Biological & holistic dental adviceMercury free dentistry by Dr. VinogradInternational Lecturer on Biocompatible Dentistrybiocompatible dentist on youtubebiocompatible dentist on linkedin

Health Leadership

watch the video at http://vimeo.com/20400332

Good morning everybody. I always like to start off with a few stories. Some of you may or may not know, but I was a teacher, and I started out, I have a master’s degree in trumpet and played professionally for about twenty years, but taught for ten years. I remember sitting in a teacher’s lounge once at one of the elementary schools because I taught elementary, junior high, and senior high, and one of the fourth grade teachers came in, and she said, “I just had a great class.” She said, “I had my kids working on reading about leaders and then making a little speech about.” These were fourth graders. And she said, “And one little boy, [inaudible] got up in front of the class, and he said, ‘I read about Julius Caesar. He was a leader. He made long speeches. They killed him.’” So I’m hoping that’s not the outcome from today.

So basically, what you’re going to hear about is what I call permanent white water. You’re going to hear about a journey through a time that, I believe, was a pretty difficult time, and a difficult time for this area. But the other thing is that it impacted me very much personally, and so I usually like to add a few personal stories, and one was that my daughter and son, when they were about six and eight years old, and I went to the old Richland mall, which many of you didn’t even know there was one, and we were standing in a book store way in the back, and my daughter was looking for books on the pony books, Pretty Ponies, what were those pony books? Anyway, she was looking for – what is it? My Little Pony. And my son was looking for Incredible Hulk magazines, and they were back in the kid’s section, and all of the sudden, in the front of the store, I saw this really big guy. Real long hair, big boots, and one  of those wallets with the chain that wraps around your waist so you don’t lose it when you’re on your motorcycle. And he locked eyes with me, and he started coming through the store at me at a high rate of speed, and I thought, “This can’t be good.” And he’s working his way up through that store, just totally focused on me. He gets up to me, and my kids are like standing there looking at him. He throws his arms around me, and he says, “Mr. Jacobs, I had you as a teacher. You changed my life.” And he turned and started to walk away, and my son said, “If he hadn’t had you as a teacher, might he have had a neck tie on?” Probably so.

So I’m hoping that I could help change your life a little bit in a positive way. Part of this story, part of this challenge is one of how do we get there, were did we go, how did we deal with it, and what I think you’ll hear this morning is that a lot of our challenges exist between these two cartilages here on the sides of our head. They’re inside our own brain, and so what I hope to do is take you on a journey that will point some of that out.

So I became the president of [inaudible] medical center in 1997. And I have a witness here today, so I will look to him periodically to shake his head like this and to agree with me. Rod, will you do that? See, he did it. So that’s good. And so basically, we were in a situation where we had just merged with the [inaudible] health system, and they brought Ernestine Young in, the accounting firm, and Ernestine Young did a study of the organization and came into my office and said, basically, fundamentally, it’s over. You are at about fifteen percent penetration of what at that was called managed care, and within the next three to five years, it’ll be at about thirty-five to thirty-seven percent. You can’t possibly sustain the organization. There’s virtually no hope for the hospital’s survival, and we should start making plans to transition it and close it down. That was my first month on the job. Shake your head. Okay, thanks.

So basically, we were kind of up against it, and I will describe the building in 1997. It was all pink inside. The whole building was pink. I had indoor outdoor carpeting in my, no, I had shag carpeting in my office that was about this deep and kind of dirty, and Brady Bunch furniture, like different colors of oranges and greens and reds and whatever, and I had a cardboard desk. I mean, it was pressed paper. And we had indoor outdoor carpeting in the OB suite with duct tape. And there were three computers in the building. So it wasn’t exactly a wealthy situation. They didn’t have a lot of money in the bank. I think it was a total of about six million dollars, and interestingly enough, this pronouncement is what kicks off this whole journey. Because it basically put me in a situation that I did not foresee, and it gave me power that I did not ever assume that I would have.

I reported to the board of directors out there, and that board of directors passionately wanted to keep their facility open, but we were just given this decree here that life was going to end as we knew it. And so what ended up happening is when I went to the board, who were looking at me as someone who was going to make this work, I said, “Look, here’s the deal. [Inaudible] declared it’s over. We can go out to [inaudible] lumber, we can buy plywood and deliver it one sheet at a time and start to board our buildings up. Or you can let me try some of these ideas that I’ve had for the past many, many years.”

And these ideas that I had came from the fact that I taught for ten years, I ran an art center in [inaudible] for five years, I ran a convention bureau in [inaudible] for four years, and got into healthcare when I was forty years old. And when I made that transition into healthcare, I have to tell you that it was a very, it was a very difficult transition for me. I remember the very first day on the job at the old mercy hospital. The elevator doors opened and the elevator was filled with people in scrubs who were coming from surgery to the cafeteria, and I remember hearing them talking about T and A, and I thought, “Oh, this is a pretty cool group of people. They had just come from hearing the musical [inaudible] chorus line.” That’s a song; you can look it up and find out what that stood for, but they were talking about tonsils and adenoids.

And I realized, at that point, that here I was, primarily a right-brained, creative kind of guy, in a left brain world. I was in a world where these people had really done well in science, and in doing well in science – they had raised the bunnies and fed them certain diets, and then they’d kill them and cut them open to see what happened to them. And I could never do the kill them and cut them open part. And so here I was coming out of a world of education, the arts, tourism, the convention bureau business, having worked with about 123 different hotels, motels, convention centers, and wondering to myself, “Why do they do it like this? Why do they treat people this way?” And I looked at where they were coming from, what their training was, and I looked at where I was coming from, where my training was, and I’d been doing a lot of flying. I just did Denver, Alaska, Iowa, all over the place. Florida.

And when I get on that plane, I really don’t know if the pilot is sober or competent. I’m hoping that the rules that company has are strong enough that they’re both sober and competent. I absolutely don’t know how the engines work. I know that sometimes it smells really, really bad if a bird gets in one of them, but I don’t know how they go, why that works. I don’t understand what makes the plane get up in the air in terms of the actual science of it all. But I know if the flight attendant or the [inaudible] is nice, I know if the plane is clean, I know if they’re polite, I know if their boarding process is good. When I put the tray down, if it’s dirty, it scares me, because if they didn’t take care of that tray, what are they doing to that engine?

Well, try to imagine – and you can imagine because you probably all experienced this – walking into a hospital. You hope that whoever’s running the place has the right equipment there and that it’s good equipment, and you pray that the people that are running that equipment are at least certified and know how to do it and have competencies in that area. But you don’t know. You really don’t about any of those things, and so what can you judge it on? You can judge it on how people treat you, how you feel about the experience, how people address you, how they work with you. And so my whole thing coming into healthcare was why do you treat people like lab rats? Well, because they were trained to work with lab rats.

And so how can you change? How can we marry these two worlds together? How could you take some of this right brain, creative, sensitive, emotional stuff and bring it in more with the left brain world? And I could tell you when the TV series House began winning all of their – what do they win, Emmys? Daytime Emmys, nighttime Emmys – it really was disturbing to me, because that is the [inaudible], that is the person who is praised for being brilliant, but he can be ignorant and mean to people. It’s the diva mentality, and that’s where I saw things not working well in healthcare. It’s like when I went to music school, you could go down one track and you could be a soloist, or you could go down another track and you could be a solo player that worked in ensembles and worked with people. And on the solo track, the world revolved around you. It’s like the old joke, how many neurosurgeons does it take to change a light bulb? One. You hold it in their ear and the world revolves around it.

