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Dental/Cancer Connection
by Dr. Gerald H. Smith

Author of Reversing Cancer: A Journey from Cancer to Cure
It is estimated that 70% of all medical illnesses are directly or indirectly caused by human intervention in the dental structures (teeth and jawbones). This includes: impacted teeth, infected root canalled teeth, new and recurrent decay around old fillings, cysts, bone infections in areas of previously extracted teeth, granulomas and areas of bone condensation to osteitis represent some of the more common factors.

Toxicity from dental restorative materials
Dental amalgam fillings slowly leak mercury, tin, silver, copper and sometimes nickel. All of these metals have various degrees of toxicity. A fairly large mercury filling contains enough mercury to kill a child if given as a single dose!

The most common symptoms caused by amalgam fillings are:

• Chronic fatigue

• Tendency to chronic inflammatory changes- rheumatoid arthritis, phlebitis fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome

• Chronic neurologic illnesses, especially when numbness is one of the primary symptoms

• Lowering of pain threshold

• Allergy to dental materials used to restore teeth

Having an allergic response to dental materials (gold alloys that include palladium, silver, platinum, iridium, mercury fillings, acrylic denture material which contains methyl methacrylate, chrome cobalt partial denture framework, nickel based crowns, composite resin crowns containing polyurethane) is a common cause of intractable pain, chronic fatigue, food allergies, chronic sinusitis and headaches.

Use of dental liners, that is, bases under permanent restorative filling materials can also be the causative agent for an allergic response and body toxicity. A new toxicity disorder discovered by Dr. Omar M. Amin, Ph.D., Neurocutaneous syndrome (NCS), linked components (ethyltoluene sulfonamide and zinc oxide) in the calcium hydroxide dental bases (Dycal, Life and Sealapex) as sources for the observed symptoms of NCS. The neurological aspects of NCS are characterized by pinprick and/or creeping, painful and irritating movement sensations, often interpreted as parasite movements subcutaneously or in various body tissues or cavities including the head. In no case was the movement sensation related to parasites, which were always found absent. Additional neurological symptoms include memory loss, brain fog, and lack of concentration and control of voluntary movements, pain, depleted energy and depressed immune system that may invite various opportunistic infections. In many cases, lesions are associated with swellings in the arms and legs. Blood vessels may also become enlarged and elevated, and the head may become hot and turn red and the gums and the teeth may turn gray.

Amin's study concluded, that the toxicity of the dental sealants (Dycal, Life and Sealapex) was well demonstrated in studies conducted in patients and controlled laboratory conditions by many workers.

For those interested in reading the full text of Dr. Amin's article, Toxicity from dental sealants causing neurocutaneous syndrome (NCS), a dermatological and neurological disorder, it is available on the following web site: www.holisticdental.org.

Electro galvanism
When two dissimilar metals are present in the mouth with saliva, an electric current will flow. Saliva acts as an electrolyte when it mixes with amalgam fillings, to create a measurable electric current of 900 millivolts. This current overpowers the body's normal 450 millivolts, interferes with energy flow to the brain and is suspected as a catalyst in many illnesses.

Other alloys, such as nickel in the metal base of bridges and under porcelain crowns, have been documented to lower the T-4 and T-8 lymphocyte levels (David Eggleston,DDS. "Effect of Dental Amalgam and Nickel Alloys on T-Lymphocytes: Preliminary Report", J. Prosthetic Dent, 1984, 51(5);617-623.) In predisposed patients, exposure to nickel can be a contributory factor in the development of cancer of the lungs, nasal passages and larynx.

Any metal materials in the mouth such as gold crowns, chrome cobalt partial dentures, mercury fillings, titanium implants, etc. will set the stage for galvanic currents. In 1985, a research team (A. Knappworst, E. Gura, D. Fuhrmann and A. Enginalev) revealed that when mercury fillings were in close proximity to gold crowns, the mercury release was ten times greater when compared to mercury fillings alone (p132. Mercury Poisoning from Dental Amalgam- a Hazard to Human Brain by Patrick Stortebecker, MD, Ph.D. published in USA by Bio Probe, Orlando, FL). Electro galvanism frequently is the cause for the following symptoms:

Lack of concentration and memory
Insomnia
Psychological problems
Tinnitus
Vertigo
Epilepsy
Hearing loss
Eye problems
Mouth pain
Removing the mercury and other metals and replacing them with biocompatible non-metal restorations will resolve the galvanic issue.

