and all new and old extraction sites properly cleaned, he finally reached his present success rate with MS.

While it is very noteworthy to realize that the significance of these sites of chronic dental infection was first appreciated in the work and experiments of the great dentist, Weston A. Price, in the 1920s. Dr. Huggins was the first modern dentist to appreciate Price's profound research and apply it in today's dentistry. Unfortunately, only a frighteningly tiny percentage of dentists even now are aware of or concerned over Dr. Price's work or Dr. Huggins' reproduction of much of that work and application of it clinically. Even the Multiple Sclerosis Society has actively campaigned against looking into the mercury issue, sending out letters stating that they have "thoroughly checked" the literature and found no correlation between amalgam and MS. Once again, one can only wonder what the real agenda here is.20

In a poll of 1,320 patients at the Huggins Diagnostic Center (HDC), unexplained irritability, frequent depression, numbness and tingling of the extremities, chronic fatigue, tremors and difficulty with memory were seen in a majority. These symptoms are also among the most common symptoms in MS patients as well. Even when frank MS is not present, these symptoms in isolation all respond as well or better than MS with amalgam removal. It would appear logical to assume that many such patients with isolated symptoms as above could be at one end of a continuum that will lead to MS or a similar debilitating neurological syndrome if the continual absorption of mercury into their bodies is not addressed.

Over the approximately 20 year period in which Dr. Huggins has treated literally thousands of patients, he's noticed that in recent years his MS patients are becoming younger and the disease is progressing more rapidly. Many patients become absolutely wheelchair-bound even when their first clear symptoms were only two and one half to three years earlier. Around the same time this was observed, the "high-copper" amalgam (an amalgam with a substantially greater amount of copper) began to be utilized with increasing frequency. This amalgam was found to release 50 times more mercury than the previous conventional amalgam.21 It seems the more dentistry advanced, the worse it got. You should also be amazed (and, perhaps, stupefied) to know that "high-copper" amalgams were actually outlawed several decades ago due to their severe cytotoxicity (ability to kill cells in the body).22 Why are they back? This author surely doesn't know.

More Toxic Effects

In studies where test animals inhaled mercury vapor, the uptake of mercury was greatest in the kidneys, followed by brain, heart, intestine, and liver in decreasing order.23 Additional target sites include the testes, ovaries, and pancreas, as well as the thyroid, adrenal, and pituitary glands. Essential hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart disease have showed steady increases in recent decades, and chronic mercury toxicity can be related to them both. Smaller amounts of inorganic mercury elevate the blood pressure and larger amounts can cause direct heart muscle damage (cardiomyopathy), resulting in heart failure and an ultimate lowering of blood pressure.24 In a very recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology nearly half of 673 patients with enlarged hearts and heart failure were classified as "idiopathic," or cause unknown, despite extensive testing.25 Of extreme interest in this regard is the discovery by Soviet researchers that mercury binds avidly to sulfur-containing contractile (squeezing ability) protein sites in the heart muscle itself,26 a property that could ultimately cause the poorly functioning, enlarged hearts as mentioned above. Perhaps that "cause unknown" fraction of the patients is not completely unknown after all. You'll recall the postulated protective effect of high cholesterol levels against mercury toxicity. Haber, et al, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that in patients with chronic heart failure, heart function was clearly worse in those patients with the lower cholesterols.27 It would seem that the lower cholesterols made a toxic situation even more toxic. And, in addition to being a possible primary cause for many cases of idiopathic heart failure, mercury toxicity could very readily serve as a co-factor in worsening heart failure in cases that have been assigned another etiology, or cause.

In the pancreas there are groups of cells called the Islets of Langerhans, which function to secrete the body's insulin and thereby regulate the blood sugar. Mercury has an affinity for these cells and appears to directly affect the sugar metabolism in some patients.28 In fact, diabetics requiring insulin shots who undergo amalgam removal frequently show a decreased need for insulin subsequently. When this fact is ignored in the course of amalgam removal, some patients can go into insulin shock (severe low blood sugar) when their blood sugars are not monitored closely and their insulin doses are not appropriately lowered.

