Dear Subscribers,

It's been a long time since I tried to cover some of the many, many issues surrounding tooth care. However, halfway through the last post, a crown broke on one of my molars and I see now that some information I posted previously is either out-of-date or vastly in need of updates.

In the past, I was a big advocate of Cerec dental restorations but it was, in fact, a Cerec that broke. There is one major advantage to Cerecs and this is that the inlay, onlay, or crown is milled in the office so you could call this one-stop dentistry. By making a restoration on site, the patient is spared second visits and the additional trauma of molds, temporaries, and twice as much anesthesia, not to mention other toxic substances. Cerecs are widely available in some areas are harder to find in others. My dentist's machine broke and he does not plan to repair it which means there is no one reasonably close at this time and others have been telling me this for years. So the epitaph for the Cerec is that that the Cerecs wear more slowly than real teeth and therefore the bite needs to be periodically checked.

In the past, I used to look at my blood after a dental procedure. It was full of blue blobs which eventually disappeared, but seeing them alerted me to the hazards of agreeing to procedures that are quite normal for dentists and therefore usually unquestioned by patients. If you think I am talking in circles, just think fluoride. Your dentist — who is at least partly responsible for educating you on tooth care — has reduced his lessons to 20-second sound bites on flossing, after which he gives you some artificially flavored dental floss and fluoridated toothpaste.

One dentist told me that he prefers offering his patients fewer choices because there is less to explain. This gives the patient the impression that there are only two choices whereas in reality there are several hundred choices. A filling, for instance, used to be typically made of a malleable amalgam that is 49-53% mercury. This highly dangerous substance was routinely placed into teeth without any warnings and usually without any discussion. Amalgams are now forbidden in some countries and are being increasingly questioned by patients and consumer advocates. Mercury is toxic because it is unstable and it leaches. Most of the loss is in the early stages of placement into the tooth so the other problem is that the leached mercury might be deposited elsewhere in the body. Some years ago, I wrote a pdf on the history of mercury in dentistry. It was the first pdf I ever posted, but many will still find it interesting:

http://subscriptions.bioethika.com/pdf/mercury_toxicity.pdf

After years and years, decades, of professional and political action, awareness of the risks of mercury has reached a level where dentists are refusing to use this substance or municipalities or states and entire countries are banning it as has happened in Sweden and several other countries. The problem is that because of the leaching, removing an old filling does not necessarily solve the problem. What is the problem? Officially or unofficially, most of the problems associated with mercury toxicity are neurological in nature, but the immune system is also heavily affected by toxic metals. Recently, some victims of mercury poisoning have had their day in court and prevailed but most cases are appealed and there is still massive denial surrounding the hazards to which most people were routinely exposed via dentistry and vaccines where another form of mercury is used as preservative. There are two directions to go from here: alternatives to amalgams and chelation of toxic metals.

The usual alternative to amalgams is something called a composite. I have written about this recently because while much more aesthetic than amalgams, it would be ludicrous to call these fillings safe. I had all of mine removed but I think, like amalgams, they remain dangerous until completely eliminated from the system. Composites are made with resins and inorganic fillers. They are estrogenic and often rely on bisphenol-A in the base material. Like mercury, they off gas and often have a "taste" that is completely unnatural. They do a number on hormones because they are massively disruptive to the endocrine system. As I said in a recent post, for cancer patients with estrogen-sensitive tumors or anyone else who is concerned about xenoestrogens because of their impact on secondary sexual characteristics or normal sexual unfoldment and libido, such substances can be nightmares.

Let's pause for a moment. Relatively speaking, amalgams and composites are inexpensive compared to other materials, but neither are safe. The fillings themselves are unstable. Amalgams, despite the leaching, expand with time and can cause tooth fractures whereas composites shrink and leave the tooth vulnerable to decay.

Hazard Reduction

The official term for removal of toxic metals is chelation. There are two main ways to chelate: oral chelation and intravenous chelation. Some people are able to eliminate through the skin, but usually only if this is triggered by substances used in oral or IV chelation. Most mercury is eliminated via the kidneys when passing water. Dr. Omura found that cilantro acts as an effective oral chelating herb. He stumbled upon this quite by accident because the cilantro was simply a garnish on a soup served to patients who were participating in a study. The patients were themselves practitioners with terminal prognoses so the study is compelling for a number of reasons. There is much we can learn from this study, some of it hypothetical and unpublished and some already well understood by many people. If one has amalgams, eating cilantro would tend to mobilize material from fillings and produce symptoms. I have a proprietary method for extracting cilantro but when I first took it, I still had amalgams and I overdosed. I had a guest in the house and was walking towards the kitchen when I felt like my legs were going out from under me. I grabbed the arm of my guest and you can imagine what went through his mind. Two days later, the same thing happened to him. This is a warning! Be sure to by-pass the amalgams if ingesting cilantro, this whether as a tincture or food.