Mercury and tin are prime neuro-toxic substances. Mercury has the ability to destroy and or damage the transport fibers inside each nerve. The latest research from one of the top German toxicologists, Max Daunderer, MD, reveals that the entire jawbone (upper and lower) has become a toxic waste dump for the following substances:

Pesticides
Solvents (mostly present in lower jaw)
Formaldehyde (mostly lower jaw)
Amalgam (mercury, tin, copper and silver) - jawbone and maxillary sinus
Palladium (from gold/palladium alloys)- mostly upper jawbone
Through biopsies, Daunderer found that virtually all inhaled toxins are stored in the jawbone in the areas adjacent to the root tips. Also of great interest is Daunderer's serial biopsies on malignant tumors in-patients that had amalgam fillings and found, predictably, amalgam in the tumor. The concentration is highest in the center of the tumor (malignant melanoma, brain cancer, bladder, stomach, colon and tongue cancer).

Focus on Foci - by Josef Issels, MD
By lowering resistance, head foci are a contributory cause in the development of neoplasia. The extent of the disease-provoking activity of a focus in distant parts of the body depends on whether the body is able to oppose the focus with its own defense mechanism. As long as the focal situation is kept under control by the local defense mechanism, no focus-induced remote effects will arise. On the other hand, distant effects will arise when the body's resistance has more or less broken down: control of head foci will then gradually collapse, and there will be consequential gradual increase in generalized focogenic intoxication. This will cause an inevitable deterioration of the body's defense power with a concomitant promotion of malignant growth.

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Root Canalled Teeth
Boyd Haley, Ph.D., a researcher, at the University of Kentucky has estimated that 75% of root canalled teeth are infected. Another researcher, Hal Huggins, DDS, has shown that the toxins liberated by infected root canalled teeth are almost 1000 times more toxic than botulism. Botulism is the most toxic substance known.

Austrian researchers have exhaustively studied the finer details of the entire dental structure. They have established that there is a lively metabolic interchange between the interior and exterior milieu of the tooth, and that this two-way process takes place along many thousands of hyperfine, capillary canals joining the pulp cavity to the exterior surface of the tooth.

Very careful conservative measures may possibly seal off the vertical central dentinal canal, but it will never reach the lateral "twigs" branching off from this tube. Nor can it ever close off the innumerable capillary canals. Some protein will always remain in these secondary spaces. If this protein becomes infected, toxic catabolic products, such as thio-ethers, thio-ethanols and mercaptans will be produced, and conveyed into the organism.

In 1960, it was established by W. Meyer (Goettingen) that within devitalized teeth the dentinal canals and dental capillaries contain large microbial colonies. The toxins produced by these microbes in a tooth with a root filling can no longer be evacuated into the mouth, but must be drained away through the cross-connections and unsealed branches of the dentinal and capillary canals into the marrow of the jawbone. From there, they are conveyed to the tonsils, and thus the flow systems of the body. In fact, the conservative treatment may literally convert a tooth into a toxin producing "factory".

Bartelstone (USA) and Djerassi (Bulgaria) have reported that endodental exchange may also take place in the opposite direction. If radio-iodine, I-131, is deposited in an evacuated pulp cavity which is then sealed off with a filling, the iodine will appear in the thyroid some twenty hours later, as can be demonstrated by taking a scintograph of the thyroid region. Similarly, dyes can be washed out of a sealed pulp cavity. (Any substance produced by any of the structures in the oral cavity, teeth, gums, tonsils, will be drained by the lymphatic system and carried directly to the thyroid gland.)

The close interlacing of the lymphatic and endocrine systems in the head, make it unavoidable that brain cells are more intensively toxified by the circulating focogenous agents and may suffer particularly heavy damage. The lymph ducts of the head region join Waldeyer's tonsillar ring, and if there is such congestion, waste fluids will be pressed through the porous base of the skull into the lymphatic spaces of the brain. Toxogenous changes, especially within autonomic nuclei, are regularly found in cancer patients, as verified in the 1930's by Muehlmann (USSR), and they may be a consequence of a life-long inhibition of cerebral aerobiosis due to focogenous intoxication.

All these findings prove conclusively that within solid dental structures, there may proceed an unimpeded substantial interchange in either direction. Consequently, odontogenic toxins, wherever they may have been produced, are able to diffuse and circulate within the organism.

