Scary Truth Of Having A Toxic Mouth- Part 2
As I arrived for my first visit with the doctor, I was nervous as hell. I was literally shaking, cold and my voice was trembling. Was this the right choice? A choice that can not be undone? What will my front tooth look like? How will I feel? Will it make a difference in how I feel? Ultimately, will it be worth the time, money, or energy? So many questions ran through my head as I sat in the chair. Over the hours I was in the office that day, my nerves eased, my questions were answered and I felt more aligned to the choice I was making for my health.
I want to start by telling you why I made the choice to get 3 root-canal treated teeth extracted. What we have been led to believe is that when you get a root canal, the tooth is scraped and cleaned out from the inside and sterilized leaving zero possibility for bacterial growth and infection. I know I believed that to be true but, as I learned from research and going through the process myself, I knew that that is not the case.
It’s impossible to remove all bacteria from the inside of the tooth and to completely sterilize it. Inside the tooth, microscopic tubules, like tiny straws that connect the enamel to the pulp (inside of the tooth) exist. The purpose is structural but it also works as the alarm system signaling abnormalities going on with the tooth. There are 5,000-90,000 per square millimeters inside of the tooth which makes a perfect hiding place for bacteria and realistically impossible to clean out each one. What a root canal procedure does is suck out all the living pulp inside the tooth, clean it to the best of their ability and then cement it in, filling the tooth in and blocking the tubules. This means no more life to the tooth, no more natural alarm system and with the cut out of the alarm system, the immune system is shut down to the tooth as well. So, how the heck would you even know if that tooth was breeding, harvesting, thriving in bacteria? You wouldn’t! Until it gets so bad you start to notice “other” symptoms which may or may not be localized to the area/tooth. If localized, the pain will most likely arise from an abscess or the infection spreading outside the tooth to the jaw. But, the “other” symptoms can be huge so if you haven’t already read part 1 check it out and you will see what my symptoms were. Scary Truth of Having a Toxic Mouth Part 1.
As I went through my day doing all my pre-op work, my nerves settled because I received not one but multiple confirmations that there were some serious infections brewing inside my mouth. The first thing was getting a cone beam x-ray. This is a 3D x-ray that allows the doctors to see a lot more than a normal x-ray can show.
My regular x-ray showed my upper right molar #3, where I was experiencing a lot of discomforts, that there was something on the root tip- an infection, abscess, or something of some sort. The other two root-canal treated teeth were not physically bothering me in terms of local symptoms to my mouth and nothing showed on a typical x-ray either. However, it’s important to note any chronic infection big or small will be taxing to the immune system, nervous system, and increasing allostatic load and what the physical body can tolerate. So, as I sat with the doctor looking over my cone beam results not only did she confirm I had a large abscess on #3 but also #14 (the same tooth left upper side) was infected where the tip of that tooth (14) lied up against my nasal cavity. I had a polyp growing inside. Plus, the nasal cavity was extremely inflamed. Hmm, the culprit for all my sinus issues? I would absolutely say it would be a huge culprit if not the culprit. My front tooth #8 didn’t seem too bad which was good news.
Also, on the cone beam was 4 cavitations on all my wisdom teeth extraction sites. I will do another educational blog on cavitations in part 3 especially because cavitations were something I had no idea about personally until 6 months ago.
Okay, so the cone-beam results proved I wasn’t crazy. It confirmed that my body had been reacting to infections. I mean I had my first root canal in my very early twenties. This alone would impact my body which of course would lead to the chronic fatigue symptoms because my body was using up lots of my energy to combat these chronic infections with no progress causing my immune system to try to fight harder to no avail. Quite a vicious, unhealthy cycle which drained my energy, weakened my immune system and who knows what else occurred internally as a means to compensate for this cycle.
The second thing that confirmed I was making the right choice was when I got my teeth cleaned. The hygienist was doing the measurement on my gums to analyze for gum disease. You know, when they start spewing out 1,2 or 3’s. Well, everything gum wise was good until she was going around those back molar root-canal treated teeth. They both had deep pockets around the tooth. Why? It is because they were infected and inflamed. The funny thing was, she said prior to working in that office, she would notice how root-canal treated teeth would always be worse than none root -canal treated teeth and would just notice it and think it was weird but never thought it was the culprit because of what she was taught. Now that she knows what she knows, it all made sense. Of course, the gums fighting the tooth are toxic and the body is going to create an inflammatory response to try to isolate the infection. When you can logically think about it then, it makes sense right? Dead tooth, no immune system able to access it, isolating it off making it chronically inflamed all while the bacteria locked inside is thriving and leaking its exotoxins out into the body creating even more toxic stress. Honestly, it frustrates me so much now that this procedure is so normalized, doctors very rarely even consider oral health with patients and yet people are suffering and not getting the answers they so desperately want and need.
Ok, moving on. Well, the amazing thing was I knew I was in the right place and making the right decision which helped to settle my mind and calm my heart allowing me to be energetically ready for the procedure the next day. The beauty of it was that it would be done in the most holistic way possible which furthermore will decrease the allostatic load on my body. I loved that they used ozone on the surgery sites because we knew by this point there were definitely infections happening and ozone will be able to kill them. I loved how I got IV vitamin C vs antibiotics because it would not be good to take an antibiotic which would wipe out my microbiota (gut flora) because if you didn’t already know 70-80% of the natural immune response lives in the gut, plus vitamin C will be supportive with helping my body to detox out the exotoxins from the bacteria, chemicals and is supportive for healing. The other amazing thing they do is they took my blood, spun it, and created a platelet clot with it and put that in the extraction sites. That promoted healing prevented infection and dry sockets from forming.
Of course, being the science-based person that I am, I wanted to see pictures of the teeth once they came out. Well, #3 was so brittle that it came out in so many little pieces they couldn’t get images. That is a huge confirmation that root-canal treated teeth are healthy. But, I did get images of #14 and #8. As you can see, they don’t look very vibrant and healthy either. These images were reassuring for me to see post-op as it further confirmed I had made a good choice.
The last thing was to wait for the lab results. The doctor took cultures from each extraction site and cavitation and sent it to be analyzed. I wanted to know what was brewing there because well, I just wanted to know. The results came out about two and a half weeks later. It was not a pretty sight. When there are excess amounts of bacteria then there is harm. I definitely had many strains in excess as you can see.
I want to finish this blog talking about the procedure and initial recovery for a minute. I will write about cavitations and then part 4 on my healing progress soon.
So, on the day of the procedure, I was again nervous. Three things were stressing me out the most.
- What the heck will my front tooth look like when I wake up? My brother teased me to get what he called a pirate picture before they bonded on a new “tooth”. Of course, I told him to “f” off.
- The pain of the procedure and post-op recovery.
- My own personal reaction to the medications as I haven’t used any pharmaceuticals in 8 years.
Well, I am happy to report that the pain was so minimal. I had acupressure pre-op and post-op. The following day and in between, I used essential oils on my jaw, in my salt warm water rinse, took natural anti-inflammatory capsules, and used an infrared light. All of which left me with just slight discomfort. Other than feeling drowsy for a couple of days, I didn’t have any negative reactions to the medications and I am thankful I used them during the procedure.
As for the front tooth, I can no longer bite into food directly because that may cause it to pop out of the bond and it took quite a bit of time to get used to the feeling of it in my mouth with the bonding but by the looks of it, I have no complaints. I may decide to get a ceramic implant later but it needs to fully heal first. So, all and all, these are good things. Flying post-op wasn’t pleasant as the pressure definitely made me more uncomfortable but I am glad I went to Marble Falls, Texas and saw Dr. Freeman.
This was a hard choice to make. But, I know I made the right one. Without health, then there is no possibility to thrive. Why just survive when you can thrive, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually?