And so you’re trained to be a soloist and you’re trained to be a diva, and if any of you have ever worked anywhere in any capacity where a star comes to town, and they send a contract along, it’s things like, I remember when Bob Hope came to town. I have to have all feather pillows, the windows have to open in the hotel, I have to have a double suite, I have to have a massage at midnight, I have to have – I mean, the riders that go with these divas are pretty crazy. Well, what happened in hospitals is it evolved out of warfare, so all the training was triage warfare, hierarchical training. It was all Socratic where people literally were screamed and yelled at if they didn’t perfect things.  And then they would do the same to the people beneath them. They were trained a certain way, and they treated everybody else that way. So by having this interesting situation, we had an opportunity to make things work.

And so creative thinking, creative ideas, creative approaches, creative relationships, but it all boiled down – I mean, solutions – but it all boiled down to relationships. It all boiled down to what is happening between you and your customer, you and your client, you and your peers, you and your boss. That’s what it really boiled down to. How do we get it through to these employees and to the physicians and to everybody there that this may be your 475th tumor, but it’s their first one? How do we get through to them that all of us spend our whole life trying to preserve a little bit of dignity, trying to be okay with ourselves, and the first thing you do when you walk in a hospital, someone says, “Okay, take off your clothes, stand on your head, I’ll get to you into forty-five minutes or whenever I get to you.”

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Not All Dental Implants Are The Same

Dental implants have changed the way in which dentistry is practiced today. Although implants are not for everyone, once evaluated if you are a candidate, it can provide a highly reliable restoration.

The two most important considerations for implant placement are:
General Health and sufficient thickness and length of available bone. If it is determined that you are not a good candidate for an implant, other restorations can be considered, such as a non-metallic fixed bridge or a partial removable denture.

Once it has been determined that you are a good candidate, the next question is what kind of implant to place. There are basically two materials used in implants today: Titanium and Zirconia.

The advantage of titanium is that it has a long, proven track record and there are hundreds of companies with many systems to chose from.
The disadvantage is that it is a metal.

The advantage of zirconia, is that some people consider it more biiocompatible. The disadvantage is that they are very limited and new. They are very large and invasive and they often need to be reshaped with a bur to fit properly, creating the possibility of micro-fractures.

I will be the first in line when zirconia implants become smaller and more patient and doctor friendly.

Implants vary tremendously in size and design.
It was earlier thought that the larger the implant the better. Latest research show that that is not necessarily the case.
There are also implants that are cemented, others that are screwed in and some that are designed to just click into place (something called a cold weld).

regular dental implant pano
In my practice when we feel an implant is the right choice, we have opted for a very small (much less invasive) and well designed titanium implant that is coated with a bio-ceramic material. This implant is placed and allowed to properly integrate, making sure the bone around it “embraces” it (we find that to be the case in over 95% of our cases). Once the implant is solid, we proceed to place an abutment (connecting the implant to the crown) and a crown.


bicon dental implant
These implants, although a fraction of the size of conventional implants, have a longer life expectancy and because of their small size, allow us to place them most of the time, without the need of additional and costly surgical interventions such as nerve repositioning or sinus lifts. In addition, the post-operative discomfort is significantly reduced when the procedure is not so invasive.

To determine which dental implant option is best for you, Call (619) 630-7174 for a free consultation with Dr. Daniel Vinograd.
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Holistic Dental Lecture Transcribed (Part 4)

Female: What happens to the roots of good teeth when they’re ground down for a bridge?

Daniel: Actually, you don’t grind the roots at all. Let me see if I can find, here, something that I could use to… Yeah. So, this is a good example. So the roots would be down below here, and all we’re seeing right here is just the crown of the tooth, so the root would be all the way down here,  so nothing happens at all to the root, and what you’re taking is a couple of millimeters off of the outside of the crown only. So it’s just the outside of the tooth part itself, but not the root. The root stays in place. And actually, those are the two pillars that actually hold the bridge together with the middle part attached to it.

First female in audience: It’s very interesting. Thank you for all that. I do have a question. I’ve got two questions. The first question, you talk about the bioceramic. Is it done in Europe – you said that it’s done in Europe, I’m French, I just wanted to know if it’s done in Europe. That’s the first question. And my first question, you talk about the bioceramic and the interference, the magnet interference.

Daniel: With the ceramics?

First female in audience: With everything that you told. And I wanted to ask you if you have information such as links, surveys, and things like that because when I’m testing people, I’m a kinesiologist. Amongst ten people, eight have the problem. And you spoke about the meridian. It’s absolutely true. Most of the time, I [inaudible]. And to go further to what you’re saying, there’s a dentist in France, in south of France, it may be only three dentists like that in France, we are sixty million, and it did a YouTube fantastic film, once he had a patient. This woman couldn’t even put her arm more than this high, so she started from the ground and then she did that. She couldn’t. Then [inaudible] with a camera, a movie, and then he removed something or he changed something with the ceramics, and then suddenly, she could do that. And I was [inaudible] results, [inaudible] and things like that, and I couldn’t even believe that things could be –

Daniel: Right. You can actually get charged very easy in the internet, and you can actually correlate the tooth with the meridian, and you’d be surprised what you find sometimes. Now, as far as the bioceramic material, you’re talking about the root canal material? The BC sealer? Or you’re talking about the crowns, or what specifically?

First female in audience: You said actually the bioceramics is better. And you talked about [inaudible], so that’s why I wanted to know.

Daniel: Okay, so you’re talking about the ceramic bridges and crowns and so forth.

Female: The bio one.

Daniel: I’m not exactly sure what we’re alluding to, but if your question is what would be the most, and it depends on what you’re talking about. If you’re talking about a crown, what would be the cleanest, most biocompatible material for a crown? The best material you could have is probably just a pure zirconia. They’re called bruxzir crowns. Bruxzir. Now, I have patients that are extremely chemically sensitive, and I’ve had one patient in particular last year that tested very sensitive to everything except for the bruxzir. He was even sensitive to the glaze of the bruxzir. So the bruxzir crown is not going to be very pretty. It’s going to be very chalky looking, and we put some glaze to make it look pretty. But the glaze is probably the most toxic part of the crown, so if you want to go with a very, just pure, pure crown, the cleanest that there is, if you have a lot of sensitivies or challenges, would be a bruxzir crown, unglazed. And then you could probably buff it and give it a nice, you know, finish just by buffing it. It’s not the most aesthetic. Using it in front would probably raise some eyebrows. It’s not terrible, but it’s not the most aesthetic. They all have pros and minuses, but as far as the health is concerned, that would be the one. And then you – did I answer your questions? Okay. Alright. Thank you for your questions.

Female: Here’s  quick one: is it safe to rinse with hydrogen peroxide after brushing?

Daniel: Yes, it’s safe. Hydrogen peroxide is perfectly safe. And it makes sense if you guys think about what we talked about, right? The hydrogen peroxide, right, peroxide, you’re actually adding some oxygen into the area, which is not very welcomed by some of these bacteria, these anaerobic bacteria. I would say, though, that a lot of people talk to be about hydrogen peroxide. There’s really no comparison between hydrogen peroxide and ozone. Ozone is much more concentrated, much greater amount of oxygen per square inch, and a lot more able to kill more of the anaerobics, so I would say ozone would be much preferable, but hydrogen peroxide is fine. In the long run, though, if you get an ozone generator, it will be cheaper than buying a lot of hydrogen peroxide. You know, you should shop it around in the internet, but they usually, a good machine runs between two hundred and two hundred and fifty dollars. No. It’s just an ozone generator. You can use it for anything you want. There are actually people who use ozone to ozonate olive oil and do flushes. There are different things that you could do with it, so that’s a whole other lecture, but… Yes, dear?

Second female in audience: Do you recommend calcium supplementations or any other supplementations?

Daniel: What kind of supplementations? Calcium supplementations. You know, calcium supplementation by itself, and as far as the teeth are concerned is, I would say, useless.

Second female in audience: Oh.

Daniel: Yeah. I don’t think your body absorbs it, and even if your body absorbs it, you know, your teeth are already calcified. Most of the recalcification of the teeth happens in the mouth with the enamel, directly through the mouth. A little bit of the calcium you could have could go into the saliva and help somewhat, but I don’t think it’s a major player. I would say eating well, [inaudible], you know, especially some of the high-calcium containing vegetables would probably be much, much better than to have calcium in isolation, because calcium needs phosphorus, needs a few other elements to really be properly absorbed.

Second female in audience: So, no supplementation period.

Daniel: Yeah. You know what, I’m a really anti-supplement kind of guy. I think good nutrition by far outweighs a lot of the stuff that millions of dollars are spent, or billions of dollars are spent to promote.

Second female in audience: [Inaudible] with vitamin D?

Daniel: Vitamin D’s a little different story, and we found some research showing that a great number of people in this world today are vitamin D deficient, so that would be the one supplement that I would consider, especially if you live in an area which is not sunny or you spend a lot of time indoors. You’re welcome. That was Shakespeare’s question. To be or not to be, to do or not to do. So tell me, what’s your situation.

Female: He’s talking about the fact that if you remove the nerve of the tooth it leaves the tooth dead, and also that the canals fill with germs and viruses and then penetrate the jaw bone and can cause severe infectious bone damage.

Daniel: Right. So this is what we talked about. Traditional root canals, absolutely, they create micro spaces that get infected. Traditional root canals, and 99 percent of the root canals in everybody’s mouths are traditional root canals. Very few people use biocompatible materials for the root canals, so absolutely. Root canal done in a traditional matter will probably be a focus of infection. As far as it being a dead tooth, that’s not absolutely true. You do take some of the irrigation and innervation from inside the tooth, but there’s still a lot of innervation and blood supply coming from the outside of the tooth, so it’s not totally true that it’s dead. It does become more brittle. It does become more calcified. The big issue, I think, was more with the infection part of it. Now, will a biocompatible root canal get rid of the infections? In my clinical experience, patients have gotten considerably better when we’ve actually retreated traditional root canals with biocompatible materials. I believe that I probably would use one in my mouth if I had to, depending on my circumstances, but since it’s not a certainty, again, it depends on you. I have healthy patients that, you know, have an important tooth that would actually affect their lifestyle, their quality of life, taking it out, and I have no hesitation. I know that that is not exactly in line with the Gerson Institute, and this is beautiful that we can have a conversation, but you know, I strongly believe in biocompatible root canals in healthy patients under certain circumstances. Not a blanket statement, and I don’t recommend it for everybody. No. Not people with cancer. No. Not people who have major challenges. No. I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.

First male in audience: When he said… You see, when he said that the nerves come down, right? Then he said that nerve was going to be empty.

Daniel: It’s not empty, it gets filled. It’s not empty.

First male in audience: No, I’m not talking about the tooth. I’m talking about the nerves underneath. What happened with it?

Daniel: The nerve underneath actually, you know, you have nerves that are going to the teeth. Basically that nerve just moves through. It doesn’t need to connect there any longer. But it does, because there are nerve innervations around the tooth, as well. So that’s really not an issue. The bigger issue is the focal point of infection. I think really that’s the main issue here. You’re welcome.

Third female in audience: Have you seen any correlation between cancer developing in a patient who has teeth removed, young cadaver bone graft done, and cancer forming afterwards, like within eight to ten months?

Daniel: I have not read any research. Have you?

Third female in audience: No.

Daniel: No. I have not. And in our practice, we don’t use any cadaver or even bovine graft. We use basically calcium based grafting any time we have to graft bone. You know, who knows what the issues will be ten or twenty or thirty years from now from using cadaver bones, so I don’t really want to expose my patients –

Third female in audience: More specifically, I have, my sister had a bone graft done eight to ten months ago, and it was a young cadaver bone, and then after eight months, she is found with cancer in the [inaudible].

Daniel: Yeah. It may not be related, but my gut feeling is that I would not use cadaver bone on myself or my family or my patients. I don’t think it’s needed. If there are really situations that require large bone grafts, I would be much more inclined to do a [inaudible] bone graft, you know, from another part of your body and put it into your own, you know, into your mouth, or to use, what we use is a calcium based bone grafting material which just creates a matrix and a holding pattern for your own body to actually lay the bone in. Sorry about your sister.

Second male in audience: Hi, thank you. I just wanted to know your opinion with regards to oil pulling and oral hygiene.

Daniel: Great. So oil pulling is an effective method of actually pulling some toxins out of your mouth, and I think it’s been used for a long, long, long time.

Female: Dr. Vinograd, could you explain in case people don’t know what oil pulling is, actually?

Daniel: Yeah. You basically use a base of oil. It could be, some people use walnut oil, coconut oil, different kinds of oils, and you actually hold it in your mouth and swish it for a long period of time, and the oil actually helps draw the toxins. Yeah. Anywhere – there are people who do it for twenty minutes. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. I don’t, I usually don’t recommend it in my practice so much because 95 percent of all the toxins in the mouth are generated by bacteria, mostly anaerobic bacteria, so I’m mostly a proponent of the ozone rather than the oil pulling. It’s faster and I think much more effective in going to the root cause. If you have bacteria that are generating this, you can oil pull the toxins, but the bacteria are still in there, and they’re recreating the scenario again, over and over again.

Fourth female in audience: Hi.

Daniel: Hi.

Fourth female in audience: I have two questions.

Daniel: Sure.

Fourth female in audience: I’m having an amalgam removed. I have one in my mouth. And I’m getting an onlay done – is that right? Is that normally a composite material or a porcelain material?

Daniel: It can be both.

Fourth female in audience: Okay.

Daniel: It can be both. If it’s going to be, it’s going to probably be done at the lab or at the dental office. It’s going to be milled. So if it’s going to be milled, your composite will probably not have any BPAs or any fluoride, which is a good thing, but it can be both. Either or. And most of the time it’s porcelain, and that’s probably going to be the more stable of the two materials.

Fourth female in audience: Oh, okay. And also, what’s your opinion about pulling wisdom teeth?

Daniel: You know, wisdom teeth are most problematic when they’re partially erupted, because once they get partially erupted, you have a real bacterial trap there, which is basically what we talked about in pockets, it creates a much larger pocket in there that becomes problematic in that sense. When they’re in the bone, you’re just watching for the possibility of cysts in the future, but most problematic when they’re halfway in. Yeah. You’re welcome. Thanks for your question. Hi. Pulling teeth out in order to get braces? Can you speak into the mic a little bit?

Fifth female in audience: Hello? Ah, there we go. I was wondering what your opinion is about pulling out healthy teeth in order to get a brace, because that’s what they do in my country.