Autoimmune and collagen vascular diseases are also commonly caused, or worsened by, chronic mercury poisoning. The disease known to the public as "lupus" is probably the most infamous of this disease group. These diseases are characterized by a duping of the body's immune system, in which the body actually attacks certain of its own tissues after they sustain damage from outside agencies or toxins, such as mercury. Autoantibodies, produced by the body and directed against itself, allow for the laboratory diagnosis of these diseases. In experimental animals, mercury exposure induced such autoantibody production in greater than 90% of the time.29 At the HDC, Dr. Huggins has also seen a good response from such patients undergoing full dental revision. (The chronic infections in the previously mentioned root canals and cavitations can also strongly promote chronic autoimmune activity and must be addressed in these patients as well.)

Curing the Incurable?

Leukemias, as well as other malignancies, have also often been observed to respond to the Huggins protocol. A particularly interesting leukemia, and still totally incurable by traditional methods, is chronic lymphocytic leukemia. A very slowly progressive disease, and often asymptomatic for years in the older patients it commonly involves, it is characterized by elevations, sometimes astronomical, of the white blood cells. These same cells have been noted to increase after amalgam placement. Amalgam removal has been accompanied by rapid drops in this cell count in some leukemics after only a few days. Almost ironically, some leukemia patients actually seem to be mounting an excessive immune response to the mercury exposure, and this excessive response is what eventually kills them.30

Other "incurable" diseases have also responded to total dental revision. These diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, "Lou Gehrig's disease"), Parkinson's disease, and even Alzheimer's disease. It should be emphasized, however, that although these diseases do often respond, the clinical improvements are generally not as profound or as quick to appear as in some other diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome or MS. Bear in mind, however, that modern medicine is presently doing very little for all three, beyond diagnosis and custodial care.

One of my own patients had such an advanced neurological syndrome, previously diagnosed as Parkinsonism, that he literally resembled a piece of wood in my office, unable even to bend and conform appropriately to his wheelchair. He could neither move his head, make facial expressions, nor talk. The extent of his contact with the world was limited to squeezing his sister's hand with his right hand. In less than two weeks, after total dental revision, he was moving his head, smiling, moving all of his limbs, crying for joy, and forming his first simple words in a long time. No amount of cynicism from any of my medical or dental colleagues will convince me that my trained medical eyes didn't see what they saw, or that I witnessed something of no consequence because it wasn't in a "controlled clinical trial." I saw life return.

Deadly Alternatives

Unfortunately, from a dental perspective, maintaining good health involves more than just avoidance of mercury. Nickel is rapidly gaining a severely toxic reputation as well. Most partial dentures are made of nickel. Approximately 80% of crowns utilize nickel, even so-called porcelain crowns, where nickel is often the base onto which the porcelain is fired. The braces worn by many children and young adults are usually nickel, (Stainless steel is usually nickel alloy.) Nickel compounds have been unequivocally implicated as human respiratory carcinogens in epidemiological studies of nickel refinery workers.31 Moreover, recent data is indicating a relationship between nickel crowns and breast cancer in women.32 Although many children appear to tolerate braces without apparent difficulty many children also become chronically ill or lose mental acuity in school, and no thought is ever given to the nickel braces as an etiology. For those parents who must put braces into their children's mouths, or even nickel crowns, consideration should be given to pre- and post-insertion checks on lymphocyte viability, a measure of the percentage of lymphocytes (a white blood cell important in the immune process) that are actually alive and functional. Nickel is notorious for killing these important cells, and a significant drop (>10% or more from a normal of 95-100% alive) is a red flag, indicative of an immune system virtually screaming to get the nickel out.33

Cast glass crowns and inlays are some of the latest dental materials. However, be aware that this "glass" generally contains more that 25% aluminum as aluminum oxide. About 80% of patients with such dental work show laboratory findings consistent with some drop in immune function, in spite of the propaganda fed dentists that all of the components in this "glass" remain tightly bound and safe (just like the reassurances initially that amalgam remained forever intact).

Composites, filling materials consisting of ground glass powder mixed with a plastic binder, demonstrate laboratory immune reactivity in patients about 50% of the time. Certain composites (they 're not all the same) evoked this reactivity in over 90% of patients.34 Composites certainly can be good as long as the individual patient has had the appropriate testing to verify a low level of immune reactivity to the components.

