Root Canals, the Ugly

I came to the conclusion this morning (but had been questioning for a few days already), that I still might be fighting infection in one of the root canaled teeth. I have felt an achiness in one of them over the last month, and it seems to get a little more tender every day.

I imagine some of you are wondering how a "dead" tooth can cause problems, but according to Dr. Huggins, they can almost be as bad toxicity-wise as amalgams! For those of you who have been fortunate enough not to have ever had a root canal, what happens is "a root canal is a tooth that has had the nerve removed and replaced with a sterile material, a heavy wax or paste. This is usually done when a tooth has died. Teeth may die due to trauma (such as a blow or fall in which the tooth is hit and the nerve is killed), or a break in a tooth that exposes the nerve, or decay that reaches the nerve and infects it with bacteria." (It's All in Your Head, Hal Huggins) My two teeth needed root canals due to decay that exposed the nerves and in one tooth bacteria had made a home. The offending tooth now is one that didn't have any infection at the time, but can happen easily later on. The tooth root is made up of small tubules, much like a root of a plant. If you look closely at a root, you can see smaller roots coming off the biggest one, and smaller ones yet off those. When a tooth root is cleaned out, it's not always possible for the dentist to get into all the nooks and crannies. And the cleaning solution (made up of bleach) doesn't always reach these smaller root areas either. Once it's sealed up and covered over (most times with amalgam and a crown), there is no way for antibiotics to reach into those crevices, although the bacteria still has access to the rest of the body.

There are so many things that can go wrong with a root canal. In the case of what I'm feeling with mine, I think (now this is my opinion on this, not my dentist's or doctor's thoughts on the matter - in fact my dentist is out of the office until next week, so I can't even get in to have him look at it) that when my root canal was done, the dentist did all he could to clean it out, but there was bacteria hiding in there. Even though I went through all of the antibiotics I did, it only took care of most of it, but not all since it couldn't reach everything. Now that the bacteria are free to roam, it may be starting to grow around the tooth root and spread, causing all of the symptoms I've been having this week. In order to completely take care of it, most likely the tooth will need to be extracted along with the ligament that attaches the tooth to the jaw bone. And most likely another round of antibiotics.

In Hal Huggins' book "Uninformed Consent" co-authored with Dr. Thomas E. Levy, they devote an entire chapter to root canals. It's worth a read if you are concerned about a previous root canal you've had done, or if your dentist says you'll be needing one. Too bad I didn't remember any of it before I had these two new root canals done. I've had three done previously, so I have a total of five root-canaled teeth. Does not make a happy camper.

Here's a webpage with a video that explains root canal problems better. http://www.mercola.com/article/dental/rootcanal/root_canals.htm#