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Ask the Expert: How do I deal with
dental toxicity?
New Life Journal asks Dr. Patrick Patton,
D.C. some common questions about dental metals.
How can you help people who have problems
with mercury amalgams in their mouths?
From a physician's perspective, the challenge for me, when
I'm working with a patient who has mercury problems, is to
figure out what way mercury is affecting them. Is it just
a straight toxicity thing or is the mercury breaking down?
Even though the American Dental Association says that you
should replace all your amalgams within seven to ten years,
they've done research that shows that in as little as five
to seven years half the mercury in the filling in a person's
mouth is gone. It has half the mercury it used to, but where
did that other half of the mercury go? It goes into the tissues.
Mercury's attracted to sulphur, to what we call sulph-hydral
groups, and so there are certain parts of the body that mercury's
attracted to because it will combine with those particular
elements. Sulph-hydral groups include brain tissue, myalin
tissue, blood marrow, ovaries, etc. Unlike most other metals,
mercury, and lead, too, will jump out of the bloodstream and
attach to parts of the body and it will be stored there.
A little bit is stored in the body at
first, then over time, more and more keeps being stored, and
the American Dental Association says there's not enough mercury
released to cause a problem. Well, there's not in a day's
time for most people, but in twenty years time or thirty years
time… We breath it in, we swallow it, it's in the gums, it's
transported in the bloodstream. So, over a period of time
a person can develop a toxicity to the mercury.
Are some people more allergic to it?
Yes. Often, that depends on exposure, how much they had in
their mouth, whether or not they've been exposed to more mercury
in their jobs or hobbies. People who live in Florida may be
a little more susceptible because when they usually use a
mercury compound when they spray for mosquitoes down there.
It's often difficult to tell why some people are more sensitive
than others.
If it's just a toxicity issue, where
mercury is in the tissues, there are certain things that you
can take that will pull the mercury out, chelate it, and allow
the liver to dump it out into the intestines. Most of the
mercury in the body-eighty percent of it-is taken out through
the liver and intestines and twenty percent or so will be
taken out through the kidneys. There are many formulas available
to aid in detoxification of mercury. There's a prescription
called DMPS-most of the time it's administered in injections-that
you have to be really careful with. In some people, it works
really well, and in some people, it mobilizes mercury and
makes them sicker.
Do many doctors use DMPS?
There's one way to find out if there is mercury in your body,
and that is to take a urine sample and measure the amount
of mercury and then have the DMPS injection, and within 24
hours, take it again. And generally, because DMPS mobilizes
mercury, pulls it out of the tissues, you will have more in
the urine, and that way you can test it. These tests are not
entirely accurate, though. I've seen people who test with
this method that they have no mercury problem, and they actually
do, it just wasn't coming out in their urine as much. Each
person is different. I don't use DMPS, because it requires
a prescription. Sometimes, I use DMSA, which the patient takes
orally and is very similar to DMPS. It's very high in sulphur.
About one out of 100 patients that I come in contact with
can handle that; for the others, it mobilizes the mercury
too quickly, and can cause a reaction.
What supplements do you usually give
your patients for mercury detoxification?
I've tested a lot of different formulas that are out there,
and I've found a combination of supplements that I find works
most effectively. The first supplement is a combination of
free form amino acids, which contain natural sulphur. It's
important to use free-form aminos. I also use N-Acetyl-Cysteine
(NAC). When you open up a bottle of NAC, you smell sulphur.
