Cavitations & Root Canals
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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
causing 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 often 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.