In case you missed it over the weekend, here’s Dr. Glaros’ conversation with Dr. Mercola about the perils of mercury amalgam “silver” fillings and the leading role of biological dentists in mercury-free, mercury-safe dentistry:
From Dr. Mercola’s article accompanying the interview:
Biological dentists, also known as holistic-, or environmental dentists, operate according to the belief system that your teeth are an integral part of your body and hence your overall health, and recognize that your oral and dental health can have a major influence on other disease processes in your body. Any medical treatment performed takes this fact into account. The primary aim of holistic dentistry is to resolve your dental problems while working in harmony with the rest of your body.
I recommend using a biological dentist for all your dental needs, but if you’re considering removing dental amalgams, it’s an absolute necessity. Most conventional dentists simply do not have the know-how to do it without putting your health at risk in the process. For example, some things that need to be done to keep you safe during amalgam removal include:
- Providing you with an alternative air source and instructing you not to breathe through your mouth
- Using a cold-water spray to minimize mercury vapors
- Putting a dental dam in your mouth so you don’t swallow or inhale any toxins
- Using a high-volume evacuator near the tooth at all times to evacuate the mercury vapor
- Washing your mouth out immediately after the fillings have been removed (the dentist should also change gloves after the removal)
- Immediately cleaning your protective wear and face once the fillings are removed
- Using room air purifiers
Additional or alternative precautions may also be used. For example, Dr. Glaros uses a saliva ejector beneath the dam along with a mercury vapor sniffer in his practice, as he’s found that the mercury vapors have a tendency to migrate underneath the dam. He also stresses the importance of making sure your bladder and bowels are healthy prior to getting the work done.
“There are some other issues that can happen before you start the dental part, and that would be nutritional support and making sure that people’s exit routes are open – their bladder and bowels are functioning –because it’s easier to get it out of the mouth than it is to get out of the body. Getting it out of the body is the main goal. It doesn’t do it by itself easily for some people,” he explains.
Interestingly, certain bacteria in your gut, such as Candida, actually tries to demethylate the mercury it comes across. Methyl mercury is the more hazardous type of mercury, in terms of toxicity. According to Dr. Glaros, some people who struggle with Candida may actually owe the troublesome bacteria a debt of gratitude, because the reason they can’t get rid of it is because your body is using it to demethylate the mercury, which decreases or limits the toxicity they’d otherwise be experiencing.
Checking Compatibility of Dental Materials — An Important Step in Biological Dentistry
“One of the things that we believe in biological dentistry is it’s important to check for the compatibility of dental materials,” Dr. Glaros says. “There are different ways to do that…. I don’t care which way it’s done; I just like that it’s paid attention to. That is the way to honor a patient. We all have patients that can take anything… Then we all have patients for whom everything becomes an issue. So testing for compatibility of materials is crucial.
… [W]e also want to protect the environment. Having mercury separators in dental offices is a unique thing, unfortunately. But dentists don’t see that as an issue. It’s not particularly expensive, you know, 500 bucks maybe to put a separator in your office, so that… the mercury fillings you’re grinding out and cleaning out don’t end up in our water supply.”
According to Dr. Glaros, an estimated 30 tons of mercury are placed in people’s mouths each year in the US. That’s A LOT of mercury! And a lot of it ends up as environmental pollution as a result of dentists who fail to give this issue the attention it deserves.
“San Francisco Bay had a big problem with mercury in it. They tried to get the dentists to volunteer to put the separators on. They didn’t do it, so they mandated it. Within four or five years, the problem has cleared up in San Francisco Bay,” Dr. Glaros says.
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Success Story from Removing Mercury
While it’s impossible to predict whether or not a health problem will resolve as a result of getting your amalgam fillings removed, many people have experienced notable improvements. Dr. Glaros recounts the following story of one of his patients:
“In preparation for our meeting, I was thinking about particular patients, and we had a lady that came in. She was a wife of a physician. She had mercury fillings. She had non-precious crowns. She had a root canal. She had two titanium implants. She had symptoms that she described were low energy to no energy. Her memory was not what she wanted it to be. Her face was swollen. She got pain in her shoulder, pain in her breasts… she had facial pain that she couldn’t explain and couldn’t understand. She just didn’t have the energy to get along and to do anything.
That first visit, we did diagnostic blocks. We placed local anesthetics around her root canaled tooth and her two implants…
When she came back two weeks later, she said, “When you put that block there, it became clear to me that my pain was localized in those three areas.” When the anesthetic was gone, she said “I was able to focus the pain from those areas.”
We didn’t start there though. We started with removing her mercury fillings and non-precious metal crowns. Every time she came back, she said “I feel better.” She had more energy. She had a different look… She came with her sister, and her sister said, “This is a different person.” I brought part of her notes, and she told us what she’d noticed. She said, “I get up once a night to go to the bathroom rather than multiple times,” which is the effect on the kidney of the toxins. Her shoulder pain was gone. Her breast pain was gone. Her energy level, she said that she felt like lifting weights now.
The morning she gets up, she wants to start the day. She’s read the newspaper. Before, she just wanted to go back to sleep. Her sister said, “This is not the same person.” She had those symptoms increasingly, but she’d had them her whole life.”
You can read the full article here.