In the USA solely, daily, around 41,000 such dental procedures are performed on patients. Known as an endodontic treatment or root canal, this is the removal of an inflamed or infected pulp, after which, the tooth’s inside is cleaned and disinfected and then filled and sealed with gutta-percha. The tooth is then restored with a crown or a filling for protection.
These teeth are essentially ‘dead’ and they can breed highly toxic anaerobic bacteria, which may, under the right circumstances, penetrate the bloodstream and cause serious health problems, even decades later.
However, according to the American Dental Association, root canals are safe, even though there is no published data or research to substantiate the claim.
Weston A. Price
Doctor Price was a dentist and a researcher who travelled around the world in order to study teeth, bones, and diets of native populations who lived without modern -day food. In 1900, he had been treating persistent root canal infections and began doubting that these teeth remain infected regardless of the treatment.
One day, the doctor recommended to a female patient, who was bound to a wheelchair for 6 years, to remove her root canal tooth instead of doing the procedure. She agreed, the tooth was removed and then implanted under the skin of a rabbit and it developed the same arthritis as the female patients and died after 10 days. On the other hand, the lady, free of the toxic tooth, recovered from the arthritis and was able to walk without a wheelchair or a cane.
What Price discovered was the mechanical impossibility to sterilize a root-filled tooth and then he showed that a lot of chronic degenerative illnesses are caused by root-filled teeth, like heart and circulatory diseases.
In fact, he found 16 different bacterial agents and strong connections between these teeth and joint, brain, and nervous system diseases. In 1922, he wrote his two books with details of his research on the association between chronic diseases and dental pathology. But, his work was deliberately hidden for 70 years until an endodontist, George Meinig, recognized the value of Price’s work and decided to expose the truth.
Doctor Meinig was born in Chicago and was a captain in the U.S. Army during WWI and after the war; he moved to Hollywood and became a dentist there. Later on, he became a founding member of the AAE. In 1993, he published the book Root Canal Cover-Up.
What dentists don’t know
In the middle of the tooth, there is the pulp chamber, a soft, living inner structure which has blood vessels and nerves. Around the pulp chamber, there is the dentin which is made of living cells which secrete a hard mineral substance. And, the hardest and outer layer of the tooth is the white enamel encasing the dentin. The root of a tooth descends into the jawbone and is held by the periodontal ligament.
In dental school, dentists are taught that every tooth has 4 main canals, but the additional ones are never mentioned. Weston Price identified around 75 separate accessory canals in one central incisor. And, when a dentist performs a root canal procedure, they hollow out the tooth and fill the hollowness with gutta-percha. However, this cuts off the tooth from its blood supply and fluid is no longer able to circulate through the tooth. Bacteria, being cut off from their main food source, hide in these tunnels, safe from antibiotics and the body’s immune defenses.
Under oxidative stress and nutrient deprivation, these previously friendly organisms morph into stronger and virulent anaerobes that produce toxins and wait for the right opportunity to spread further. Unfortunately, sterilization was found unsuccessful in reaching these tubules and very often, the infection may extend down into the jawbone and create cavitations.
These are areas of unhealed bone accompanied by pockets of gangrene and infected tissue. They can form after a wisdom tooth extraction or root canal procedure. The problem is that this condition doesn’t manifest through visible symptoms and, you may have a dead tooth without knowing about it.
As long as your immunity is strong, bacteria coming from the infected tooth will be destroyed, but, once your immunity weakens by an illness, trauma, or an accident, the immunity won’t be able to hold off the infection. As a result, the bacteria may spread onto the surrounding tissues and then go into the bloodstream and from there, to any organ, gland, or tissue.
The diseases which have been associated with root canals are heart disease, kidney disease, rheumatic disease, neurological diseases, and autoimmune diseases.
According to Dr. Robert Jones, who researched the association between root canals and breast cancer, these are the connections he found through his 5-year study with 300 breast cancer cases:
93% of breast cancer patients had root canals
7% had other oral pathology
In most of the cases, the tumors were on the same side of the body as the root canal or other oral problem
A similar association was found by a German physician, that is, in his 40 years of treating terminally ill cancer patients, 97% of them had root canals done at some point in their lives. The presence of dead tissue may cause the immunity to launch an attack, which is yet another reason why this procedure should be avoided.
Nonetheless, the ADA rejects the evidence of Dr. Price and they still claim that this procedure is safe. There is a definite contradiction here since they recognize the fact that oral bacteria can make their way from the mouth to the heart and cause an infection since they prescribe antibiotics to patients who have undergone the procedure, but in the same time, they deny any possibility that these bacteria can be released in the bloodstream whenever a person chews.
Probably, the main reason for this is the fact that root canals are one of the most profitable procedures in dentistry.
What to do?
Instead of having this procedure, a far safer option is to remove the tooth; otherwise, the risk of serious health problems may increase. After a tooth extraction, there are several options that your dentist may recommend like partial denture, a bridge, or an implant.
