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Root Canals

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,298
Location
Ashland, Oregon
I and others are stuck with the decision between root canal and extraction. Extraction according to my dentist and independently my ME specialist who I saw yesterday is really virtually worthless with our condition. He said even if all the infection is removed, it will return.

I feel this is a very bad dream.

Hi Judith,

Thanks much for your reply. I posted a reply to you earlier, and now see that it's gone. Oh well, I guess I'll try to remember some of what I wrote.

RE: """I feel this is a very bad dream."""

I often feel this way as well. It feels like I spend so much of my days trying to wade through a thick fog. It often even feels sort of surreal at times. I can hardly think, while at the same time feel an urgent need to try to do relevant research that can help me make some major decisions. Not an easy task we have had presented to us!

RE: """He said even if all the infection is removed, it will return."""

I think I have to agree with Jenbooks on her take of this assertion. I'm not sure why your doctors feel this way. I would think that with some of the new laser technology for disinfecting, and skilled oral surgeons looking for various kinds of necrosis, that successful disinfection is quite possible.

The story I mentioned earlier about the woman who had all the classic symptoms of ME/CFS for (for several years), completely recovered within a couple days after having her oral infections properly treated. This woman happens to live here in Ashland where I live, and I was able to briefly talk with her one day. She is still doing extremely well years after her successful treatment.

I wish you the best as you move forward and try to make some good decisions for yourself. It sounds like it's been very difficult for you to wade through all this complex and frustrating stuff. My take is that we can only do the best we can, and hope our decisions work out well. I found that doing nothing invariably makes things worse. So despite all the difficulties of figuring out how to proceed, doing nothing I've found is generally not an option.

Warm Regards, Wayne
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,298
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Excerpt From Book: Diagnosis Unknown

The following is an excerpt from the book DIAGNOSIS UNKNOWN
The full online book can be accessed at:
http://aubreypub.typepad.com/writing/files/diagnosis-unknown-ebook.pdf

DIAGNOSIS UNKNOWN—Cavitation Surgery

The problem still had not been resolved. Why? The root canal
had not been extracted properly. The bone had not healed
completely leaving small pockets (cavitations) in the bone. These
cavitations became a home for toxins and infections.

Dr. Meinig outlines a very specific protocol for removing a root-canaled tooth.
This involves grinding out the periodontal ligament and the first
millimeter of bone and flushing out the socket with a saline solution.
This had apparently not been done when Linda’s root-canaled molars
had been pulled. The periodontal ligament which normally holds
the root of the tooth to its bony socket does not break down during
healing. As the bone heals and fills in, small spaces are left which
become filled with necrotic tissue and infection. The surgical removal
of this tissue and periodontal ligament was the procedure Linda was
undergoing while I studied dentistry.

It was dark in the waiting room of the Camelback Dental Clinic.
Suddenly, however, the light came on for me. The medical
establishment, dentists included, were apparently hazardous to
our health. Linda had originally been made ill by root canals.
Her condition had been exacerbated by multiple visits to doctors
and dentists who 1) extracted the root canals incompletely, leaving
pockets of infection in her jaw and 2) prescribed many courses
of antibiotics and steroidal drugs which stripped her body of
healthy bacteria, allowing harmful bacteria to overwhelm her
body’s ability to fight infection, toxins and environmental poisons.
They com pounded the problem by not having the ability to
diagnose specific causes, leaving us wandering aimlessly through
their obstacle course.

After three hours, I asked how Linda was doing and the nurse
invited me back. They were finishing up. Dr. Lee was a tall, serious
man about my age. He explained that he had cavitated the three
molars on the upper left side of Linda’s jaw. Doug had diagnosed
two but Dr. Lee believed a third area was also involved. He was
excited about his work and told me of a seminar he had just
attended involving blood studies.

Linda was worn out. Her jaw was packed with gauze. She was
trying to sit up. “I think we got it all,” said Dr. Lee. It was a mess.
Lots of cavities and tunnels. Really ugly stuff.”

“It smelled pretty bad,” said Baxann, Dr. Lee’s assistant.
“We like to get a biopsy, just to be safe. It costs $100 but it’s a
good idea. By the looks of the material, I don’t think it was
cancerous.”

“I don’t think so either,” said Baxann.
We were instructed to keep the packing on the stitches until the
drainage stopped, given a packet of calcium, some Traumheel—
a homeopathic medicine to aid healing—and something German,
“Homeopathisches Arzneimittel,” described as homeopathic
penicillin. Dr. Lee said it was excellent.

I paid the bill. It was $1,200. They accepted my out-of-state check.
Linda wanted an ice cream cone because she had been so good.
We found a Baskin and Robbins on Camelback Boulevard and
she ordered mint chocolate chip.

When we arrived at her mom and dad’s, Linda took to her bed. The
wound was draining. She thought it was bleeding and chomped on
gauze and tea bags until the gum became, I thought, infected. A
couple days after the surgery, I called Dr. Lee who advised us to
report back for an inspection. We did. The incision was infected. Dr.
Lee began treating the infection with injections of the homeopathic
penicillin. We had to come back four times, every third day or so, for
this treatment. The treatment, though painful, worked; the infection
went away and Dr. Lee cleared Linda for travel.