Serum Compatibility Testing

Presently, there are over 1000 different metal alloys from which to choose. But how to choose? Dr. Huggins found that the only safe (and scientific) way to know what was best (and least toxic) in any given mouth was to check the immune reactivity of the patient's blood serum against all of the commonly used dental materials. Virtually everybody shows some reactivity to all materials, but the degrees of reactivity can range widely, and such a laboratory profiling allows for an intelligent selection of the least reactive dental materials in a given patient. Some unfortunate patients who were aware only of mercury's toxicity have had wonderful recoveries from their various illnesses after amalgam removal, only to precipitously relapse after reacting severely to the replacement dental fillings. Certainly, some composites used are usually safe, but is avoiding a blood test really worth one's health? There is NO good excuse not to use such testing prior to dental work, especially in the case of children preparing for their first dental visits.

Hidden Dental Infections - Mercury's Little Brother

Dr. Weston A. Price, in 1923, published his 1100 page, two volume treatise on dental infections, entitled Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic (Vol. 1) and Dental Infections and the Degenerative Diseases (Vol. 2). The results of his research were nothing short of profound. While it may seem a ridiculous statement to make, he found that there seemed to be hardly any disease or disease process that was not either primarily caused by dental infections or just worsened by them. The heart and circulatory system appeared to be favorite target sites for the bacteria and/or their toxins. Dr. Price observed angina pectoris, phlebitis, hypertension, heart block, anemia and inflammation of the heart muscle to often be side effects of root canal therapy. He also reported that he would sometimes see heart patients with outwardly normal appearing root canal teeth resolve most or all of their symptoms upon removal of those teeth.

One of Dr. Price's experimental techniques was to implant extracted root canal teeth under the skin of rabbits after removal from patients with various illnesses. Amazingly, not only would the rabbit become ill, but the animal would reliably develop precisely the same primary disease that the human tooth donor had. In this fashion, Dr. Price transferred to rabbits arthritis; heart lesions; kidney, liver, and gallbladder disease; anemia; pneumonia; appendicitis; eye, ear, and skin disorders; and nervous system disorders, to name only a few.35 For the more skeptical, it also should be noted that he would use the same tooth, or shavings from it, sequentially in a minimum of 30 rabbits, consistently demonstrating the same disease transferal.

The underlying premise behind the toxicity of root canals is basically twofold: 1) they cannot be sterilized, and they all demonstrate chronic infection, however normal they may appear clinically, and 2) the anaerobic (oxygen-lacking) environment they offer in the root tips allows otherwise benign, oxygen-utilizing mouth bacteria to undergo a toxic transformation, causing the production of thioethers as a bacterial byproduct. These thioethers alone proved to be potent sources of disease as well. Dr. Price would grind up the root canal teeth, wash them with a solution, filter the solution through a bacteria-retaining filter, and, upon injecting the germ-free solution (containing the thioethers), still cause the same reactions in the rabbits as with the whole teeth.

When Dr. Huggins discovered Dr. Price's research, noting especially the amazing results reported in numerous patients with all variety of chronic degenerative diseases, he incorporated root canal extraction into his routine of dental revision, and he immediately saw a dramatic further increase in positive patient response, as noted earlier. However, some patients would show an initial dramatic improvement for a few months, and then they would demonstrate a slow but progressive backslide, sometimes back to baseline, even when they were following all lifestyle, dietary, and supplement recommendations.

Dr. Huggins then had what proved to be a truly brilliant insight. Every extracted tooth has its own capsule in the jawbone called the periodontal ligament, which was always routinely left behind after extractions (and, unfortunately, nearly all dentists still leave it in today). Dr. Huggins reasoned that the deep-seated root canal infections likely infected this ligament as well, and once the bone healed over top, the same circumstances of chronic infection could persist even without the root canal tooth being any longer in place. He then initiated a quick and simple routing out of this ligament, along with about 1 millimeter of surrounding jawbone following extractions. Similarly, because the ligaments were always left behind, he postulated that most people probably never filled bone in completely, even after decades-old extractions (often the case with wisdom teeth removal), and upon routine exploration these old sites did usually show a hole, or cavitation. These sites were then approached like fresh extractions, with removal of the old ligaments and some surrounding bone, and they would nearly always show a prompt healing, this time with a totally filling in of bone.

