The Radiant Health Blog in Review, 2018

It’s the time of year when lists abound, reflecting on the year that’s winding down or looking ahead to the year to come and all the promise it holds.

Who are we to buck tradition?

So with that in mind, we take a look back at our year in blogging on Radiant Health, starting with the top 10 posts viewed in 2018. It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure. There are new posts and old. There are posts about scientific research and on particular therapies we offer here in our holistic West LA clinic. Yet others address specific health issues that are often overlooked or misunderstood by the medical establishment.

In short, there’s a bit of something for everyone, with more than 12% of all visits to our site including at least one of the 10 posts listed below:

1. A Heavy Metal You May Have Only Just Heard Of: Gadolinium
2. For Chronic Knee Pain, Think Prolozone Therapy
3. Dr. Joe Talks Supplements
4. The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy
5. Recovering from Chronic Lyme Disease
6. Detox Smart
7. Need Energy? Beyond Caffeine
8. The Facts on Lyme
9. When Medical Issues Have a Psychological Component
10. The Diet-Cancer Connection

But what about just this year? Where has this blog been? The first sentence of each month’s first post offers a great snapshot of what this blog is all about:

January: Self-Care, Purpose, & Creating a Healthful Life
Let’s face it: New Year’s resolutions can be the stuff of angst – especially if you find yourself sliding back to the habits you just told yourself you’d finally kick.

February: Take Care of Your Heart This Valentine’s Day
Hearts, hearts everywhere!

March: When You Vape, You Take in a Lot More Than Just Flavor
You often hear people say that vaping is safer than smoking.

April: Physical Health, Emotional Health
Happiness and health go hand-in-hand.

May: Zero-Calorie Sweeteners: “Doing Everything Else That Glucose Does”
Though artificial sweeteners – aspartame, sucralose, Ace K, and the like – may contain zero calories, they do pack a punch of unintended consequences.

June: When Medical Issues Have a Psychological Component
Think about a time when you were really stressed out – the tangle of anxiety, anger, fatigue.

July: From Basic Health to Radiant Health
If you’re looking to save money on healthcare, prevention is about the best insurance you can get.

August: The Newest Wellness Trend Isn’t Really So New: IV Drip Therapy
Suddenly, IV drip therapy is the one of the hottest wellness trends around.

September: Heavy Metals & Your Heart
No matter how clean your diet, no matter how much physical activity you get, no matter how balanced your lifestyle, you’re exposed to a crazy cocktail of environmental toxins every day – including heavy metals such as lead, copper, cadmium, and arsenic.

October: Medical Ozone for Healing? A Couple of Case Reports
“The world is facing a crisis of antibiotic resistance,” writes Dr. Robert Rowen in a paper just published in the journal Medical Gas Research.

November: Survival Vitamins vs. Longevity Vitamins (& Why You Need Both)
Broadly speaking, good health happens when the body is given what it needs to operate as it evolved to do, with toxic exposures kept to a minimum.

December: Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection?
Over the years, root canal teeth have been associated with a host of chronic, systemic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, fibromyalgia and other enigmatic illnesses, and cancer.

Happy holidays from all of us here at Dr. Joe’s office! We hope the season is an amazing one for you, filled with joy, love, peace, and togetherness – and that 2019 starts with health and happiness. See you back here in January!

Image by Sam Churchill, via Flickr

The post The Radiant Health Blog in Review, 2018 appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.

Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection?

Our thanks to the office of biological dentist Gary Verigin for providing this article.

---

Over the years, root canal teeth have been associated with a host of chronic, systemic health problems, including autoimmune disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, gastrointestinal disorders, fibromyalgia and other enigmatic illnesses, and cancer.

In fact, in Cancer: A Second Opinion, German physician Dr. Josef Issels noted that nearly all of the patients he saw in his cancer clinic had infections lingering in “successful” root canal teeth. Each root canal tooth, he said, should be considered “a dangerous toxin producing ‘factory,’”

Research published earlier this year in the journal Dentistry likewise found a connection between root canal teeth and systemic health problems.