The other point is obviously that you don't need to get cilantro from me. You can grow it yourself and make a pesto or garnish or chutney or whatever you want, but you still have to be just as careful. My cilantro is just for the convenience having something handy where the dosage is easily adjusted. For those who are interested, I have a pesto recipe here:

http://toxicteeth.com/cilantro_pesto.php

It's Sunday, you know the day I allow myself freedom to reflect and speculate.

A few people believe that cilantro aka coriander is a soil remediation plant. I don't know whether or not it is officially classified as such but some other plants that are definitely used for remediation are also used in Ayurvedic medicine for improving brain function. To give this a really firm context that you can perhaps appreciate, think of aluminum as being primarily associated with Alzheimer's disease and mercury as being more associated with attention deficit disorder and autism. You might say that cradle to death, we are challenged by toxic metals but if the best way to learn from Nature is to observe her, I would study plants that grow in swampy areas or anywhere else that the soil is wretched.

Now for those who are cynical and think that all the mercury that is excreted is from the plants themselves, I want to interject that rigorous tests are performed on the plants so they are not contaminated when processed into herbal formulations but they seem to have the same action on metals in the body as they do in the soil. There is probably some word for such plants, like metallophilic, but if not, let's make up our own words.

Today I am going to go to extra pains to dot every "i" because even though my intuitive mind has difficulty with details, it is important for you to understand a few more points. First, though the original Omura study was based on a tiny amount of garnish, others have taken the ball and run with it. The first adjunctive support for cilantro was chlorella. Some people are using it and some are skipping it. I added warnings about supporting the kidneys and preferably also the liver, lungs, intestines, and brain. Why?

First of all, there are what is known as good excreters and poor excreters. This conclusion resulted from reverse findings from what was expected in a study of autism. Those with the highest amount of mercury in their urine had the fewest symptoms of disease. It was hypothesized that children are exposed to approximately the same number of childhood vaccines containing Thimerosal but those who are good excreters, i.e., have more mercury in the urine, are less symptomatic than those who do not manage to push the mercury out of their bodies. What can we deduce from this finding?

If one were to take cilantro and kick loose some mercury that is sequestered in some part of the brain or in the lungs or wherever, that mercury will move from the storage tissue into circulation. From this point, it will either be eliminated or reabsorbed. If the mercury is forced to bond with chlorella or some other agent, the odds of eliminating it are better, especially for the poor excreters. While in circulation, the mercury produces different symptoms than when in storage and for some people the irritation, nervousness, and instability are practically unbearable. However, the whole effort is futile if the mercury is simply reabsorbed and placed back into storage, in the same site or a new repository.

The questions people ask about chelation are usually whether all the products recommended are needed or some will be enough. I think the answer is that those with the most symptoms need to be the most cautious but erring on the side of caution is never a mistake whereas cutting corners can be dangerous. If people take smaller amounts over a longer period of time, they will probably succeed even if they are basically poor excreters.

To wrap this up, let me simply say that just as mercury-free dentists have suffered for their opposition to products that have regulatory approval, many doctors and dentists who offer chelation to their patients have also had unpleasant experiences with authorities. This is lamentable, but I don't want to get into a funk right now, and I particularly do not want to drag others out of their bliss into a funk.

Xenoestrogens

My article on xenoestrogens might also be out-of-date. I put it online almost a decade ago:

http://www.kitchendoctor.com/health_issues/excess_estrogen.php

This is a more challenging issue and brings up more philosophical as well as practical issues. Since first writing that piece, more problems have come to my attention. Of course, the handwriting was on the wall. As fish were born without sexual differentiation, it had to be simply a matter of time before the problem spread to other species whose reproductive cycles are longer. Lest this not be clear, let me say that in species that live shorter lives, they may procreate after only weeks or months of birth whereas humans generally don't even reach puberty until age 12, but this obviously varies considerably. Most do not have children until at least in their 20s. Since there are exceptions, all I am saying is that the consequences of environmental pollution and use of xenoestrogens in medical products would take longer to become evident in human populations. We have seen a surge of children born without clear sexual differentiation as well as problems, particularly among boys, of effeminate development or inability to develop masculine secondary sexual characteristics. This means that instead of the voice lowering and facial hair appearing, boys may develop breasts or even have hips that are more padded than the boys who were lucky enough to escape the estrogen mimicking by-products of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The issue for me has always been how these industrial products make their way into medicines? When you answer that question, you will know why I am passionate about "natural".

