Root Canals a major cause of Chronic Disease? Weston Price science reviewed

Chronic degenerative diseases like cancer, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis are becoming increasingly common in the developed world, despite the tremendous amount of money being invested into researching their cures. About 100 years ago, though, a scientist and doctor made a surprising discovery in connection with a common dental procedure…

Which one? The root canal.

Researchers have estimated that over 40,000 people are receiving root canals procedures every day in the United States, making for more than 25 million root canals every year. For being such a common procedure, it’s also relatively poorly understood by the average person: Essentially, teeth that have been root-canaled can become toxic cesspits for anaerobic bacteria, with a chance of leaking into your bloodstream many years later.
These toxic teeth can seem perfectly normal, even while being the source of disease; this makes the issue even harder to trace back to its source. Why aren’t dentists more aware of the potential dangers of this sort of procedure, or how it relates to chronic degenerative conditions? After all, the American Dental Association claims that root canals are safe, but has yet to publish sufficient evidence to support that fact.

Over 100 years ago, a man by the name of Weston A. Price was already warning of the dangers of leaving root-canaled teeth in the mouths of dental patients. While his work continues to be discounted by modern-day medical and dental professionals, it seems that the many dentists irresponsibly providing root canals every day would do well to familiarize themselves with the late Dr. Price’s work.
Doctor price traveled outside of the confines of his day and age to examine the diets, bones, and teeth of native populations, who didn’t consume much of the day’s “modern” foods. In the year 1900, Price was treating recurring root canal infections, and noticed a disturbing trend: The canaled teeth remained infected, even in the face of the day’s many treatments.

Enter a woman, confined to a wheelchair for the past six years with debilitating arthritis. She went to see Dr. Price, who recommended extracting her root canal, even though it appeared to be normal and healthy. She agreed, and it changed the history of dental research.

After the tooth was extracted, the woman began to recover from her previously-debilitating arthritis, and was soon able to walk again. Doctor Price, meanwhile, had taken the extracted root-canaled tooth, and attached it under the skin of a rabbit. Soon, the rabbit developed the same arthritis that had afflicted the woman, and died from infection 10 days later.

This led Price to conclude that it was nearly impossible to sterilize a root-canaled tooth. From this conclusion, he went on to show that root-filled teeth may be the source of many chronic degenerative diseases, with 16 primary bacteria causing a majority of heart and circulatory disorders. In addition, there was strong evidence to suggest root-canaled teeth as the cause of joint, brain, and nervous system diseases.
Writing two books on the subject in 1922, Price was largely ignored. Until, almost 70 years later, Doctor George Meinig took a renewed interest in Price’s research. The former U.S. Army captain, hailing from Chicago, was also one of the founding members of the American Association of Endodontists, a group of root-canal specialists. Meinig spent 18 months showing the validity of Dr. Price’s work, which can be found here.

Why is it that dentists continue to engage in this common, destructive, mistaken procedure? They may not fully understand the anatomy of your teeth. Being made of the hardest substance in your body, the middle of each tooth has a soft inner structure filled with blood vessels and nerves; the roots of each tooth are connected to your jawbone and held in place by a ligament. With a complex network of micro-canals, the teeth have a tremendous network of tiny transporting tubes, which can become a prime breeding-ground for deadly bacteria after a root has been canaled: Hollowed out, and filled with a hardening substance. While the canal itself is filled, this network of bacteria-laden tunnels is never filled, instead remaining safely at a distance from antibiotics and immune defenses.

This may, in fact, be the “root cause” of so many chronic diseases. In this enclosed environment, the bacteria will begin to change shape, producing many potent toxic substances. What’s worse, no amount of sterilization seems to reach these networks of tubules, meaning that nearly every root-canaled tooth is a breeding ground for infection.

Increasing in intensity of infection, the bacteria can move into the jawbone itself, creating cavitations — pockets of dead tissue. According to the Weston Price Foundation, only two of 5,000 surgical cavitation cleanings were show to have healed. A grim analysis indeed, considering that this often occurs without specific symptoms to alert us of danger, meaning that we may have abscessed, dead teeth without even knowing about it.

Heart, Kidney, Bone, and Brain diseases may also be linked to root canal procedures. Under normal conditions, our healthy immune systems may be able to keep this bacteria at bay, preventing it from spreading further. But, if a sudden accident or illness weakens the immune system, these pockets of bacteria can begin to infect the bloodstream — effectively transporting them to any area of tissues in the body, including our major organs.

Returning to Dr. Price’s work: He found that by implanting parts of root-canaled teeth into rabbits, he could successfully transfer disease nearly 100% of the time! Nearly every chronic degenerative disease has been linked to root canal procedures, including heart disease, kidney disease, arthritis and rheumatism, neurological diseases, and autoimmune diseases.

Furthermore, there may be a connection between cancer and root canals. Another doctor, Robert Jones, found an almost one-for-one correlation between root canals and breast cancer. In a five-year study, her discovered that 93% of women with breast cancer had root canals, with the other 7% having other oral pathologies, with tumors occurring on the same side of the body as the root canal or oral pathology, claiming that toxins from the infected root canals led to tumor development by suppressing important proteins. A German doctor, Josef Issels, confirms this data with his nearly 40 years of treating cancer patients.

How exactly are the bacteria from root canals connected to heart disease or arthritis, though? While major dental associations claim that the bacteria do not cause disease, this is based on false information: The idea that the bacteria are the same as in the rest of your mouth. However, the Toxic Element Research Foundation used DNA analysis to show a rather different story: Bacterial contamination in every single sample of root-canaled teeth that was tested, including such deadly bacteria as capnocytophagachracea, fusobacteriumnucleatum, gemellamorbillorum, leptotrichiabbucalis, and porphyromonasgingivalis — all of which are implicated in diseases of the heart, nervous system, kidneys, brain, and sinus cavities. Even more bacteria was found in the blood surrounding the root canal tooth, suggesting that the tooth acts as a breeding ground while the periodontal ligament nourishes the bacteria.

No other medical procedure leaves a dead part of your body inside of you. How ridiculous would this be — if we had appendicitis, and the appendix was cut out but left in the body? The immune system would go nuts, trying to find a way to combat the steady accumulation of bacteria and viruses in the dead tissue.

So why do dentists continue to deny Dr. Price’s research and findings? It’s not entirely clear, as the ADA has not yet published data backing up their claims of the safety of root canals. A trend emerges when we examine another factor: Root canals are perhaps the most profitable procedure in dentistry, accounting for a huge portion of dentists’ incomes around the country.

But what can you do instead? While the author strongly recommends never getting a root canal, there are other options for having a tooth fully removed instead. Though the cosmetic appearance of missing teeth may be embarrassing, there are options: A partial denture, which is the simplest and least expensive choice; a bridge, which is more expensive but more permanent; or an implant, the most expensive yet most externally attractive option.

To further protect yourself from a potentially deadly buildup of bacteria, it is strongly recommended not just to remove the infected tooth, but a portion of the periodontal ligament as well as a portion of the bony tooth socket. A biological dentist may be the best choice for this, as they are better-trained in tooth removal than a standard dentist.

Check out toxicteeth.org for a listing of biological dentists in your area; the organization takes a holistic approach to dental health, and encourages everyone to be more informed about their choices in dental health.