Daniel: It’s usually a good idea if you need it, obviously, if you trust and if you have a competent orthodontist, then they’re pulling it because usually your arch, the arch of your jaw, or your maxilla, is not large enough to accommodate all the teeth. So it’s very important that you don’t have crowding so that you don’t eventually have gum issues.

Fifth female in audience: So it won’t create like a disbalanced situation?

Daniel: No. Usually it’s a beneficial situation when you can get your teeth aligned and no crowding.

Fifth female in audience: Okay. Thank you.

Daniel: You’re welcome.

Female: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Vinograd. I know everybody’s learned so much from you today. I know I learn something new every time you come, and I think everybody will join me in thanking you for being here today.

Transcription: part 1 | part 2 | part 3

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Holistic Dental Lecture Transcribed (Part 3)

So one of my heroes, Weston Price, which maybe some of you know of, was a dentist, but he was one of the first dentists that was just really looking at the whole picture. He was saying, “Let’s look at nutrition. Let’s look at the effects of what we’re doing on people’s bodies,” and so forth. So he was fantastic. He was amazing. He put together some nutritional research. By far one of my greatest heroes of all time, because he is the father of holistic dentistry, really. So what he did is he actually took some root canal teeth and he implanted them in rabbits, just under the skin, closed it up, and he found that the rabbits got sick. A lot of them had arthritis. The patients had arthritis, actually the rabbits developed arthritis. And some of them died from the infection. Right away, everybody said, you know, looking at this research, “Oh my god, root canals are going to kill you, they’re going to give you cancer, they’re going to give you an infection, they’re going to give you arthritis, et cetera, et cetera.”

It’s possible. It’s very, very possible. What was about the root canal, though, that created the problems? And I think what was, my opinion is that the root canals that were done traditionally had been performed with hydrophobic materials, which is materials that actually contract in the presence of moisture. There’s moisture in the body, there’s moisture in the mouth, always, so when you have a material that’s hydrophobic, you’re going to actually have the materials contract. What happens when the materials contract inside of this space is that you start getting micro pockets, and in those micro pockets you have bacteria, anaerobic bacteria that creates a lot of damage. Again, being untouched. You can’t really access that, and they become a focus of infection. So was that the problem? Was that why those root canals were the focus of infection? Well, as of maybe seven or eight years ago, there was something called BC sealer which was being used to repair knees and, you know, it had a lot of osteogenic properties. They would put it near, in the bone, and it would actually create bone around it.

So the body actually liked it a lot, and the nice thing about this material was that it actually was hydrophilic – it liked moisture and it would expand. So you can see that if we have a material here that actually expands, there’s a much better chance that this is going to be sealed without any pockets in it. Is this a hundred percent the case? We don’t know. We don’t know. What we do know is that clinically, we’ve had very good results with it, and that from a research point of view, it makes a lot of since. Up to just a few months ago, that BC sealer had to actually be placed with a Gutta Perchavs Point, and Gutta Perchavs, aside from the fact that it has a little cadmium, is basically a fairly inert, but it doesn’t expand, it doesn’t contract, so even in the presence of the BC sealer, the BC sealer’s expanding, but because the Gutta Perchavs, even though it’s just one point versus multiple points with traditional root canals, you still have the possibility of having very small air pockets in there. In Europe, they started using something called a CPoint, and that’s a biocompatible point that’s now taken the place of Gutta Perchavs mostly in Europe. It really hasn’t been brought to this country, and you know, this is something I’ve been very excited about, because now you have [inaudible] that you can use, you no longer have to use Gutta Perchavs, that can actually expand together with the BC sealer and create a nice, even, uniform expansion right on the canal.

And if you obviously get enough expansion, which is usually about twenty, twenty-two percent, that’s enough to really create a nice, tight seal. And, you know, they actually compared the use of Gutta Perchavs with the use of the new biocompatible materials. And this is basically talking, basically, about how the hydrophilic materials expand. Okay, so having said that, when do you do a root canal, when you don’t?  You know, I would say when I get a patient in the office, if this patient has a lot of health issues, I probably would not go with the root canal. There are many different options, and you can explore those. Also, you can actually check some of the [inaudible] charts and find out. I have a root canal on tooth number three. How is that connected with what organs in my body? Is there a connection? If there is, then you having challenges with that, I would definitely either remove or retreat that root canal, and if it’s been retreated, definitely remove it. So again, you know, if you understand what’s going on, now you can make decisions. You can ask the right questions to your dentist.

You know, I had a patient that called me from Toronto recently and said, “I went to a holistic dentist, and they wanted to remove nine teeth.” I said, “Okay, send me your x-rays. I’ll take a look at them.” One of the molars was absolutely unsaveable, so I said, “Why don’t you have the doctor remove this molar, live with this for three months, and then multiply times eight, and see what the quality of your life will be.” So we have to balance things out, you know? We can’t get so crazy [inaudible]. Now, of course, if I have cancer, if I have a very, very challenging situation, it might be worth it for me to do this and then see how I’m going to replace them. But we have to think ahead of time. How are we going to replace these teeth? Are we not going to replace them? Are we okay with not replacing them? Do we understand what it means to live without these teeth? If the answers are yes, then go ahead. I just want you to think before we act and the consequences of the decisions we’re going to be taking.

What is best, implants, fixed bridges, removable bridges, Maryland bridges? So this is our sum of the, if you have decided you want to extract the tooth, what are our options now? Implants. Implants are made of titanium. About 99.5 percent of the population is not allergic to titanium. There’s half a percentage that is. We can actually find that out early. We can do a serum test, and we can find out if that’s an issue. From a biological point of view, I’ve seen these implants integrate beautifully. The body loves them. It takes them in. However, there is the magnetic interference with some of the channels. And again, you know, if you’re having, if you’re very healthy individual, this might not be a problem for you. If you are seeing some health challenges, hey, you might want to reconsider. This may not be for you. Now, this is what implants were even, you know, six, seven years ago, this is what implants were like. Very, very large. Very invasive. A lot of the times, you know, so big that we could not place them because there was a nerve here or a sinus, et cetera. There has been some research showing that actually, longer implants don’t have the longevity of shorter implants because the fact that they do this. Zirconia implants. So, because of the kind of practice that I have, a lot of people come and ask me, “How about zirconia implants?”

Zirconia implants, from a biological point of view, okay. You know, I think they’re a little bit better than titanium. Probably comparable, but a little bit better than titanium. The problem with those implants is that they are one piece, and they are very large, and very invasive. Why is it a problem they’re one piece? If you saw this implant right here, this is one piece, and then you have a second piece coming out of the middle, and a third piece that is the crown. These ones come only in one piece and then you can put the crown on the top. Most of the time, your bone and your jaw is not oriented perfectly well so that you can [inaudible] an implant and have the tooth come out perfectly straight so you can put a crown, so you have to actually grind those things, and when you grind them, you create micro fractures, and micro fractures are a big problem when you have something imbedded in your bone. So I really, until the time where zirconia comes with a two piece implant, I’m not going to be placing them in most cases. We’re eagerly waiting to see if they come up with a two piece.