One final extension of this reasoning led Dr. Huggins to realize that even previously normal teeth that were severely traumatized with loss of nerve and blood supply ("dead teeth") would then usually become infected eventually just like root canal teeth, needing extraction with site cleaning for optimal results. These final modifications to Dr. Huggins' approach to dental revision have brought him to his present level of success.

An additional note should be made here about edentulous (toothless) patients. As noted above, most such patients probably have numerous cavitations, since the periodontal ligaments were likely not removed at the time of the extractions. In the older patients lacking a robust immune system, such a situation could still severely compromise their health in any of the numerous ways already mentioned even in the absence of any implanted metals or other dental materials. Note should also be made of the fact that the "pink" in the artificial denture plates comes from mercury-containing pigment. Clear plates with just a few front teeth separated by the pink component is often a reasonable compromise between cosmetic appeal and additional mercury exposure.

Immune Cycles

Having also completed a Master of Science program at the University of Colorado in 1989, in which he focused primarily on immunology. Dr. Huggins was also aware of the importance of the timed cycling of the patient's immune response after significant stress, such as in most surgery. After the major stress of extensive dental work, the patient's immune system will cycle over the next 7. 14,21, and 28 days (and even longer), demonstrating the greatest immune system vulnerability at those points to any additional stress (such as additional dental work). These days are specifically avoided in the scheduling of subsequent dental work, in order to help optimize the patient's recuperative powers. In support of this concept, Erhard Haus, M.D., at the University of Minnesota, observed that transplant patients tended to have more rejection episodes at 7, 14, 21, and 28 days post-surgery. He even noted that unicellular organisms and rodents displayed similar 7-day (circaseptan) rhythms.36

Are You Toxic?

This is not always clear-cut. There is really no single test that will provide this information. Characteristic patterns have emerged in blood, urine, and hair analysis testing, but an absolute laboratory diagnosis is still not possible. Dr. Huggins has been in the unique position of observing "before and after" laboratory profiles on literally thousands of patients, and he has observed certain reasonably consistent reflections of mercury (and other dental material) toxicity.

He has also observed the direct effects of various dietary and supplementation interventions on laboratory values, giving him clear feedback on the foods best to avoid and the vitamins and minerals best to take. If you have a mouth full of amalgams and/or root canals, and you feel that you may well have compromised health because of them, a good first step to recovery is to obtain your own labwork as a guide to what your vitamin and mineral supplementation should be.

Many patients have excess stores of certain minerals, and "shot-gun" supplementation with many multivitamin/multimineral formulations can worsen a situation rather than help, making some of the excess minerals even more excessive and thereby toxic. For example, the body does require some copper and chromium, but these can easily be made toxic if their levels are already somewhat high and supplements containing them are taken. Similarly, if such levels are deficient and not specifically addressed, they tend to remain deficient.

What Should You Do?

First of all, DO NOT rush out and get your amalgams removed by a dentist who has not convinced you of his awareness of mercury toxicity, or of his ability to perform such removals with maximal safety precautions. Although the numbers of such dentists are very slowly increasing, the numbers are still very small for the vast number of patients that need attention. Your health could be worsened rather than improved if too much mercury is dumped into your body during the removal process.

Probably the first consideration in this process is an honest evaluation of how healthy you really are. If you're robust, full of energy, and free of any significant symptoms, then rushing out and getting a complete dental revision may not be the way to immediately go, especially if you are one of the many who are financially compromised and only able to address the usual bills. However, this should not dissuade you from considering adopting certain significant dietary modifications and undergoing minimal laboratory testing to determine a program of specific supplementation, as just mentioned above. Everybody should undergo full biocompatibility testing to determine his or her individual sensitivities prior to further, (or first), dental work. Prevention is always so much easier than undoing what has already been done.

On the other hand, if your health is severely compromised, and especially if you can trace the biggest, or most rapid decline, in your health to be close in time to your last dental intervention, then a complete dental revision may be the most important factor in regaining or improving your health. Dr. Huggins has given seminars to thousands of dentists now, and although all of them do not embrace all that he advises, his clinic (HDC) also serves as a central information center that can help callers find the nearest dentists who better understand the amalgam and dental toxicity issues, and who can help them address their situations, wherever they may live.

Minimal protocol standards for amalgam removal would include the following: