Cavitations & Root Canals
The following is an interview from the Laura Lee Show on
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Laura Lee: Have you ever looked at fossil
remains of dinosaurs or those of early man and noticed those rows and
rows of perfect teeth still intact? Have you ever wondered why modern
man can't seem to get through a lifetime with all his teeth intact, it
doesn't seem fair does it? What are we doing wrong? No doubt you've
heard and we have covered in depth on this show the problems arising
from mercury and silver amalgams. It's so well known in fact that 50%
of the over 1,000,000 amalgams placed in teeth of Americans today are
composites.
A new material that doesn't contain mercury. You probably
thought that mercury was the big issue and that now you know about it
you're safe in terms of what's safe in your mouth. I'm sorry, but
there's more. There's much, much more. And we have tonight two
gentlemen who are experts in their field in some of the newest
research, actually it's old research, but it's just getting the
attention today that it deserves. And that is problems with root
canals; apparently there are bacteria that can be harbored in root
canals no matter how perfectly they're done.
These bacteria mutate and become toxin factories, they can
get out into the bloodstream and cause degenerative diseases or make
them worse. Also cavitation is a new term you're going to learn tonight
and that is the space left in the jawbone when a tooth is extracted. If
an infected tooth or simply a wisdom tooth that needs to come out to
make space, problems can arise with dead tissue in the jawbone and
you're going to learn tonight what you can do about these conditions.
We have with us Dr. George Meinig, the author of Root Canal
Cover-up. It's a book that details this work from the 1920's done by
Dr. Westin Price. Research that has been done recently and confirmed.
He's a specialist in root canals and a dentist. We also have with us
Dr. Michael LaMarche. He's a dentist that is in practice today
specializing in mercury removal. He has worked closely with Dr. Hal
Huggins who's a leading researcher into mercury toxicity and silver
dental amalgams and also Dr. LaMarche is one of 13 dentists selected
nationwide selected for research into cavitations. And we're going to
find out some very important and useful information tonight.
Welcome Dr. Meinig.
Dr. Meinig: Thank you very much, Laura.
Laura Lee: And welcome Dr. LaMarche.
Dr. LaMarche: Thank you, it's a pleasure to
be here.
Laura Lee: Thank you for all the work that you
two have been doing in this. I know that people who are plagued with
degenerative diseases, people who want to avoid those conditions,
people whose health is delicate don't need any extra assaults on the
immune system. And this research is quite startling when you first hear
about it. It begins to make more and more sense when you look into it.
Let's start with you Dr. Meinig, tell us a bit about the
problems with root canals, your research and why do we even have
infected teeth? That's a question we'll get to - prevention - at the
end of our discussion tonight, but what is a root canal, let's define
some terms. What has been some of the research?
Dr. Meinig: Let me start out by saying that
I am one of the 19 founding members of the root canal association, so
the people out there don't get the idea that I have no background in
the...
Laura Lee: Did I not mention that? I'm
sorry, that was in my notes.
Dr. Meinig: And it's important for you to
know that because I'm going to be saying some things critical about
root canal treatment today. And the reason is that I practiced some 47
years and in all of that time I never heard about a 25-year research
program that was conducted by Dr. Westin Price in the early 1900's and
actually before then and it was finally published in 1923.
His work was all well documented in two volumes of 1174
pages and in 25 articles that appear in the medical and dental
literature. Now what he reported and what he found with the tests which
involved some 5,000 animals over the 25 year period was root canal
distilled teeth, no matter how good they looked, or how free they were
from symptoms, always remained infected. Now that's a shocker, and it's
one that many dentists don't want to believe because many of the things
that we do as an endodontist involve large areas of bone loss at the
end of a root of the tooth and when you do the root canal filling you
see that bone fills in with new bone and how could that dentist and
that patient ever think that there could still be infection in that
tooth? And the problem is that the infection occurs in what is known as
the dentin of the tooth.
The dentin involves 95% of all of the tooth substance and
surprisingly, although it's almost as hard as enamel when it's cut with
a drill it makes a shrill noise just like if you were cutting stone,
and you would think it was a very hard solid substance.
Surprisingly it's composed of little tiny tubules, and those
tubules are so small that if we took our smallest front tooth and
stretched it out - stretched those tubules out end to end - it would
stretch out for a distance of 3 miles. Now what happens is when you get
a cavity in a tooth and the decay gets into the dentin of the tooth the
bacteria that are involved in the decay process get into those tubules.
I should tell you that initially those tubules carry a fluid and that
that fluid carries nutriments and the nutriments in those dentin
tubules keep the tooth alive and healthy. And those nutriments come
from the nerve and the blood vessels that come into the root canal of
the tooth. And so fundamentally what happens when you get a deep cavity
and it exposes the nerve of the tooth, those bacteria get into all of
those dentin tubules and they remain in there causing infection and
eventually they can escape and that's a story in itself.
They can escape in what's known as the lateral canals and
there toxins can actually escape directly through the root surface into
what's called the peridontal membrane or ligament. This is a hard
fibrous tissue which holds the tooth in the bony socket, and when the
infection gets into there it transfers easily into the bony socket and
from there the bacteria and the bacterial toxins can get into the
surrounding bone and the blood supply of that surrounding bone. And now
this acts much like cancer cells, you know cancer cells metastasize and
that means that they travel around the body in the bloodstream and they
get to another tissue, gland or organ and they set up a new cancer.
Well these bacteria from infected dentin tubules also travel
around and metastasize in the same way and they can get into the
various tissue. Those bacteria are kind of like people, you know, if
they get to like Seattle or Reno or someplace they decide that's where
they're going to have their home, well the bacteria traveling around
the body, they may get to the liver, the kidneys or the heart or the
eyes or some other tissue and they set up an infection in that area. So
this is exactly what happens and why the degenerative diseases occur
from these teeth.
Laura Lee: Now why isn't the immune system
not able to knock out these bacteria when they get outside the tooth? I
can understand three miles of tunnels in these microtubules of an
infected tooth for these bacteria to propagate in. It's hard for the
immune system to get in there, but once they travel out, what's the
immune system doing there? Just a slow wear and tear where they can't
get rid of the infection sites so it's this constant default...?
Dr. Meinig: Well, you're right, the immune
system under certain circumstances can take care of this quite
adequately, but it has to be those people who have extremely good
genetic backgrounds who are in good nutrition basis, are having no
health problems, in their daily life.
Laura Lee: Now, who in the late 20th
century can make that claim with all the assaults on our systems.
Dr. Meinig: That's right, Laura, there's
not very many that can make that claim. Now if there are some people,
and Dr. Price found that 258 of his patients met that requirement, he
found they could stand root canals for many years without any
difficulty until they had a severe accident, until they got a case of
the flu, they had some severe stress to them, and now their immune
system which was able to cope with these bacteria and these toxins of
the bacteria now had too much to do and they could no longer cope and
this person would develop a disease in their liver, their kidneys,
their eyes, their brain, their whatever, just the same as a cancer
metastasizing around this would happen to them in degenerative disease
situation.
Laura Lee: When we come back let's talk a
little bit about Dr. Price's original research. This research went on
for five decades or so not being recognized. He was first doing this in
the 209. It went for a long long time not really being recognized,
though he was part of the establishment of his day, he did legitimate
research, he wrote volumes, it's well-documented, he did the proper
laboratory experiments, etc. etc. And yet it's counter intuitive to
what dentists observe, or how we thought the mouth worked, or bacteria
in the immune system worked. So I'd like to know what's the original
research, I know he did a lot with rabbits, it's pretty startling
research, it's dramatic research. Let's talk about that and how it went
on for so long and you said there was a cover-up involved. We've got
more to talk about with Dr. George Meinig, the author of Root Canal
Cover-up and Dr. Michael LaMarche that's going to tell us a bit about
cavitations. I'm Laura Lee.
Michael, you were telling me in the break that your
description of your practice in dentistry is now encompassing so much
more that you now describe it as biologically compatible dentistry.
Could you define that term and then we'll...
Dr. LaMarche: Yes, basically our practice
has changed and to say that our focus was strictly on amalgam removal
would not be correct. I think we're more focused on the nutritional
aspects of an individual in conjunction with blood chemistries and also
working very closely with physicians for the patient's general overall
health. Certainly we are concerned with heavy metals in our patients
but to say that would be our major concern and focus would...
Laura Lee: Well, I'm one of your patients
and I know that you look at the system as a holistic system and that
the role that dental health plays in that segues into so many other
areas so I think you're the dentist of the future and that you're
looking at the whole system of the person, the entire health of the
person, and that interplays, yes indeed. Thank you for making that
correction. And you'll also find Dr. LaMarche in Lake Stevens,
Washington. Dr. Meinig, you were going to tell us about Westin Price's
work in the 1920's - how he even happened onto the thought that root
canals might be a stress on the immune system.
Dr. Meinig: Before I mention that I should
say that all of this is really dealing with the theory of local
infection. Focal infection means that you can have an infection
somewhere in the body and that the bacteria that are involved may be
transferred to another tissue, gland, or organ somewhere in the body
and set up a whole new infection. Most of this was started by Dr.
Billings in the first decade of this century and by 1914 his research
had showed that 958 of all focal infections came from teeth and from
tonsils. The others came from a few other sources like infected
sinuses, fingernails, toenails, appendices and so on. But what happened
is that of course Dr. Price learned about all of this work and he had
done a root canal filling for a woman who developed a severe arthritic
condition. She was so bad that she was bedridden most of the time and
her hands were so swollen with arthritis that she could hardly feed
herself. And when he heard about all of this focal infection work by
Billings he realized that maybe this root fill that he did that looked
so fine on the X-rays was part of her problem in causing this
arthritis. And so like all research programs in which researchers get
involved, there's usually one that sets of the tone and this case
happened to be the one that captured everybody's imagination. There
were a lot of others, but this one did, and the reason was that he
finally convinced her that she should have that tooth removed and she
came into his office, had the tooth removed aseptically incidentally,
because if he contaminates the tooth when he's taking it out with the
saliva and other things then that's a problem of introducing other
bacteria into the situation.
Laura Lee: Also couldn't do a proper lab
test on it.
Dr. Meinig: So he did that and he secured a laboratory
animal and in this case it was a rabbit and he put a little local
anesthetic under the skin of the back of the rabbit. He made a small
buttonhole incision into the skin of the rabbit and he put that
extracted root canal filled tooth into that incision. He put a couple
of little stitches in there to hold the tooth, to keep it from popping
out again and he returned the animal to a spacious cage that had plenty
of good food and awaited development. Well it didn't take long, two
days later that rabbit developed the same arthritis in its limbs that
the patient had and in ten days it passed away from the infection from
that root filled tooth. Well now this was somewhat of a confirmation
for Dr. Price that people who had root canal filled teeth and had
illnesses that the medical profession was having difficulty in solving
- that maybe these root filled teeth were caausing those problems, and
so whenever he had people who were going from doctor to doctor and not
finding out what was wrong with them, he would then advise them to have
any root filled teeth out and he would implant the tooth under the skin
of the rabbit or they used numbers of other animals, but rabbits proved
to be a little more dramatic, but the same thing happened whether it
was a dog or a rat or a chipmunk or whatever they used, these same
diseases would occur. Well the surprising thing was when the patient
with a heart condition came in and had a root filled tooth and wasn't
getting anywhere with his treatment and they took that root filled
tooth and implanted it under the skin of a rabbit, by golly, that
rabbit got a heart condition and usually passed away within a few days.
If the person had kidney trouble, well the rabbit got kidney trouble.
And if the person had trouble with their eyes, well the rabbit got
trouble with the eyes. As a matter of fact the eyes reacted so severely
that even minor problems with the patient's eyes would cause the rabbit
to go blindusually in two to three days. And so there were a lot of
different situations and almost any disease that you might think of
they eventually transferred from a patient through the root filled
tooth into another laboratory animal.
Laura Lee: So what's the theory with the
focal infection? Why is it there's the connection with the infected
tooth and that problem area in another part of the body?
Dr. Meinig: Well, the reason that this is a
focal infection is because the infection came from the tooth and
traveled from the tooth to the heart or the kidneys or the lungs or
some area of the body and it set up a new infection.
Laura Lee: Right, but certain bacteria that
is human transferred to an animal, say rabbit, that same bacteria will
not just accidentally go attack the liver, it will attack the eyes.
Dr. Meinig: Yes.
Laura Lee: It's destined for that one
organ. How do you explain that?
Dr. Meinig: Price I'm sure was not able to
explain that either, it was a big surprise to them to think that almost
always the same disease occurred. Sometimes it wasn't exactly the same,
but it was usually the same tissue. But most of the time it was
actually the same disease and what he did in order to prove these
things in those days - he realized he might insert his own thinking
into what was happening and so what he did very often was to repeat
experiments because they didn't know double-blind business, but he did
know enough about it, so what he did was he transferred...
Laura Lee: We'll get the rest of this when
we come back with DR, George Meinig and Dr. Michael LaMarche. And you
thought it was just mercury in your mouth that was a problem. I'm Laura
Lee, we'll be right back on the Laura Lee Show.
And we are back, hi. Dr. George Meinig and Dr. Michael
LaMarche are with us in studio tonight. The topic, root canals and the
problem with bacteria that get trapped inside the microtubules of the
tooth, of an infected tooth, can migrate throughout the body, they can
infect an organ, gland or tissue, they can damage the heart, kidneys,
joints, eyes, brain. They can even endanger pregnant women. These
infections were first discovered by a 25 year root canal research
program carried out by the American Dental Association. Dr. Meinig says
this research was secretly covered up. It's been re-examined and redone
recently and here's the story. Let's start taking some phone calls from
Martin up first from Portland, Oregon. Hi, Martin.
Martin: Hello, Laura Lee. Yeah this is kind
of a personal topic for me, about 15 years ago I heard a report from
the University of Texas Medical School at Waco. They had a 6ve-year
study where they demonstrated that 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C per
day would prevent periodontal disease. Well then shortly thereafter my
cat came down with distemper so I cured him over a period of ten days
using 500 mg. of vitamin C per day. And about two years after that I
was diagnosed by my dentist whom I had been going to for a long time,
with pretty serious periodontal disease. And he X-rayed my whole mouth
upper and lower, showed me all the pockets and everything I had and he
sectioned my teeth of into two upper and three lower and did the
scraping on the first section lower, the worst part first. Well I was
so frightened and saw that there was going to be such a tremendous
amount of expense to me that I immediately started taking 15,000 mg per
day for the next four months. He x-rayed my teeth at the end of the
third month and he said "You know something's happening here, the
number of pockets you have and the size of those pockets is rapidly
diminishing" 90 he wanted to re-X-ray just to verify this, so he did
and it showed that some of the smaller pockets had completely gone away
and the larger pockets were reduced by less than half their previous
size only three months before. And he was amazed and he asked me what I
had been doing, and I said I had simply been taking 15,000 mg of
vitamin C every day - 5,000 with each meal. And other than that I
hadn't changed my diet or done anything else. Does your guest have any
experience using vitamin C for therapy?
Laura Lee: Well, they are looking into
nutrition and the impact it has on health overall. Dr. Meinig...
Dr. Meinig: Well a third of my practice is
actually periodontal disease. You said that I was a specialist in
endodontics but I preferred to do all of dentistry and about a third of
practice was periodontal disease. I never had any patient do 15,000 mg
of vitamin C, I got many of them on vitamin C, but not that much, and
your discovery is a very interesting one and I'm going to advise a few
people to try that and let's see what happens with them. I can't say
that I've had experience to that extent with anybody.
Laura Lee: I would say that you'd want to
get the plaque and everything else scraped off your teeth and give
yourself a head start. Don't do it instead of.
Dr. Meinig: That's right. Absolutely it's
important that you get all of the deposits removed, otherwise....
Incidentally those infections from periodontal pockets are as serious
as root canal filled teeth are, so it's very important that you know
that.
Martin: Well, just recently I had had a
relapse where one of my front teeth has been pressed back partly out of
the jawbone as far as support is concerned and developed a pretty
serious periodontal pocket because I used an infected dental floss,
well I hadn't used a brand new one, I used one I used a couple of days
previous and apparently the food had become contaminated and it
infected the lower gum, down the root line below the gum. And I
developed a pretty serious pus pocket down there which it took about
three days to clean out physically, but then I merely started taking
high doses of vitamin C and within about 2 weeks the gums are
completely cleared up and developed a more reddish color and the tooth
was much firmer in the gum than it had been before. Also, ginkgo can
have some of the same effect as far as helping a person of middle age
or older to develop much stronger teeth, you know as far as being
rooted in the jawbone and help their gums .
Laura Lee: Thanks for that story, we
appreciate that Martin. Also, let's go back to the research that Dr.
Westin Price had done you were saying you were going to explain another
aspect of it.
Dr. Meinig: Well, we were talking about the
fact that he didn't know about double-blind studies and what he did
instead. He knew that he could introduce his own thinking into what he
was doing and so he repeated a lot of things. For instance he had a
patient who had kidney trouble and had a root filled tooth. He removed
that tooth, put it under the skin of a rabbit, the rabbit got kidney
trouble and died within a few days. He took the tooth out of that
rabbit, surgically of course, and washed it in soap and water,
disinfected it with a disinfectant and put it under the skin of another
rabbit and that rabbit got kidney trouble and passed away. He then took
that tooth out of that rabbit and put it in another rabbit and he
repeated that 30 times.
Laura Lee: The same tooth?
Dr. Meinig: That's right. The same root
filled tooth. Now the reason he did that was that he had to prove to
himself and to the world that this infection was able to be transferred
and the only way he knew it was to do more animals and it wasn't that
he disliked rabbits, in fact he took very good care of his rabbits, but
this was one way he could do something about it. Now one of the things
that happens with these root filled teeth is that when they are removed
it is very often that periodontal membrane that is infected and the
surrounding bony socket remains in the jaw and sometimes healing gets
rid of that but many times it doesn't. And what happens then is an
infection that occurs in the jawbone and I think we should turn this
over to Dr. LaMarche because he's going to be telling you something
about that phase of things.
Laura Lee: And the term cavitation. Dr.
LaMarche...
Dr. LaMarche: Well cavitation actually is a
cavity within the bone which was formerly occupied by a tooth. I think
it's important that our listeners know that our office is one of 30 in
the United States, Canada and Europe that have been selected to
participate in a research group called the North American NICO Research
Group. NICO is an acronym - Neuralgia Inducing Cavitational
Osteonecrosis. Which is another word for dead bone, actually it
literally means a cavity within the jaw that is lined with dead bone
that causes pain. Our research group was formed by Dr. Jerry Eboco who
is an oral pathologist in West Virginia, and he began researching this
extensively in I believe early '90s. Papers have been written on it
since the '80s, and more recently he's been pursuing this and he
gathered together a group of dentists so that we could make the
connection between trigeminal neuralgia, atypical facial pain, chronic
migraine headaches and cavitations. And what we have found in addition
to this is when cavitations are removed, not only do we find that these
trigeminal neuralgia's or this pain is relieved, but we find that
patients also realize other improvements within their systemic health.
Laura Lee: How do you remove a cavitation,
what do you mean by that? Remove the dead bone?
Dr. LaMarche: Well, cavitations do not show up extremely
well on X-ray, but when they are located and maybe a little bit later
we can describe how we locate them, but a cavitation is...an incision
is made in the gum tissue over where a tooth was formerly located, a
large enough area or flap is laid so that the gum is removed from the
bone and we are allowed to penetrate the cortical plate or the bone
overlying the cavitation. The dental instrument, in this case a drill,
will actually fall through the bone and into this cavity. Before we
clean it out, however, we go in with an instrument called a curette and
scrape it very thoroughly and we submit this sample to the pathologist.
Laura Lee: What kind of lab results do you
often get?