These are actually the ones we place in our office when it’s indicated, and they’re called [inaudible] implants. They’re bioceramic coated implants, and they’re very, very small, which I like a lot, because even from an electromagnetic point of view, they don’t create interference that these things were creating. And they have found out that the bone integration is great with them because they have a lot of surface even though they’re small. So this is an option. Again, not for everybody, but this is an option. And this is a case we just placed last week. Removable bridge. A lot of people like removable bridges because they feel they are, you know, some of the better, least aggressive invasive materials. And that is true in some cases, you know, but obviously, the quality of life is a consideration here. Taking in and out your teeth all the time and moving around, you know, is not for everybody. Fixed bridges, of course, and, you know,  if you, for example, have a tooth that is compromised, and you have two teeth on the side that have crowns already or large amalgams, I would say that’s a no-brainer.

You should really place a bridge there. Remove, you know, use the other two teeth on the side of them, and place crowns on them, and the middle part is actually going to be attached to them. You cement them. Great. So that’s a no-brainer. When you have to think twice about it is when you have two beautiful, pristine teeth to the sides of the tooth that you’re talking about. Do you really want to grind those teeth down the place the bridge on it? So, again, more food for thought. And then we have Maryland bridges, which actually are a lot less invasive. Rather than having to trim the whole tooth and place a crown on it, you know, there’s really, the tooth gets respected quite a bit more. It’s not as aggressive in the preparation. Why doesn’t everybody do this? Because they tend to come off. So you have to be ready to re-cement them every six months, every eight months, you know, you have to re-cement them, because usually the retention is not quite what it could be with a traditional bridge.

So once again, you know, I urge you to listen to yourselves. You have a billion and a half years of evolution and godliness in each one of you. For heaven’s sake, listen to yourself. Get good advice, obviously, but you have to listen to yourself and use your intuition in choosing your health professions as well, and I think if you do that, you’re more likely to make really good decisions, you know? The Chinese talk about the brain and the heart as being one organ, a single organ, and I think they got it right. Anyway, this will be right there if you have any questions or if there’s anything I can do to help you guys out, I’d be more than happy to. So I’ll open it up for questions if you have any.

Female: I have one that came in actually a little earlier on from the webstream, and that is, “Do porcelain fillings cause more sensitivity than composites?”

Daniel: Okay. What we’ve found I our practice is that a lot of the time when amalgams are removed, you have micro fractures, and those micro fractures, as you remove them, actually relax and open up a little bit more, so teeth get sensitive no matter what you replace them with. So what’s important is the depth of the preparation. If it’s very, very close to the nerve, you’re going to have more sensitivity than when it’s not, and so often we’ll place desensitizers that we have now, [inaudible] based desensitizer, and we can actually put a coat of calcium to protect from the sensitivity. If none of those things are done, then you could experience sensitivity either with the porcelain or with the – do you find that to be the case, Anastasia?

Anastasia: Absolutely.

Female: So you don’t necessarily find a greater sensitivity with one versus the other.

Anastasia: So the calcium base that we use is, again, from a biological standpoint, very healthy for the body. The teeth accept it very easily, and it just puts a nice coating down, and with a lot of the cements that we’re using, the strength is very good, and again, it adheres to the teeth in sucha  nice manner that it reduces the sensitivity, and yeah.

Daniel: Yeah. But I don’t think we have found much difference in the porcelain and the composites as far as sensitivity. Right. Yeah. So it’s more of a matter of the depth of preparation.

Transcription: part 1 | part 2 | part 4

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Dentures vs Implants

The most basic definition of a denture is basically just two pieces of plastic or other material used in place of teeth used to grind and mash food.  A bit simplistic and outdated, but for someone without teeth, it’s better than nothing at all… or subsisting on a liquid and soft foods diet.

Better than nothing, but dentures are dramatically inferior to natural teeth.  Chewing ability is impaired and quality of life is diminished.  Many denture wearers express feelings of being old and unattractive – and dentures cause a host of problems.  Reabsorption of bone where the teeth were anchored leads to dentures not fitting well, resulting in sore spots.  Regular adjustments of the dentures can help for a while, but bone is often eventually reabsorbed to the point where the dentures just aren’t going to fit anyway.  Ill-fitting dentures can also allow small bits of food to get between the denture and the gum, causing soreness, aching jaws and even earache.

Many people go through a great deal of dental work, with the accompanying pain and expense, before they eventually lose so many teeth that dentures are necessary.  Dentures were so common in generations past that many people believe that it is simply part of the aging process.  They believe that once in dentures, there’s no going back.  While it’s true that you can’t grow a new set of teeth, dentures are not the only solution.

implant assisted bridgeDentistry today offers several alternatives that are superior to traditional dentures and can improve quality of life for many people, and they are all based on implants.  A couple of decades ago, implants were considered to be radical dentistry and many dentists looked upon them as quack dentistry.  Since then implants have advanced so much that modern implants, when the procedure is done correctly and the implant is well-integrated, they work to improve quality of life over dentures in more that 95% of patients.  Implants can be used to augment dentures or even to replace dentures.

There are three basic ways implants can be used in place of traditional dentures.  The first method uses two to four implants with male pieces that fit into female counterparts fitted onto the denture.  Basically, the dentures simply button onto the implants, holding them firmly in place.  This method results in dentures that can still be removed as needed by the wearer.  Essentially, this is just a more secure version of the traditional denture, but still a huge improvement over dentures that can slip and rub on the gums, causing painful sores.

The second method involves placing implants in every spot that has available bone and placing bridges and crowns to replace the lost teeth.  Also a huge improvement, this method is quite extensive, using more implants than some other methods.

The final method places four to six implants and adhering them permanently to a complete set of teeth.  This method uses a solid bridge that is fixed in placed and not removable by the wearer.  The major advantage of this method is that it does not require as many implants as replacing individual teeth or using small bridges.

The main consideration in deciding to place implants is healthy bones and enough bone in the area where the implant is to be placed.  Most patients have healthy enough bones to get implants, but not all of them have enough bone to integrate with the implant.  When implants were first introduced to the market, they were very long, about 18-20 mm or around ¾ inch, making them quite invasive and requiring more bone than a lot of patients had available.

Where there is insufficient bone to allow the implant to integrate, sometimes bone grafts can be used to reinforce the available bone and allow integration.  This bone can either be a patient’s own bone, taken from the chin, hip, or shin, or bone from a cadaver or cow.  When the bone is taken from the hip or shin, the procedure is done as an inpatient surgery under general anesthesia. In other cases, the procedure may be done under IV sedation. Regardless of where the bone comes from, bone grafts require several months of recovery time before implants can be placed.  In some cases the bone has deteriorated so

implant diagramDental implants have grown smaller in recent years and research shows that smaller implants integrate better and last just as long or longer than their lengthier counterparts.  Today most implants are about 10-15 mm or about ½ inch long.  Much smaller than they used to be, these implants are still a bit longer than necessary and still need a significant amount of bone to integrate sufficiently.

Some offices use bicon implants, which are significantly shorter than other implants and surprisingly well-designed.  They are about 6 mm, or just under ¼ inch long and offer a significant surface for the bone to grip.  Recent research suggests that not only are these implants less invasive than others, but they integrate more effectively than longer implants.  These smaller implants are less invasive than longer implants and require less bone to integrate.  For most patients, this results in a shorter recovery and less pain.  Because the implants are so much smaller and require so much less bone to effectively integrate, the possibility that a patient will need bone grafts, sinus lifts, nerve repositioning, or other invasive surgery is much less.  Because of this, some patients who might have been poor candidates for dental implants in the past may now be able to toss their old-fashioned, ill-fitting dentures for good.

As soon as the implants are integrated and the new teeth are in place, patients experience a dramatic difference in how they look and feel.  Simply being able to smile again without feeling self-conscious is a huge relief to many patients.