As I mentioned before, mercury bonds to sulphur compounds,
and so these supplements can actually pull the mercury out
of a patient's tissues. I also give the patient some form
of silymarin, or milk thistle. That's really specific for
metal and chemical pathways in the liver. And, of course,
good old Vitamin C. I like to use the buffered form; it's
gentler on the digestive tract, and the patient usually can
handle more. I also use Rumex crispus, or yellow dock, which
is more for the other metals that compose the amalgam, the
copper, silver, tin, zinc; it's a blood purifier. The theory
about how all this works is the free-form amino acids actually
draw the mercury out of tissues and hold it. Free-form amino
acids can go anywhere in the body, including the brain. The
high doses of Vitamin C chelate it; in other words, keep it
from jumping back into the tissues. In a sense, it holds it
together until it gets to the liver, and then that's where
the N-acetyl-cysteine and the silymarin do their job of keeping
it bound up and having it go through the pathways. Often,
people will get fillings worked on and will be exposed to
mercury in the process, and it just goes right to the liver
and clogs it up, and then they start getting symptoms. So
the first step is to capture the mercury in the bloodstream,
then you need to get it out of the liver into the intestinal
tract to leave the body. The yellow dock assists in the process,
and helps pull the other amalgam metals out.
Now, I want to qualify that this program
works on people with mercury toxicity. There are other things
that mercury can create in the body that those supplements
may not help. It gets really complicated when people have
mercury and other metals in the mouth.
What other metals do dentists use?
They use non-precious or semiprecious metals, and sometimes
they still use precious metals, gold and platinum, but you
have to request those. Generally precious metals are better
because they don't rust or break down as easily. The less
precious a metal is, the more easily it deteriorates; an example
is iron, which oxidizes and rusts relatively quickly. Oxidation
can take place in the mouth because of the moisture there.
Saliva is acidic, and it will start breaking any metal down.
Typically, what dental labs use to make
crowns and bridges is nickel. It's interesting, the EPA has
banned nickel in a lot of industries because of its cancer-causing
potential. They had to stop using nickel in solders and in
other applications because of its toxicity. And yet, a dentist
can put it in your mouth. Usually, beryllium is mixed with
the nickel in dental applications, and that is an extremely
toxic metal, but they add only a small amount. To me, the
nickel beryllium chromium crowns are the worst type. A person's
gums will be perfect except where there's a nickel beryllium
crown, and then they will be all inflamed and reduced. Dentistry
is well aware of the sensitivity people can get to nickel
crowns. After that the most common crown usually involves
mixtures of other metals, but the main metal in it is called
palladium. Palladium is a semiprecious metal. It's not as
reactive as nickel, and yet it's a heavy metal. Some people
can still get allergic to palladium, and once your allergic,
it doesn't really matter what metal it is-you have an allergy.
Also, many dental materials have aluminum and barium in them,
and that's often a problem. Many composites on the market
have that combination, so people get their mercury fillings
removed, but they're replaced with aluminum barium ones.
Root canals can also be a problem with
metal toxicity. Typically, what dentists use is a material
called gutte percha, which is a tree resin, but it's wrapped
in aluminum and barium. There's an alternative to gutte percha
called Bio-calex®.
So, can I just go to a dentist and
ask them to remove my mercury?
If you're not very specific, there's no guarantee that what
the amalgams are replaced with will be much better. That's
the part where the confusion lies, even in alternative dentistry.
In my experience, there is only one composite being made right
now that doesn't have aluminum and barium in it. I'm not saying
everybody is allergic to aluminum and barium, but if you're
going through all the trouble to get metal removed from your
mouth, why would you want to put more back in? It's amazing
to me that dentists forget their chemistry. Aluminum and barium
are metals, and they use barium for diagnostic purposes because
it shows up white on an x-ray. It's a metal. It's in the same
family of metals as lead, mercury and all those on the periodic
chart.
I only know of one composite material
and that doesn't have aluminum-barium in it. It's called Diamond
Lite. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be checked for
biocompatibility with Diamond Lite, but my experience has
been that even my most chemically sensitive patients are able
to handle it, and it doesn't have aluminum barium or a chemical
called phenol in it. Phenol/bisphenol is in a lot of dental
product materials, and that can cause reactions.
What issues can mercury create, other
than toxicity?
