Root Canals
To understand how root canals can affect your health, you need to understand the structure of a tooth. The following diagram shows the structure of a tooth.
Tooth Structure Diagram
As illustrated, the crown portion is covered with enamel, the hardest substance in the body. Enamel has no nerve structure. It is like glass, though much stronger, and acts as an insulator (think of fiber glass).
Teeth are made up mostly of dentin. Dentin is a soft bone-like structure that is enervated: It has zillions of tiny tubules radiating out from the center of the tooth (they look like spokes on a bicycle wheel) that contain nerve fibers. If you take the smallest tooth in the mouth, a lower anterior incisor, and took each tubule and placed it end to end they would extend approximately 3 miles! Consequently, a molar tooth with three roots would be about 8 or 9 miles!!
When a tooth dies (due to decay, trauma, or other causes) the nerve and the blood vessels supplying the tooth will die and begin to decay, often resulting in an abcess. Dentists perform root canals by removing the dead nerve and blood vessels and filling the main central canal with gutta percha. Gutta percha is a rubbery material that expands when heated. When dentists or endodontists (specialists who perform root canals) fill a dead tooth with gutta percha, they will heat it so that it will soften and fill out the canal. As the fill cools, the gutta percha shrinks. There is research demonstrating that 100% of all root canals result in residual infection due to the imperfect seal which allows bacteria in.
Dental schools in the United States teach that Dentin is not porous and that there is a cementum layer covering the outside of the root that prevents porosity. However it has since been proven that this notion is false! Dr. Gordon Christensen - a DDS, MS, and PhD - has a research foundation in Orem, Utah. More dentists go to his courses than any other single dentist in the world. He and his wife do research on dental materials. Dentists want to know the latest and best materials to use for their patients. Dr. Christensen said that dentin is porous and dentist should not place stainless steel post in root canals anymore because nickel comes out of the stainless steel and goes into the surrounding bone of the tooth. Why is that bad? Because nickel is carcinogenic and causes neurological problems! After one of Dr. Christensen’s courses I asked him how she knew dentin was porous. He said we know that it is porous because we took a tooth, drilled a hole from the top to the pulp chamber and clogged up the ends of the roots and under pressure of oil dentinal tubules sweated oil! That’s porosity!
So my next question for Dr. Christensen was how much harder would it be for nickel to come out of stainless steel in the center of a tooth in the center of your mouth oozes it way through the dental tubules and go into the surrounding bone than for bacteria which is teaming in the mouth and oral cavity to work its way down the sides of the dead tooth, go inside the dental tubules and take up house? I could not believe his answer. He told me that they have not done research on that yet!!
The reason why that is so fantastic and unbelievable is that in 1999 there were about 76 million root canals done in the United States! If they just averaged $600 a piece that is 45 billion dollars!!! That does not include the crowns they put over them which is about another 45 billion dollars. Dentists are not only continuingly doing root canals but their use is accelerating and also their costs!
If you think for one nanosecond that the ADA is going to do research on root canals when they have not done research on mercury silver fillings for 157 years you better think again. (BTW a nano second is a millionth of a second) They will never do it. The ADA at one point in time did research. The Chairman of their research committee, for 25 years Dr. Westin Price proved that root canals are toxic. However, the ADA did not accept his research and has tried to disprove it. To date no one has been able to do that! Dr. Price Westin is what you would call a philanthropist. He was never paid for his work with the ADA. Half of a day he gave to dentistry free for 25 years and the other half for his livelihood. He had about 50 or 60 employees who worked under him and they were paid. He conducted about 5,000 animal studies mostly with rabbits. That study probably could not be done today. It would be cost prohibitive! Researchers are lucky to get rats let alone rabbits.
Dr. Price had a patient who had chronic deforming polyarthritis. She was bedridden cripple, completely helpless for six years. Dr. Price told her that all dentists know that arthritis other illnesses sometimes clear up after bad teeth are extracted. In her case she had one root canal tooth in her mouth and no other fillings. She told him why don’t you just extract it.
Now came the historical experiment. After Dr. Price extracted the root canal tooth he dismissed his patient and embedded it under the skin of a rabbit. Lo and behold in two days the rabbit developed the same kind of crippling arthritis as the patient. He thought that might be a fluke or a mistake so he took the tooth out of the rabbit and place it in another rabbit. It came down with arthritis. He did another and another. He did series of 30 rabbits everyone came down with the same kind of crippling arthritis as his patient!!!
Dr. Price found that if the patient had kidney trouble, the rabbit developed kidney involvement; if eye trouble, the rabbit’s eyes failed. Heart trouble, rheumatism, stomach ulcers, bladder infections, ovarian diseases, phlebitis, osteomyelitis, whatever the disease, the rabbit promptly became similarly infected.
He tested his theory further by taking naturally sound, teeth taken out for orthodontic reasons or wisdom teeth and implanted them under the skin of a rabbit, even sterilized coins and nothing detrimental happened to the rabbits.
Dr. Price found that what caused the problems in the patients and consequently in the rabbits was the bacteria found in the dental tubules!!!
Your dentist or physician may say this is old news, that there is nothing to it, and that antibiotics are able to control all focal infections that come from teeth. However, most dentists and physicians do not realize that antibiotics have no way of reaching the bacteria in the teeth because they are locked inside the tubules that make up the dentin of teeth. To date, none of the more than 100 medications used in treating root canals has been capable of penetrating the miles of dentin tubules. Once the root canal filling is placed in the tooth it has proved impossible to reach the bacteria with drugs!!!