Dr. LaMarche: Well, I would say that probably 98% and even
larger than 98% what we find is what's called ischemic osteonecrosis,
it's bone death due to poor perfusion of oxygen or blood supply to a
local area. The cavitations are lined with dead bone, the body's
response to that is to...
Laura Lee: Seal it off!
Dr. LaMarche: Seal it off, it does that
with fat, we will find fat in there. Ultimately the fat becomes
calcified so we see what's called calcific fat necrosis. We will
sometimes see chronic inflammatory cells, however that is not the
hallmark of this disease, as a matter of fact we see few inflammatory
cells - many times we'll see bacteria colonies, toxide filaments,
within these specimens. I think another very interesting thing that we
have learned from this through our biopsying is that the pathologist
will identify what he terms fibrin sludging. That is the fibrin will
actually start pooling.
Laura Lee: What is fibrin?
Dr. LaMarche: It is the part of the
clotting factor and there is some proteins - C proteins, S proteins...
Laura Lee: From blood that was in there
when the tooth was pulled?
Dr. LaMarche: Exactly. What happens is the
blood initially comes into the site but because of the body's inability
to break down the clot or because of the body's ability to make a very
tenacious clot - one has either what's called thrombopheha or
hypofibrinolysis. Laura Lee: Whichever it is, it doesn't sound nice.
Dr. LaMarche: Either one of them, one of
them is a very tenacious clot or an inability to break the clot down,
consequently nothing gets in, nothing gets out, we have bone death.
Laura Lee: Why does it happen in the jaw
bone 98% of the time? If someone breaks their leg bone, that bone heals
up nicely in most instances. Why does the body have more trouble with
the jaw bone tooth extractions than say other parts of the body?
Dr. LaMarche: That's a very good question.
I believe that when a bone is broken and two pieces are put together
that's a different kind of...
Laura Lee: There's no space left.
Dr. LaMarche: Exactly, however what has
been done in the Jewish Hospital in Cincinatti, a Dr. Glick, MD has
made a direct correlation between the head of the femur, people
fracturing the head of the femur, that osteonecrosis or bone death is
identical to that which we find in the jaws.
Laura Lee: Because that's a more solid part
of the bone, a denser part of the bone? What is it about that site?
Dr. LaMarche: I would say that probably it
has more to do
with the circulation to the area.
Laura Lee: Okay.
Dr. LaMarche: Again, osteonecrosis as we
see it is defined as ischemic osteonecrosis and ischemic implies that
it is a lack of perfusion of blood to the site.
Laura Lee: In both cases it's a lack of
oxygen that leads to the mutation of the bacteria, they go from being
aerobic to being anaerobic bacteria in root canal instances. And here
you find a lack of oxygen to the site so there is a common factor. How
often do you find where you take out an infected tooth, say a root
canal tooth, either it's infected and you say I don't want to put a
root canal in, let's pull it and do other options, or it's a root canal
infected tooth that you pull - probably you're going to have necrotic
tissue arising because it's so full of bacteria, or that compared to
say a wisdom tooth that needs to be pulled for other reasons, it's not
infected or impacted - it just needs to get taken out.
Dr. LaMarche: That's what we're now
recommending no matter why you have to take a tooth out - even if it
isn't infected, then a protocol needs to be followed and that protocol
means that the dentist after he removes the tooth he also removes the
periodontal ligament or membrane which is a fibrous tissue that holds
the tooth in the socket, that's what keeps the tooth from failing out.
That becomes infected and it's still attached very securely to the
surrounding bony socket and so what we recommend is that the dentist go
in with a slow moving drill and remove that periodontal membrane and
about 1 mm of the bony socket in order to prevent these infections from
occurring. And strangely enough we find in many areas for instance,
wisdom teeth when they're removed, even though they were healthy teeth
- for some reason or another they very oftenn develop a cavitation
around them. Some 400/0 of all wisdom teeth extractions develop
cavitations and the thing that should be done and what we're thinking
is better to be done, is to remove that periodontal membrane at the
time you remove the tooth and some of the surrounding bone in order to
prevent this from happening.