For a free consultation with Dr. , Call (619) 630-7174
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Holistic Dental Lecture Transcribed (Part 2)

So these are some of the basics that you guys should really keep in mind when you go visit your dentist. First of all, that you want a rubber dam for the debris not to be ingested, and you want oxygen to, you know, prevent you from breathing any of it, the gases, the power. A lot of ventilation, high-power vacuum, and you want a hand piece, maybe an electric hand piece that can be regulated and can actually cut the amalgams in small sections and have those segments come out rather than grinding everything out. The more you grind, the more that you have an opportunity to reingest a lot of that. In our office, in addition, we use homeopathy to protect our patients. We have natural ventilation, which is, I think, important as well, and we can do nutritional guidance and quadrants dentistry. That means we actually lay a rubber dam in a quarter of your mouth and then we clean everything out one quadrant at a time. So let’s talk a little bit, now this starts getting interesting, because people come to the office and say, “Okay, I’m ready to get my amalgams out. What are my choices?”

And, you know, people mostly replace amalgams with composites. What are composites? Anybody know what composites are? Composites are basically, to just keep it really simple, they’re basically plastic and glass mixed together. This is what composites are. And is this better than mercury amalgam? A lot less toxic. Is it perfect? Not by far. So that’s basically what a composite is, and you have, kind of, two options in your composite. You either have a pure composite, and I don’t know of any composite in the market that does not contain BPAs, so if you have some challenges with your health, especially if you have some hormonal imbalances, you know, BPAs are not exactly something that you want to be having, especially when you have large restorations and you’re going to be chewing on that plastic crystal combination. So the other possibility is a combination of a glass ionomer with a composite. Now, they’ve managed to get the BPAs out of that, but the glass ionomer, by just the way they are, just by its essence, has a small amount of fluoride. So these are your choices at this point: little bit of fluoride, BPAs. So now you’re beginning to understand that there are choices to be made, and you have to be made aware of exactly what’s being used. Now, the other thing that could be used is ceramics. Why do dentists not just use ceramics all the time? Cost. It’s basically cost. Probably, ceramic is probably four times more expensive than a composite, and most people have limitations. But again, you should understand that you have those choices and that a porcelain piece that has been baked is a lot more stable than a composite that has not. So when it comes to crowns, we don’t have, really, I mean they have composite crowns, but they’re really not traditionally used. And you can have different kinds of crowns in your mouth. A lot of people want to get away from the metal. Now, is metal really the worst thing you can have in your mouth? It’s not good, but we have to make a differentiation here.  Metal versus amalgam fillings. Metal usually does not contain mercury; amalgam fillings do. So they’re really a totally different category.

Having said that, even though some metals are quite a bit more biocompatible than others. For example, they have pure titanium cores with a porcelain covering is probably one of the most biocompatible metal crowns that you can have. So from a biological point of view, not terrible. From an electromagnetic point of view, that’s a different story. You know, some people really don’t want metal in their mouths because it does disrupt a lot of [inaudible]. And then we have no metal crowns, which is mostly what we use in our practice, and you have bilayered crowns, which is a core of zirconia with porcelain layered on top, and then you have a pure zirconia, which is a bruxzir crown. All porcelain crowns have either zirconium-oxide or aluminum-oxide. When they are in that form, they’re usually stable, and because they are baked, they’re a lot more stable. But still, when I say there are no perfect materials, really there are no perfect materials. And again, you know, we have to find out what is the most biocompatible situation for you.

I’m happy to say that nowadays, you know, when I started out thirty years ago, it was just a handful of us that were advocating treating our patients as whole human beings and really being concerned about their whole health. I’m really happy to say that the quack has a following now. So oral disease and systemic disease. This is really interesting because I think one of the things that happened during the industrial revolution is that everything became compartmentalized. You know, the doctors became specialists, and the engineers became specialists, and all of the sudden, if you had a problem with an elbow, you had to go see an elbow specialist, and so what happened is we started disconnecting the fact that everything in our bodies work at once, and it’s all connected. So I’m here to talk to you about how a lot of the bacteria in the mouth actually move through our bloodstream and end up in our hearts, in our pancreas, and many other organs of our body.

So gum disease is one of the major ways in which we get in trouble, and when you see that inflammation in your gums, if you see a lot of redness and bleeding in your gums, it means that you probably have a lot of bacteria in there causing a lot of damage. Here’s a little more advanced stage. And what is happening here is that we all have little spaces between our gums and our teeth. We call them pockets, right, and when this is a small pocket, you know, maybe one or two millimeters here, you can actually go in with your toothbrush and clean it out. What happens when those pockets get to three, four, five, six millimeters, bacteria can have a party down there. Nobody knows, right? I mean, they’re having a blast, and nothing can touch them. These are all what we call bacteria, oxygen-hating bacteria. You know, you have in the mouth mostly bacteria that loves oxygen and bacteria that hates oxygen. So usually they hide in there because they don’t like the exposure to the air. So the same bacteria that actually has been found in the gum pockets has been found in diseased hearts and pancreas. This has been some good, solid research.

How do they get there? Very easy. The pockets actually, when you feel a little bit of inflammation, when you have bleeding in your pockets, you have access to your bloodstream. So all the bacteria that are in there are really accessing your bloodstream all the time. So how do you take care of that? Number one, traditional hygiene. Toothbrush, and floss, and that’s fine when you have two, three millimeter pockets, right, but when your pockets are a little bit deeper, we actually recommend that our patients use a water pick and an ozone generator. So what does a water pick do? A water pick actually has a stream of water, and you can access five, six, seven millimeter of pocket depth. An ozone generator can actually create O3 in your water, and it actually kills what we call anaerobic bacteria – that’s the bacteria that hates the oxygen – it dies on contact. You can actually kill that bacteria on contact. So we’ve had in our office patients that traditionally would be sent to the periodontist to get their gums trimmed, right, trimmed back, called periodontal surgery, and we’ve actually had them on maintenance on the ozone and water pick for quite a long time with really, really fantastic result.

Does that mean that you guys can’t use it if you don’t have periodontal disease? Not at all, because the ozone will kill periodontal anaerobics as well as [inaudible] generating bacteria. So this is a great thing. I’ve had my ozone generator probably for about thirty years, and you don’t need to use mouthwashes, any of that stuff if you’re going to have an ozone generator. Now, if you are going to get an ozone generator, I recommend using a well-ventilated area because it is irritating to breathe. It’s perfectly safe once it’s inside the water. That is a corona discharge, I would say six hundred [inaudible] per hour or better is good. You’re going to get effective ozone in your water. A thousand is better only because rather than leaving it fifteen to twenty minutes to ozonate the water, you can just leave it for about ten minutes. And make sure that it’s a properly sealed box. You know, in the internet they have some ozone generators, and they’re kind of homemade things, and they actually expose you to a lot of ozone in the air. So where can we buy the water irrigator?

You know, you can buy them most everywhere, and they’re fairly inexpensive. It’s a really good investment. I’ve had a couple of my patients that said, you know, “I put mine in my closet because I turned it on and I had water going all over the place, and I was taking a bath with it.” But if you’re patient with it, and you start using it, you know, you get the hang of it, it becomes a really, really good instrument for you guys. That’s the water pick. Uh huh. Now, you don’t want the travel model because it has a very, very small reservoir. You want, really, the home water pick that has the larger container. And don’t spend too much money on it, you know, any water pick would do as long as it has a large reservoir. And of course, you want to really go to your dentist, make sure that he’s actually probing, and ask your dentist, you know, do you see any pockets in here, and if you do, where? So you can go home and actually help yourself, and, you know, I could actually do the scaling for you every three months, every six months, whatever, but what I do for you can’t compare with what you could do if you’re doing that every day, because this is actually cleaning the inside of your gums once every so often.