For the study, researchers collected data from both healthy patients and those who were chronically ill. The latter included 7 patients with cancer, 32 with chronic fatigue and systemic immunological exhaustion, 19 with rheumatoid complaints, 9 with degenerative neurological disease, 18 with atypical facial pain and trigeminal neuralgia, and 12 with intestinal symptoms.

Dental x-rays were taken, and each set of images was examined for signs of apical periodontitis, or infection at the root tips which can develop into an abscess or cyst. The researchers also measured for toxic compounds that have been associated with root canal teeth.

Patients with chronic health problems were found to be three times more likely to have infected root canals than patients in good health. More than 40% “showed immunological disturbance as a result of root-filled teeth.”

Each Tooth Is a Living Organ

You might not realize it, but each of your teeth is a living organ – although if you’ve ever had a toothache or severe tooth injury, you know all too well how alive a tooth can be. If it weren’t alive, there would be no pain.

Of course, sometimes a toothache goes away. But that doesn’t mean the tooth has healed. It means the tooth is dead.

In that case – or when decay has gone deep or the tooth has been badly broken – a dentist might recommend root canal treatment to “save” the tooth. For some reason, this is deemed good medicine. Yet in no other case would a doctor leave a dead organ in an otherwise healthy body.

With teeth, it’s a different story.

How Root Canals Are Done & How They Can Spell Trouble

First, the dentist drills into the tooth and removes the nerves, blood vessels, and other tissues that make up the living pulp within. The dentist then disinfects the hollowed out tooth and packs it with a rubbery substance called gutta percha before placing a filling or crown on top.

The procedure is simple enough, yet it carries some significant consequences, largely due to the anatomy of the tooth.

Two layers of tissue protect a tooth’s pulp: the hard enamel that covers the outside of the tooth and, below that, the dentin. Though dentin looks solid, it’s actually made up of miles of microscopic tubules through which fluid flows – tubules that are impossible to disinfect completely.

Being dark, moist, hard to access, and lacking oxygen, they become a perfect harbor for harmful bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens.

Although some holistic dentists argue that ozone can do the job that standard disinfectants can’t, the results are only temporary. The infection springs back to action. Nor can lasers do the job since their light can’t bend along curves in a tooth’s roots or get into tiny offshoots from the roots.

So once a root canal tooth is filled and sealed, any remaining pathogens in the tooth are likewise sealed in and free to proliferate. And proliferate, they do.

But even more concerning is the metabolic waste that’s generated by those pathogens, including sulfur compounds such as mercaptans and thioethers. These highly toxic substances can damage mitochondria – the power plants of your cells – which are especially abundant in one of your body’s most important organs of elimination, your liver.

Toxins from the tooth are free to travel there – or anywhere else in the body – courtesy of the fact that while the tooth has been gutted and filled, it remains connected to the body at its roots. Toxins generated within the tooth thus enter the general circulation, free to wreak what havoc they will.

Through years of analyzing extracted root canal teeth, Dr. Boyd Haley has found that more than 90% of them are teeming with dozens of different pathogens.

Each tooth is also connected to the body energetically, via the meridian system. Each of the twelve meridians – energetic pathways – passes through a great many organs and tissues. Consequently, problems with a tooth may show up as problems with other organs that share the same meridian.

See For Yourself

Of course, it’s one thing to read about these issues. It’s quite another to see an individual’s journey from good health to ill and back again.

To that end, you may want to check out the recent documentary Root Cause, which tells the story of one man whose health “went to s***” after root canal therapy was performed on a broken tooth. His story is interspersed with commentary from a wide range of experts who explain why root canals can be as damaging as they are.

Here’s a preview:

The film is currently available for rental or purchase from the iTunes Store, Amazon, and Vimeo. We encourage you to check it out.

And if you’re concerned about the role that root canal teeth may or may not be having on your health, start by consulting a qualified biological dentist. The International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine (IABDM) has a searchable online directory you can use to find such a dentist near you: findabiologicaldentist.com. Other good referral sources include the Holistic Dental Association (HDA) and the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT).

Tooth anatomy diagram by BruceBlaus, root canal diagram by Jeremy Kemp & Jellocube27, via Wikimedia Commons

The post Root Canal Teeth & Chronic Illness: Is There a Connection? appeared first on Holistic Doctor Los Angeles - Santa Monica.