Laura Lee: Well, that's great when you're
getting a tooth extracted by a dentist that knows this research and
knows the procedure, but what about all those people who have wisdom
teeth? I mean most of us have had our wisdom teeth extracted and
they've grown over and the dentist didn't know and so then you have a
situation where you probably have to go in again and clean that out as
you were describing. We'll take a break and take some phone calls when
we come back and what we're going to do is have information only about
the topic - cavitations, root canals, nutrition.
Root Canals & Cavitations
These are the topics, and please don't get too personal and ask for a
diagnosis. That's not what these two doctors are here for, but to give
out information on some of this new research. We'll be right back.
Laura Lee: And we are back, hi, Laura Lee
here and we are talking with Dr. Michael LaMarche, dentist in Lake
Stevens, Washington area and Dr. George Meinig. He's the author of Root
Canal Cover-up, and you were in Ojai, California. We have some calls
for you gentlemen, we have Call calling in next. Hi, Call, thanks for
joining us.
Gail: Thank you. A couple years ago I had a
root canal done and as soon as it was done it didn't feel very good and
I kept telling them I thought something was wrong and they told me it
was a great root canal and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
And I've had a lot of pain in my right ear, and the jaw as a result and
I can't find a dentist that's willing to take that tooth out. I've been
to three endodontists and five dentists and no one will pull that
tooth, because they look at it and say it's a great root canal. So my
question is - where can I find a dentist in my area that will actually
look at this and possibly extract that root canal tooth, it's a
bicuspid.
Dr. LaMarche: Can I ask what area she's in?
Laura Lee: You're in Tacoma, Washington,
Gail?
Gail: Yeah.
Laura Lee: Michael, you mentioned that
there were 30 dentists involved in the cavitation research, what about
the root canal research? How many dentists are there out there that are
up on this and familiar with the work?
Dr. LaMarche: Well currently, right now, in
the research group there are 30 of us, and I'm sure that there will be
more.
Laura Lee: Can dentists anywhere say "I
want to get involved, I want to find out?" They're looking for more
dentists?
Dr. LaMarche: Yes, if they would contact
you perhaps you might connect them up with me and we could make
arrangements for them to communicate with Dr. Bocho so that they could
learn more about this because certainly we need more involved....
Laura Lee: Is there a list available so
that someone could send...I'11 be happy to distribute the information,
but if there's a list then our listeners in San Francisco to
Minneapolis could also write in and get a list of dentists.
Dr. LaMarche: Exactly. Dr. Bocho did ask
those of us participating in this research if we would have any
objections to him giving the names out and I cannot recall that anyone
raised their hand and objected, so I'm sure that he would provide you
with that list.
Laura Lee: And Dr. Meinig do you have any
sort of list of dentists who are up on this?
Dr. Meinig: I have a list of dentists that
I refer. This is such a new subject many dentists are in disagreement
with it of course, because they haven't heard or seen the research.
Laura Lee: They may disagree until they see
the research...
Dr. Meinig: We do have a scattering of them
around the country and the only thing is that when we give you a name,
the first thing you ask is whether they follow the root canal
extraction protocol. Now that may sound like a lot of things to say,
but if you just ask if they follow the extraction protocol and they say
"yes," then fine. If they say "no," then you keep looking, because what
you want is somebody that does follow that protocol.
Dr. LaMarche: I would like to add too to
this, if I may, that it's very important that you have that biopsy. I
think to take the tooth out, to say we've taken care of your problem,
or to remove a cavitation and to say that we've taken care of the
problem is incorrect without substantiating the clinical diagnosis with
a pathologist's report.
Laura Lee: So what do you find out? If you
had any bacteria colonies, then what? Then what do you do?
Dr. LaMarche: Well, let me say that for
example root canal teeth radiographically on X-ray - they look
beautiful, and there are those people that don't believe that they
cause a problem and probably they don't cause a problem when one is
healthy and in a healthy state. I think when root canal teeth become a
problem is when one becomes older and there are more immunological
challenges. Each root canal tooth that we have removed we have
documented on the last 150 - 147 of those have had ischemic
osteonecrosis around the tooth.