The protocol I've discussed so far deals with mercury toxicity,
but having metals in your mouth can create other physiological
issues that taking those supplements won't work on. Sometimes
I see that people have developed severe allergy to the metals
in their mouth-to the mercury or nickel, etc.-so they have
an allergic response in terms of extra histamine production,
white blood cell count, and so on. So it's not really toxicity
that they're experiencing, it's an allergic reaction.
Toxicity means that you've reached a
level in your body that it can no longer hold, and it does
what's called cascading. In other words, a person's body has
more mercury than it can and you get specific symptoms with
that.
It's often difficult to delineate between
toxicity and allergies. Generally, mercury toxicity can cause
neuropathies, numbness and tingling, depression, vivid dreams
or nightmares, and inability to sleep. Patients often require
sleep aids and antidepressants when there's mercury toxicity
going on; they experience flu-like symptoms. If I give a patient
with toxicity the protocol discussed earlier-free-form aminos,
NAC, yellow dock, silymarin, Vitamin C-it will help them immediately.
On the other hand, the patient can have
an allergy response, like chronic sinus problems, chronic
digestion, fatigue, and exhaustion. That patient won't necessarily
respond to the detox protocol. When I discover the patient
is at that stage, the only thing we can do is have the dental
materials that are causing the allergy removed. Until removal,
we can support their allergy response with different supplements,
depending on the patient. I have an interesting patient now.
This lady is in her 60's, and she has painful arthritis; she
aches all over. She still works, but she's in immense pain.
After working with her a little while, I realized we were
not making much headway with straight supplementation. So,
I sent her to Dr. Nabors, a dentist I work with, and he sent
me a report back that showed that she had 21 or 22 teeth with
nickel crowns in them and mercury under just about every one
of them. It's a fairly common practice for dentists to use
mercury amalgam as a build-up material like that, and using
mercury that way is even worse than putting in a filling because
they're using it to replace the tooth that has been ground
away. So when the first bridge came out of her mouth, she
immediately got relief from her arthritis symptoms…with just
one bridge! She was experiencing more of an allergy response
than a toxicity; we tried the mercury detoxification protocol,
but it didn't work for her. The mercury and nickel and other
metals can create an autoimmune response-the body reacts to
itself-which is what arthritis is all about. That's why mercury
is suspected in things like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's
Disease, and Alzheimer's, among other diseases.
There's also another effect that metal
in the mouth can have, including mercury. Generally this happens
when the patient's mouth contains more than one kind of metal-mercury
and nickel, for instance. It's called the galvanic response
or battery effect. It's similar to the allergic response but,
typically, what happens is that you have two different kinds
of metals in an acid medium (saliva), and the mouth becomes
a battery. Literally, the teeth will generate electrical impulses
that are measurable with an instrument called an amalgometer,
and this galvanic effect will travel up pathways to the brain
and interfere with neurotransmitter and neuromuscular function.
This can cause a broad range of symptoms; for example, the
person could be extremely cold, have low body temperature,
have spasms of the legs, have forms of dementia, or problems
with motor function. It just depends on what part of the brain
is being affected. Symptoms can overlap in terms of galvanism,
allergy, and toxicity, and a qualified practitioner who works
with metal toxicity issues can help a patient determine the
best course of treatment.
The only treatment for the galvanic response
it removal of the dental materials. Dr. Nabors has an amalgameter,
and he reports to me which teeth are giving off the highest
readings.
How would I go about getting my mercury
removed? What should I look for in a dentist?
Find a dentist whose practice is mercury-free, who is genuinely
committed to proper removal and replacement, and who does
it on a daily basis. They need to use a dental dam and use
high speed suction. They need to have an understanding about
aluminum and barium, as well. Without adequate testing, there's
no way to know that you wouldn't have a problem with aluminum
barium composites.