You could be doing that every day. You’re actually killing those bacteria every day, and so there’s no dentist in the world that can actually compete with that. Another thing you might want to think about is if you have a lot of crowning, that creates a lot of problems with your gums are very hard to clean, and so you might think about maybe, not for aesthetics necessarily, but braces for this purpose, I think, are well worth it. And you know, both of the larger companies, Invisalign and Clear Correct, their trays do not contain any BPAs. Alright, here comes the elephant in the room. So, I know Gerson advocates no root canals, and I absolutely respect that. I just want to give you a little bit of background as to what is happening here with a root canal, and, again, give you information that allows you to make really intelligent choices.

So root canal controversy. Do we just leave it, do we retreat it with biocompatible materials, or do we extract it? Right? That’s usually the question we have if we have a root canal or if we’re going to get a root canal. Do we get it at all? So what is a root canal? It’s basically you have a package of a nerve, vein, and artery inside every tooth. Some teeth have three, four, five. Some teeth have just one. And when there’s inflammation and infection in this area right here, a dentist has to make an access through the top, remove this material, this organic material right here, and then fill it with something to make the difference up, right, to make the space up. Okay, so let me go back for a second. So why is the root canal so vilified in the internet? [Inaudible] with very good reason.

Transcription: part 1 | part 3 | part 4

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Silver Fillings And Root Canals Among Top Concerns For Holistic Dentist Patients

A holistic dentist is an excellent choice for a modern, clear-thinking person who asks questions of their healthcare professionals and takes an active role in advocating for their own health. Still, not all answers related to holistic health and dentistry are clear, according to a recent lecture on the topic given to students at the University of California San Diego by holistic dentist Dr. Daniel Vinograd.

Perhaps the two most common questions asked of a holistic dentist involve the safety of dental amalgam and the safety and effectiveness of root canals.

While there’s no doubt that dental amalgam works, it also contains 50 percent mercury, a substance the U.S. government and many other important bodies around the world have called unsafe. Yet many dentists still install mercury-containing silver fillings in their patients’ mouths.

Replacing amalgam with composite is the holistic dental way, and composites are much safer. But some contain additives that aren’t perfect. Still, a good solution with a minor problem is better than one that contains a proven harmful substance.

Where root canals are concerned, the waters are even muddier, as Dr. Vinograd explained in his lecture.

A root canal is often an imperfect solution for a failing tooth, but installing a bridge to replace a missing tooth damages nearby teeth. In many cases, an implant is the best solution, although those aren’t perfect in every case.

And then, of course, is the matter of treating gum disease. How can it best be treated without invasive treatments, antibiotics and toxic chemicals?

The bottom line is that holistic dentistry is thoughtful dentistry for thoughtful patients. For people who like to analyze their health and do what it takes to avoid making decisions that are detrimental to their well-being, the modern trend toward holistic dentistry is a smart one.

– Dr. Daniel Vinograd (Top 3 SDDA Dentist – see more about the San Diego Dentist Association)

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Holistic Dental Lecture Transcribed (Part 1)

Female: We have very special guests for you today. A lot of times, especially in the natural health community, conventional dentists don’t get a very good rep. And in many instances, it’s for very, very good reason, that they deserve it, exactly. But we have one of the good ones here today who is not only a [inaudible] and a dentist, but also a very lovely man, and one who takes a balanced approach that works in the real world. So please welcome Dr. Daniel Vinograd.

Daniel: Thank you. Thank you very much. Are we on? Thank you. Thank you. It’s very nice to be with you again. The Gerson Institute, I just have so much admiration for what they do. I’m Dr. Daniel Vinograd. This is Anastasia Dickson; she’s one of my team members. A wonderful person. Also does a lot of the things that we preach. Vegetarian, does her cleanses, so we have a lot of, I’m very fortunate we have a terrific team that I work with. I’m very blessed. So more than anything today, I would like for you guys to start trusting yourselves. I trust you. Why do I say that I trust you? I trust you because as I see each one of you, I know there’s a wealth of wisdom, intuition that we really don’t use all that much, right? Today, what we do use most of the time, ninety percent of the time, is from the neck up, right? We’re bombarded all day long with messages, commercials, Internet, and so we’re working here all the time, and we forget that there is really a lot of wisdom everywhere else in our bodies. And I’m saying this because what I want to do today is to empower you to make good decisions and to try to understand a little bit more why you need to make the decisions that you make together with your health professionals, and so it used to be that many, many years ago, decades ago, and still in some countries where people go to the doctor and dentist and say, “Yes, whatever you say, you know. I’ll follow your advice.”

Unfortunately, it’s not that way anymore; it can’t be that way anymore because there are a lot of commercial interests that get in the way. There are a lot of lovely, lovely people there. Wonderful healers. I had the opportunity of going to South America, Central America often, and I share some of the best, most lovely times with a lot of very, very wonderful people who are out there, and all they want to do is heal the world. So there are wonderful people out there, but we have to be realistic. There are a lot of commercial interests out there, a lot of financial interests out there, and so we have to fend for ourselves. You guys agree? Right. So why do we need to take responsibility for our health? Especially in dentistry, what the focus of dentistry has been over the years is functionality. So to some degree I would say the dentist became the engineers of the health professions, because – why? Because we are always into detail, into repairing something, into making something functional. Unfortunately, someplace along the way, we forgot that we are actually doing our engineering inside human beings. I’ll be honest with you. When I first started practicing, many years ago, I have to admit, I came out the same way. Dental school, focused on which were the most resistant materials, which ones were the most pliable materials, and I began practicing in a way that was very dissatisfying to me because I was actually just doing micro engineering. Once I realized that there was a human being behind there, the gates of heaven opened up for me as far as my practice and the way I practiced. So I used to have a good friend who used to do a lot of the dental material research at UCLA, and I always asked them, you know, why are you guys always looking about compression forces on dental amalgams? How about the biocompatibility?

You know, thirty years ago that word meant nothing; it was like gibberish. So dental amalgams, formocresol, you know, a lot of these materials have been used in the body because there’s been a disconnect. We are actually trying to get really beautiful results, really functional results, and how about the health of the person? We’re really, bottom line, we are healers. Right? We’re health professionals, and we tend to forget that in our profession at times. Formocresol, for example, is still, today, being used on children. When they do a child root canal, or a [inaudible], as they’re called, part of the nerve is taken out, and formocresol is placed. Now, formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, so why are we doing this still today? Why are we still placing amalgams today? So hopefully as we go through the lecture, we’ll maybe get some clarity about what’s going on. Mercury amalgams, what started first in 1833, a couple of Frenchmen brought amalgam for the first time into the US, and materials that were available at that time were just not great from a physical point of view, and so by 1844, New York, which was really the hub of dentistry at that time, about half of the dentists were using dental amalgam, and everybody was like, “Wow, this is great stuff! You know, it works well, you can pack it in, it hardens, it’s long-lasting, it’s just the right thing to do.”