Before we had returned to Dr. Lee for the gum infection, Linda
experienced a classic natural healing event. It had been our
mistake to not let the cavitations drain thoroughly after surgery.
As a result, toxins were still held in the jaw area. Linda had been
extremely uncomfortable and her right index finger began to hurt.
The skin began to redden and swell at the first joint. A blister
began to appear, then to enlarge. I lanced it with a needle and a
huge amount of pus drained from the joint of the finger,
demonstrating that the body does attempt to move poisons as far
away from the vital organs as possible.

We thanked Dr. Lee for his help and I raised the possibility of
removing Linda’s amalgam fillings. Dr. Lee gave us reference
material to read and suggested it was a decision he could not
make for us. He was whispering again, a clear indication that the
ground was not completely safe. The good doctor did provide
Linda with a prescription for “Clifford Materials Reactivity
Testing,” a blood test which could predict patient sensitivity to
various substances used in dental materials.

When we arrived home there was a package of remedies from
Doug Leber and a biopsy from the Robert C. Bird Health Science
Center at West Virginia University. The diagnoses per the biopsy
was: “Chronic osteonecrosis and chronic fibrosing osteomyelitis
(consistent with NICO: neuralgia-inducing cavitational
osteonecro sis), maxillary left second and third molar area.”

According to the biopsy there was no evidence of malignancy.
The biopsy completely confirmed Doug Leber’s EAV diagnosis.
More important—the swelling around Linda’s left eye, which had
diminished slightly following Doug’s initial treatments, entirely
disappeared within two weeks following the cavitation surgery.
 

jenbooks

Guest
Messages
1,270
The oral surgeon I saw yesterday is pretty wonderful. He's also on Central Park South in a very successful practice, as my bf said, That has to be the creme de la creme, as that real estate is so expensive. He was so gentle, kind, and the tooth was out before I knew it. He also scraped away the ligament to avoid cavitations. He put some kind of gel sponge in there and my body was sort of perplexed and a little annoyed I could tell, like, "What is this weird stuff? I'd better get rid of it." (It sort of degrades in a few days ie the body does just that). The gel sponge is to make it clot well. He called last night to check on me and his office called this morning. He is going to make me a treatment plan and I'm not afraid to tell you I'm getting a partial for the back teeth. I've left some holes there and I suspect a wisdom tooth or two needs to go soon anyway. And then you leave a hole and the other teeth move so that's not so good. He apparently has a really good prosthondontist.

Since I'm in NY this just means it will be fricken EXORBITANT!!! I already spent $1100 on this tooth since August 25.

By the way, he does all the typical maxillofacial stuff including bone grafts, implants, and more serious stuff. When I sat down in the chair an assistnat was in there and a panorex was up on the screen. I gasped, "Oh my god, look at all those implants that person has!" That person had like six or eight front implants. (I could see the screws on the xray). Apparently I said it a little too loud...as the assistant gently said, "She's in the waiting room" and shut the door so as not to embarrass the woman.
 

Ian

Senior Member
Messages
282
I've spoken to people whos fibromalgia pain went next day after having toxic root canal teeth removed, and the bone surgically cleaned from around the infected teeth.
 
Messages
23
I've spoken to people whos fibromalgia pain went next day after having toxic root canal teeth removed, and the bone surgically cleaned from around the infected teeth.

Thanks Ian. Were their teeth asymptomatic with no x-ray evidence of inflammation?
 

Ian

Senior Member
Messages
282
I can't remember if they were asymptomatic, but x-ray rarely shows anything. I had a hole in my bone large enough to stick your finger in, yet x-ray showed absolutely nothing.
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
I just had a premolar out instead of a root canal, and personally i dont miss it. The extraction was painless, and to my surprise there has been almost zero pain since i had it done on Tuesday this week.

I need to have at least one more tooth out, that i had RC done on a few years ago. Its never been right. I dont think i will miss that one either.

I am concerned that i might need more out, and then it starts getting into the realms of needing to do something about too many gaps. But the way i see it losing a few teeth, to improve my health (reduce the load on my immune system) is well worth it.

Clearly, most people have RCs without too many issues regarding their health - at least noticably, there may be other risk factors or smaller impact to their health (who knows) - but putting that aside for a minute, for people like us with compromised immune systems, its just not worth having a RC. We cant deal with it, in my opinion. Obviously its not nice losing a tooth, and even worse to lose several, but its the lesser of two evils.

The one i just had out went bad because of a badly done filling by the way. It wasnt cleaned out properly, and wasnt sealed properly, and thats what cost me that tooth. I want to do whatever i can to keep my remaining teeth, some of which need fillings, so i will see if i can see a good private dentist to fill them skillfully with non amalgams. It is a false economy to have a crap dentist work on your teeth, because they fail earlier.

I had some white fillings done at the back of my mouth when i was about 13, and they are all still present and never had a problem. That was with a good dentist. The other dodgy RC i have was done by the bad dentist a few months ago - i dont think she got all the roots out, and the filling on the top fell off within a few months. To summaries, bad dentists are dangerous. Good dentists, can save teeth, even without RCs if they see your cavities early enough.
 

Ian

Senior Member
Messages
282
Most of the time the infection is also in the bone around the tooth, when removing the tooth its vital that the infected bone also be surgically removed. Failing to do so might leave a bigger infection in your jaw. Sadly most surgeons never do this. It's not rocket science either, they just need to cut down to good healthy bone.