The German study group of Eger-Miehlke has investigated the pathogenic significance of these "endotoxins". They examined the changes in healthy experimental animals after injection of accurately defined, minimal quantities of the endotoxins from an odontogenous granuloma.

A single injection of a minimal dose seemed to develop a defense-activation effect. But after repeated injections, there was severe liver damage, and the animals died within weeks. Apart from the fatal liver damage, inflammatory and degenerative changes were found in all other organs, especially in the joints, muscles, and blood vessels. These results brought clear experimental proof for the first time that focogenic toxins act as causal agents for severe diseases in animals corresponding to similar chronic conditions in man.

The most dangerous of all odontogenous toxins are undoubtedly the thio-ethers, for instance dimethylsulfide. Other severe toxins from root-canal bacteria include thio-ethanols and mercaptans which have been found in the tumors of women who have breast cancer. These toxins drain through the lymphatic system down the cervical chain of lymph nodes and ultimately in to the breast tissue.

In a series of tests performed at Dr. Issel's clinic it was observed that patients with odontogenous and tonsillar foci had a heightened level of dimethylsulfide in their blood. After intensive treatment of the foci, this level returned to normal in just a few days.

Thio-ethers are closely related, both in their structure and their effect, to mustard gas and other poison gases used in the First World War. To give you an idea of its poisonous effects the following is a list of the major symptoms:

Blisters the skin
Eyes become very sore
Vomiting
Internal and external bleeding
Attacks the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane
Throat feels like it is closing with sensations of choking
Thio-ethers are "partial" antigens, haptens, and thus they also tend to combine with the normal proteins in the body, "denaturizing" them. Such denatured proteins become "non-self" agents, which the body must deal with as such. The production of antibodies adapted to the situation will be provoked, and they will home in on the target antigens wherever they are. The process of "auto-aggression" will be set in motion: self-destruction of agents alien to the organism. Extensive structural cellular damage will result and help create the environment for cancer.

Druckrey (Heidelberg) found among other things that transformation of a normal cell into a malignant cell requires a certain quantity of a carcinogen -the carcinogenic minimum dose. It does not matter whether this quantity is supplied in a single dose or in a number of smaller doses, because the toxic effects of each dose are stored, and accumulate without loss. The carcinogens held primarily responsible for the development of spontaneous cancer in man are those: Which inhibit the aerobiosis even in minimal quantities without at the same time immediately destroying the cell, and, which are constantly present in the organism in this minimal concentration of either endogenous or exogenous origin; they can therefore accumulate during the normal life expectancy gradually and unnoticeably until the total quantity necessary for malignization is reached.

Mercury
Each year in the U.S. an estimated 40 tons of mercury are used to prepare mercury-amalgam dental restorations. Scientific studies have concluded that the amalgam is the source for more than two thirds of the mercury in our human population. On a daily basis each amalgam releases on the order of 10 micrograms of mercury into the body. This mercury either accumulates in the body or is excreted via urine and feces into our wastewater systems. After death, the accumulated mercury is released to the environment via either cremation or burial. Environmental mercury pollution is also caused by dentists who remove old fillings. Cutting out a mercury/amalgam filling releases colloidal mercury for which there are no commercially available filters to remove it from the water evacuated from the patient's mouth.

According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Yoshiaki Omura, MD, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from an article, The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, by Hans Nolte, MD (Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988). In the article, Nolte states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains Š more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect.

The frightening truth is that the medical establishment has lost the War on Cancer.

Based on the American Cancer Society's 1999 statistics:

1 in 2 American men will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime.
1 in 3 American women will develop some form of cancer in their lifetime.
In the 1930's the ratio was 3 out of one hundred developed cancer.

Real Cause of Cancer
Cancer has only one prime cause. It is the replacement of normal oxygen respiration of the body's cells by an anaerobic [i.e., oxygen-deficient] cell respiration. -Dr. Otto Warburg-1931 & 1944 Nobel Prize-Winner

An effective approach to treating cancer MUST include:

Detoxification (heavy metals, chemicals, etc.)
Boosting the Immune System (anti-oxidants)
Regeneration of damaged tissues (organic nutrients)
Destruction of cancer without destroying the body
Psychological Healing
An integrated comprehensive approach is the patient's best insurance policy for beating cancer.

Last Updated October 3, 2004