There are two areas of dentistry where the door is wide open to these wretched compounds. The first, as noted, is with composite fillings, but the second is something that is even harder to avoid, the bonding agents that are usually highly toxic as well as estrogenic. I have been researching these for years but because of the broken Cerec machine, I have to investigate a whole new range of products and I think it's time to bring my own files up-to-date. I have less than 24 hours to do this so your help would be most appreciated.

In the meantime, I think we ought to look at xenoestrogens from the perspective of a female as well as that of a male. Women's reproductive hormones are cyclical so while some estrogens can be balanced by progesterone, this is not a reasonable approach for males. However, both genders can use herbs that increase fire because this drives out the water of the reproductive system. It however does this somewhat at the expensive of both libido and fertility. You can read that article. A few people have been complaining about the length of my posts, but I figure you will read as much or as little as you like.

In the meantime, let me simply say that the amount of xenoestrogens is absolutely astronomical, by which I mean that if a woman's total production of estrogen over a lifetime were to be measured, a single dental procedure can sometimes introduce more fake estrogens than her body would have produced in an entire lifetime. It's criminally insane to put anyone through such an experience and yet it happens every day, all day long, in countless practices all over the world.

Other Issues

There is much more to add here, sections on anesthetics, bonding agents, and materials used in restorations such as inlays, onlays, crowns, and bridges. There is no safe dental procedure, only procedures that are less toxic than others. Even gold crowns have to be bonded and all are alloys of something or other with more or less gold.

Very few people are so sensitive that they have zero tolerance to all methods. However, over the years, I have met several people who are this sensitive. A few have allowed cavities to remain untreated. They have tried to manage the risk of further decay through very good hygiene and sometimes remineralizing products. A few have succeeded in remineralizing teeth. I discussed this with a dentist years ago after watching a program on Nova about a French surgeon who used coral implants in bones where malignancies had been drilled out. It was fascinating because the method used was to drill holes using tools similar to what a carpenter uses, but, of course, higher quality than you find in hardware stores. The holes were plugged with coral that had been milled to fit perfectly. The coral was sterilized and after three years, the bone remineralized perfectly without the slightest trace of where the natural bone was and where the coral had been placed.

It turns out that coral is an approved dental material and my dentist at that time was able to source it. I told him to put it inside a tooth and to cap the tooth with a thin temporary. I think it worked and, of course, when I run experiments on myself, I take responsibility for the outcome. Others I know made up special dentifrices with trace minerals or dolomite and used these for brushing. This also has occasional successes. The point is simply that perseverance is absolutely necessary. I think a lot of people are so acidic that calcium is always being leached from bones to pacify the blood. Correcting the pH may liberate some calcium for use in regeneration of weakened bones and teeth, the priority probably going to blood first, bones second, and teeth last.

Continuation

The toxicteeth.com web site was started about a year ago and never completed, but I would be more than happy to post your research (with links and credits) so that not everyone has to rediscover the wheel. In the meantime, I would like to make two more comments. One is about Ormus, a powder or liquid that is allegedly based on discoveries in King Solomon's tomb. Many miraculous events are attributed to it but no claims are made. We are all probably mineral deficient. I have been eating a lot of seaweed and taking pravalmoti (made from coral and pearls) for the last several months and the irony is that the fractured crown feels like a good event, a liberation from some procedure that needed to be done differently or better.

Lastly, I have not given an update on kaya kalpa for a long time. The reason is that the preparation for rejuvenation is a very personal process that requires sorting through all our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual habits and dysfunctions. After the experience of my colleagues and friends, I realize that I personally need more time to prepare, but the bottom line is that one person got five new teeth, something well within the range of what to expect when doing kaya kalpa, but teeth did not come in straight. If I were to speculate on the reason, it would be that the usual kaya kalpa is done in remote areas, usually a jungle, but this was done in an urban setting amidst microwave towers and instead of going into deep meditation, the connections with the outside world were maintained by cell phones and walkie talkies. In short, the experiment shows promise but leaves room for perfecting. I plan to study the details and try for some improvements in outcome: new teeth would be most welcome! It is not a cosmetic or even practical issue for me. I appreciate that the body is supposed to be organic and I am not happy with the nonsense in my teeth!

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Mercury and the Immune System

The End of All Diseases || How We Observe || Photomicrography
A Perspective on Red Blood Cells || Nutrients and Red Blood Cells || How We Die

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