If you've got a big amalgam that has
a crack in it, or there are stress cracks in a tooth, or you
have an amalgam that's turning black, you'll probably want
to get that tooth taken care of first. If you're not having
symptoms, you'll need to decide how much your pocketbook can
afford. I would still recommend taking it very slow. I would
have a person do two to four teeth a year, if they're just
dealing with amalgam. We divide the mouth into quadrants-upper
right, lower left, etc.-and often we'll try to remove and
replace the materials in one quadrant to free that quadrant,
depending on the situation.
So the order of removal is important?
It depends, again, on symptomatology. If a person has many
symptoms, especially a lot of neurological symptoms, they
really need to be working with a physician that is well-versed
in this process. No matter how careful any dentist is, a patient
is going to be exposed to mercury at some level. In other
words, during the process, you're going to absorb a lot of
mercury at once. And the other thing for a chemically sensitive
person or a person with autoimmune disease ro realize is that
every time you go to the dentist for removals, they give you
shots of lidocaine anesthetic, and many people react to the
anesthetic, especially if it has epinephrine in it. The removal
of the dental material-especially when you're taking out crowns
or some large amount of material-is a form of duress on the
body. Teeth are living, vital parts of the body, and sometimes
just the assault on the teeth can affect the related meridian
and affect the patient. It's not something to take lightly
if you have lots of problems like autoimmune diseases or allergies.
In those situations, you should definitely work with a physician.
How do acupuncture meridians relate
to teeth?
Chinese medicine teaches that the body has a life force or
energy called Chi, and that Chi is divided into fourteen different
components. Each component corresponds to a different organ
or organ function in the body, and the energy flow of that
component through the body is called a meridian. All the meridians
together compose the body's energy system. Their belief is
that any disease process is either too much energy or not
enough energy going to an organ, and they can stick metal
needles in specific parts on that meridian to either speed
up the flow or slow it down, depending on what's required.
All of the meridians run through the
teeth; each tooth is on a specific meridian, and putting metal
in a tooth has the potential of disrupting the energy flow
to that meridian and creating a chronic issue. It's outside
the scope of this article, but I want to mention that sometimes
people have their amalgams removed and they don't make a lot
of progress because they have a hidden infection in their
teeth that they're not aware of. Infections or metal in the
teeth both can disturb a meridian and its related organs.
So, if I'm in good health, with relatively
few to no symptoms, should I just leave my mercury amalgams
in my mouth? I believe any mercury in the mouth is a time
bomb, and if it's not affecting you now, sometime down the
road it could. Later on, if a person keeps their fillings,
they end up at the dentist, and traditional dentistry takes
out the mercury and then puts in nickel. That changes the
whole dynamics in the mouth, and the body goes through changes.
I have patients who can trace their symptoms back to when
they had the first crown put in their mouth. All they had
was amalgams, and they didn't have any problems, then they
had that first crown put in and the problems began. The battery/galvanic
effect or allergy seemed to surface then. Most people have
had just a few amalgams put in over time. There are cases
where people had six or seven done, but generally speaking,
you go to the dentist, he finds a cavity, and he puts a little
bit of mercury in it. When you have a crown put in, you're
talking about a big wad of metal, and if somebody already
has a tendency towards allergies because of the mercury already
in their mouth, the nickel crown can create more of a response
from the body. Sometimes people also trace their problems
back to an infected tooth and then a root canal.
Recommended Reading
Whole Body Dentistry, by Mark A. Breiner,
DDS, 1999, Quantum Health Press; ISBN: 0967844304
Mercury in Your Mouth, by Quicksilver
Associates, 1997, Quicksilver Pr; ISBN: 096438700X
It's All in your Head, by Hal A. Huggins,
DDS, 1994, Avery Pub Group; ISBN: 0895295504
Dr. Patrick Patton has a practice in
Asheville, NC. He can be contacted at 828-285-9792.
This article first appeared in the
Summer 2000 issue of New Life Journal. It is © 2000 New Life
Journal. No part of this article can be duplicated without
written permission of New Life Journal.
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