The Health Problems Linked to Root Canals
By James Donahue
By the time we reach middle-age most of us have had dental procedures that include root canals. When a tooth becomes severely infected rather that pulling the tooth, the dentist drills down through the nerves, hollows out the soft inner part of the tooth and then fills it with a hardening substance, thus leaving a dead tooth in place that functions for many years as a regular healthy tooth, minus nerve pain.
It seems like a simple and workable way to stop toothaches and save teeth from extraction. But there are many critics who claim the procedure is turning the dead teeth into breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria that hang out in a network of tiny transporting tubes, safe from the effects of the body’s natural immune defenses or even antibiotics.
Contemporary studies are showing that the rising number of chronic degenerative diseases like cancer, arthritis and multiple sclerosis may be directly linked to root canals in the patient’s head. More contemporary research also appears to link infected roots of teeth to heart, kidney, bone and brain diseases. While the teeth appear perfectly normal, the root-canalized teeth are found to become toxic cesspits for anaerobic bacteria which can leak into the bloodstream during periods later in life when the immune system is weakened, and then do their dirty work.
This is not new information. The late Ontario dentist Weston A. Price made this discovery more than a century ago during a 25-year study of “pulp-less and endodontically-treated teeth.” He found direct links between root canals, infections in the mouth and general illnesses. He recommended dental extraction instead of root canals to limit the risk of serious human illness. His publication, Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic, was used as a reference in medical textbooks through the mid-1930’s.
So why have dental clinics continued to prescribe root canals? The general theory is that there is big money to be made. By the 1930s Price’s theory of focal infection was under attack and new “research” papers were shedding doubt on his work. It is currently estimated that over 40,000 people receive root canal procedures every day in the United States. That amounts to over 25 million of them every year.
It was not until 1994 that George E. Meinig published Root Canal Cover-up Exposed, thus looking back at Price’s work and forcing dental schools to consider the dangers in root canals once more.
So why are dentists still doing root canals by the thousands? Same reason. There is a lot of money in it.
By James Donahue
By the time we reach middle-age most of us have had dental procedures that include root canals. When a tooth becomes severely infected rather that pulling the tooth, the dentist drills down through the nerves, hollows out the soft inner part of the tooth and then fills it with a hardening substance, thus leaving a dead tooth in place that functions for many years as a regular healthy tooth, minus nerve pain.
It seems like a simple and workable way to stop toothaches and save teeth from extraction. But there are many critics who claim the procedure is turning the dead teeth into breeding grounds for dangerous bacteria that hang out in a network of tiny transporting tubes, safe from the effects of the body’s natural immune defenses or even antibiotics.
Contemporary studies are showing that the rising number of chronic degenerative diseases like cancer, arthritis and multiple sclerosis may be directly linked to root canals in the patient’s head. More contemporary research also appears to link infected roots of teeth to heart, kidney, bone and brain diseases. While the teeth appear perfectly normal, the root-canalized teeth are found to become toxic cesspits for anaerobic bacteria which can leak into the bloodstream during periods later in life when the immune system is weakened, and then do their dirty work.
This is not new information. The late Ontario dentist Weston A. Price made this discovery more than a century ago during a 25-year study of “pulp-less and endodontically-treated teeth.” He found direct links between root canals, infections in the mouth and general illnesses. He recommended dental extraction instead of root canals to limit the risk of serious human illness. His publication, Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic, was used as a reference in medical textbooks through the mid-1930’s.
So why have dental clinics continued to prescribe root canals? The general theory is that there is big money to be made. By the 1930s Price’s theory of focal infection was under attack and new “research” papers were shedding doubt on his work. It is currently estimated that over 40,000 people receive root canal procedures every day in the United States. That amounts to over 25 million of them every year.
It was not until 1994 that George E. Meinig published Root Canal Cover-up Exposed, thus looking back at Price’s work and forcing dental schools to consider the dangers in root canals once more.
So why are dentists still doing root canals by the thousands? Same reason. There is a lot of money in it.