But there was another group, American Society of Dental Surgeons, and they’re like the first heroes here, and they actually started understanding that how can mercury, which is so toxic, be okay to put in people’s mouths? So they began a countercurrent here, and they began to not allow its members to use the amalgam. If you wanted to belong to this very prestigious organization, you could not use amalgam. Unfortunately, in 1856 it was disbanded, and from then on, amalgam has been the go-to material for dental restorations. Now, mercury is one of the most toxic elements known to humans. And there are people who say, you know, “Dr. Vinograd, Daniel, what if you’re wrong? What if, you know, once you get the amalgam bounded with the metals, with the silver and so forth, what if at that point it really is inactive? It really doesn’t hurt anything?” “Well,” I say, “maybe you’re right. There is a possibility that you’re right. There’s always a possibility that there is another opinion, another way of looking at things. But why would I even take the chance, right? Why would I put something that the US government, Department of Health and Human Services, has categorized as the third most poisonous material that they know of?” Right? I mean, why would I – would I want to put that in my mouth just to find out if somebody’s right or somebody’s wrong? I’m not doing that. And I’m not doing this for my patients, either. As a matter of fact, we spend a lot of time and effort taking care of that and removing that in a safe manner, as some other holistic dentists do. Now, this is not me. This is not a bunch of quacks, right? This is not holistic people. This is the US government that’s saying this is so. I’ll back it up for you. So back thirty years ago, I was already beginning to have some doubts. I had a personal experience where when I first got out of school, you know, thirty some odd years ago, we were handling the amalgam, we really were not even using gloves or mouthpieces, and we were taking the amalgam and squeezing it like this into the trash can, and then using it in people’s mouths, so about five years into my practice, I started feeling really ill, and I felt, you know,  into my thirties – this is what being into your thirties feels like, is getting old, right?

And I was forgetting things, I just felt awful, and I started really trying to find out what was wrong, and I found out I was incredibly mercury toxic. And so that was my journey, that was my wake-up call, and I began to look at the possibility that this was really a nasty material, and sure enough, you know, I was able to cleanse, I was able to detox a lot, and you know, a lot of things reversed, so… Yeah, this is mostly what I got from my colleagues back there. So why doesn’t your dentist show you what mercury amalgam is such a hazardous substance? All you have to do, all your dentist has to do is go back to the manufacturers. They’ll tell you every possible injury that you could suffer from the use of amalgam. Well, for good reason, right? So, you know, I don’t want you to think that I think dentists are doing this maliciously. I think there’s just a lot of ignorance, a lot of doing things the same way we’ve always done them, and they work, and they’re okay, and not wanting to look, right? And this is what we see, Anastasia and I see in our practice all the time. Every day, this is what we’re seeing.

Now, not only are amalgams toxic and they have mercury, but when they’re fresh in the mouth, they are really releasing quite a bit of mercury and mercury gases. When they’re old, they begin to expand. After a decade or two, they begin to expand. The margins actually separate from the tooth, and not only they start leaking again, but you start having underlying decay, and one of the things that we see often in our practice is they start cracking teeth because they’re so hard, it starts expanding, and so we do multiple crowns every month based on patients coming in with fractions caused by amalgams. So these are fairly toxic restorations, and again, this is what we see in our office. Once we remove them, you know, a lot of the times, you know, this is what we find. I don’t know if you can see on that side the fracture line. Can you see the fracture line right between the two spaces there? Yeah. And those are very, very common. You’ll see those fracture lines from amalgams, and that’s usually what we find underneath. And, you know, fortunately, today there’s so many different materials. Are all of the materials to restore teeth healthy? No. And I’m here to tell you the truth: there are really no perfect dental materials, but you have amalgam here, and then you have composites here, and then you have porcelains here as far as, you know, how invasive they are to our systems. And they all have their pros and cons, and this is what I’m here to do today, to have you guys understand what it is that each material contains so that you guys can make good decisions. So there are different amalgam removal protocols, so if you’re going to remove your amalgams, you want to go to somebody that is going to remove them safely. If you had asbestos in your roof, you’re not just going to start yanking it out. It’s not a good thing to do, so same thing with amalgams.

And there are a lot of different protocols, and this is where I want you guys to start really thinking, because we go to the internet and we read all the stuff, and, you know, we get patients all the time saying, “Doc, this is what I want. I read this in the internet, and they say ,“ they, whoever they is, “and they say that this is what you need to do.” And some people say, “I only want you to follow the International Academy of Oral Matters and Toxicology protocol, or the [inaudible] protocol, or any of the above variations.” And bottom line is all those protocols are very important – you should have oxygen, you should have a rubber dam, you know, you should really protect your body from reingesting a lot of these amalgams – but really, we shouldn’t take our eyes off of the A ball. And what does that mean? It means that poorly implemented protocol, even if you’re following the best protocol, is not as good as a simpler protocol that is well-implemented. And what is the most important thing is placing a good rubber dam. That is your physical barrier. You see your teeth on this side, and everything else on the other side, so as you are working with the amalgam, you know, you’re not going to be actually reingesting a lot of it. In our office, we tend to use something that we call liquid dam that we actually seal around the teeth to provide an extra level of protection.

Transcription: part 2 | part 3 | part 4

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Podcast: Gutta Percha & The Root Canal Controversy, Part 1

Dr. Vinograd, holistic dentist in San Diego, California. Today, I would like to speak about root canals. Traditionally, root canals had been frowned upon by the holistic community and embraced by traditional dentistry. So I’d like to speak a little bit to that, specifically about some of the latest research and materials that have been made available.

The research that had been done that actually caused a lot of people to believe that root canals are quite toxic was done by Dr. Price, a dentist. He actually placed root canal teeth subcutaneously into rabbits and found that the rabbits had developed some sickness around via the focal point of the infection, which is the embedded root canal.

One of the problems is that this research has a lot of holes in it. It’s not really a very traditional scientific research, but having said that, I personally believe that his research has a lot of merit and has a great deal of information that can be had that is valid.

The second problem with the research is that Dr. Price used traditional root canals. These are still being performed by 98% of the dentists. I’m guessing 98%, but a great majority with very few exceptions. The exception being, of course, holistic dentists. And so that research really has very little relevance to what is called a holistically treated or by a compatible root canal.

Am I proposing by a compatible or holistic root canals? I am not. I’m simply trying to state the facts that people can make good decisions.

The difference between a traditional and holistic root canal is that the traditional root canal is basically performed with gutta percha points and a sealer. A sealer is a paste that is placed in between the gutta percha points and those gutta percha are just they’re depressed into the canal or heated into the canal to try to get a seal.

The problem with that is that you really can’t take a material like gutta percha, which is a rubber and truly efficiently seal those small areas. So that leaves a lot of spaces where bacteria can eventually make a home for themselves. The sealer that I’ve used is supposed to actually take up space that the gutta percha will leave. Unfortunately, traditional sealers are somewhat toxic and hydrophobic, which means that in the presence of moisture (which obviously exists in all of our bodies), it tends to shrink. So the sealers are not totally effective in doing that and the result has been that many root canals that had been taken out after a period of time and examined under a microscope have quite a number of microgaps.

Some of the holistic dentists began to use different materials which have calcium hydroxide as its main component. The problem with those is number one, they were very hard to feel accurately with this material just because of its physical characteristics and most importantly, up in some research, about 20% of those teeth found themselves fractured from the expansion of the harness of this calcium hyroxic material. So I would say that it has not been a successful way to treat root canals.

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