Dr. Meinig: Is it in the bone around there?
Dr. LaMarche: That is in the bone
surrounding the tissue. Laura Lee: Not to mention the tooth itself,
right?
Dr. LaMarche: By the way, the trichologist
(fungal scientist) also decalcifies the tooth and examines if there is
any necrotic or dead tissue within the tooth and some ofthese have been
extremely well filled, well done technically.
Laura Lee: Okay, we have Mike calling from
a car phone before he gets out of range. Hi, Mike.
Mike: This has been a very interesting
topic. My wife is suffering from a probable root canal, but my question
is: the research that they did with the animals where they implanted a
tooth - how it had affected the kidneys which was the thing of the
original patient or whatever - I wanted to know if the original human
patient got better or saw improvement after that and after the infected
root canal tooth was pulled out.
Dr. Meinig: Sorry I didn't answer that
right away. We get so involved in telling what's wrong we forget about
telling you what happens. Most of these people recover quite quickly, a
little of it depends on how long they've had the infection. Obviously
if they've had it for five or ten years it may be pretty well
entrenched and take a while to get rid of it and may not get rid of it
completely. Most of them however, go away completely and so many of
them in one or two days, it's really very startling. Some of us are
beginning to think that it's a little more than the transfer of
infection and it may be electrical in some way, electrical transference
through the acupuncture meridians and through other systems in the
body. There are a number of things we don't know about this, other than
we do know that it happens and very many people by the next day - their
arthritis is gone. I've had them call and tell me that they can now do
their mile jogging and walking that they couldn't do yesterday when
they had that tooth in their mouth.
Laura Lee: To me it seems like "hedge your
bets." If there's this kind of research on line, take advantage of it
and this information. Hi, Laura Lee here for a second hour to spend
with Dr. George Meinig and Dr. Michael LaMarche talking about
cavitations, that space left in the jawbone when a tooth is extracted
can lead to having necrotic dead bone tissue there, can lead to jaw
pain, neck pain, other problems. And also root canals, the theory being
that, in fact this is pretty much confirmed, it's not really a theory,
it's confirmed science, is it not, Dr. Meinig?
Dr. Meinig: Well, Dr. Price used 5,000
animals to help with all of this confirming.
Laura Lee: And he ran through those rabbits. The research
indicating that microtubules in the tooth can harbor bacteria that
mutate and that can get out into the bloodstream and cause problems and
compromise the immune system and lead to degenerative diseases. So,
we're going to find out what to do, how to prevent problems and the
first place is - nutrition can play a role. I know that you also did
some extensive research with Dr. Price's theory that nutrition impacts
the development of the jaw and the person, the personality. An
extraordinary amount of research done that is being confirmed today. By
the way, someone wanted to know about getting a list of dentists in
your area that is upon this research and can perform some ofthese
techniques. There is a list from Dr. Bocho who is heading up the NICO
research of which Dr. LaMarche is a member, one of those 30 dentists
nationwide who is conducting research into cavitations. And that's one
reason why you're doing the biopsies and sending it to the lab, because
that's part of the research. You want to know...
Dr. LaMarche: May I add something here -
that Dr. Bocho and our group has applied for a grant and we are waiting
to hear from NIH, the National Institutes of Health, regarding
acceptance of this grant. And it looks as though they're very excited
in supporting us in our research.
Laura Lee: So this is very mainstream then?
Dr. LaMarche: Yes, it is.
Laura Lee: It's not alternative research
when we have the National Institutes of Health involved.
Dr. LaMarche: No. This makes very good
sense, what's happening, and you can't lie with microscopic slides.
Laura Lee: There are two lists - the Dr.
Bocho list of dentists, those 30 dentists in the area, and also the
Price-Pottenger list of those who specialize in root canal removal
problems.
Dr. LaMarche: Right.
Laura Lee: Okay, we have two lists
available and if you write to me at P.O. Box 3010, Bellevue, Washington
98009 we'll be happy to send you those two lists. Let's take a call
next from Alex calling from Salt Lake City, KCNR, hi Alex.