New warning about amalgam fillings

[atmsmshr]

After reading this thread, DW just caught me standing in front of a mirror with a small flashlight jammed in my tonsils. She said "Don't think I was supposed to see that."

Anyway, confirmed that my old amalgam had been removed and replaced with composite.

Also found what I think is a new cavity. Rats. Have not been to the dentist for all year long.

 

[Richard4444]

< ----- FIREd Dentist.
1. Amalgam restorations contain mercury, and they are stronger than composite. After I graduated dental school and practiced for 20 years, the FDA began dealing with a (possible?) correlation with mercury from the amalgam causing non-dental toxicities. Most of the mercury is 'consumed' by the body either during placement or during aerosol removement, therefore the thought was that if you have amalgam restorations, let them be.
2. Fluoride strengthens the molecular structure of the tooth during development and thereby much less decay afterwards. No doubt about that. Fluoride in toothpaste is obviously applied topically (after the tooth has developed) and not within the body of the tooth, so less effective than in the water or vitamins (during development of the tooth). Then the FDA began investigating the (possible?) toxicity of Fluoride non-dentally.
3. There are lots of conflicting studies, and there are politics as well. I am not familiar with the latest data, but above is the history.

Rich

 

[MichaelB]

< ----- FIREd Dentist.
1. Amalgam restorations contain mercury, and they are stronger than composite. After I graduated dental school and practiced for 20 years, the FDA began dealing with a (possible?) correlation with mercury from the amalgam causing non-dental toxicities. Most of the mercury is 'consumed' by the body either during placement or during aerosol removement, therefore the thought was that if you have amalgam restorations, let them be.
2. Fluoride strengthens the molecular structure of the tooth during development and thereby much less decay afterwards. No doubt about that. Fluoride in toothpaste is obviously applied topically (after the tooth has developed) and not within the body of the tooth, so less effective than in the water or vitamins (during development of the tooth). Then the FDA began investigating the (possible?) toxicity of Fluoride non-dentally.
3. There are lots of conflicting studies, and there are politics as well. I am not familiar with the latest data, but above is the history.

Rich

Thanks for updating us. It’s always helpful when members with professional knowledge and experience contribute.

 

[Boho]

One of the things I want to research is the effect of using fluoride mouthwash after eating acidic food. A post here says "Some external minerals can reach the deeper layers mixed with the acids at low pH. As the pH rises the minerals precipitate and cannot enter the carious lesion. Bulk of the enamel caries occurs at the contact of two or more enamel surfaces where the acids can enter but the saliva or biofilm cannot enter."

I read elsewhere that acidic drinks with fluoride can cause fluorosis. Maybe that's a sign that a lower level of fluoride in acidic drinks is good for the teeth.

There are posts in that thread that claim teeth can heal themselves in all kinds of ways under the right circumstances and with time.

I made the note "Iontophoresis is a process of transdermal drug delivery by use of a voltage gradient on the skin" because it sounds similar. I want to look into that more too, regarding teeth.

 

[sengsational]

I had a mouth full of amalgam. Blew through the dough a few years back and had 'em all replaced with composite by a dentist that specialized in that (not my routine dentist). Certainly looks better. I can't say there is any causality, and plenty of stuff changed, but I'd been tracking gut microbiome years before and after and seemed like a few persistent 'bad guys' quit showing up.

 

[Out of Steam]

I don't think I've gotten a new amalgam filling since sometime in the 1990s, though I believe I have a couple of small amalgam fillings left.

The composite fillings don't seem to present a problem, though dentists seem to go to onlays and crowns more quickly than they used to when amalgam was the norm.

 

[OldShooter]

inlay$ and crown$

FTFY

 

[troutnut1]

I was lucky...

I was lucky! As it turns out, if you drink alcoholically, and are addicted to smoking, after about 35 years all of your teeth either fall out or have to be pulled. I quit drinking 11/21/98 and smoking 2/28/2001 and got all new store bought teeth. My denturist assures me there is zero mercury in my dentures, and they look way better than the ones I was issued genetically. And I can have them any shade of white that I want. I sounded like Sean Connery with a little whistle for awhile, but I either learned to talk better, or people got used to it. And I don’t have to worry about dental insurance anymore, because they don’t pay for dentures anyway. $1500 every three or four years and I’m good to go. And no pain or drilling.

My mercury filled teeth are in some landfill somewhere polluting someone else's water. So I really dodged a bullet!

 

[Sunset]

I was lucky! As it turns out, if you drink alcoholically, and are addicted to smoking, after about 35 years all of your teeth either fall out or have to be pulled. I quit drinking 11/21/98 and smoking 2/28/2001 and got all new store bought teeth. My denturist assures me there is zero mercury in my dentures, and they look way better than the ones I was issued genetically. And I can have them any shade of white that I want. I sounded like Sean Connery with a little whistle for awhile, but I either learned to talk better, or people got used to it. And I don’t have to worry about dental insurance anymore, because they don’t pay for dentures anyway. $1500 every three or four years and I’m good to go. And no pain or drilling.

My mercury filled teeth are in some landfill somewhere polluting someone else's water. So I really dodged a bullet!

What we really want to know is have you had an acting voice offers

 

[imnontrad]

I have some amalgam fillings that are over 50 years old. But if they need to be replaced (cipping, etc) they are either being replaced with a composite or by a crown.

 

[gerntz]

So why isn't the death of every person with amalgam fillings listed as caused by Hg poisoning?

 

[Telly]

It seems I should be dead a few times over, with all the amalgam fillings I have from the 1960s and some in earlier 1970s. My dentist here says the guy that did mine all those years ago did a great job. None have ever fallen out or fallen apart. Did have two molars loaded with fillings crowned in the last 8 years or so, as one molar split off a point, the other had decay work down the tooth-amalgam interface. And I have had one composite filling for a new cavity that was a spot that degraded very slowly over 20 years, nothing to do with amalgam. I have lottsa metal, and I can still pick up Radio Peking broadcasting on shortwave from the late 1960s with them

 

[GaryInCO]

I wonder if anyone has actually measured the amount of mercury leached from amalgam, and measured the amount we absorb, and the harm it does ? How does that compare to the amount of mercury that gets into our system from eating fish? Zero tolerance for everything is nutty.

It's not zero tolerance.

I've seen videos of a researcher sticking a mercury-meter probe into someone's mouth, obviously someone who had amalgam fillings. The meter read a mercury level that would cause the building to be evacuated if it was out in the room. And this person was inhaling and absorbing it 24x7.

Amalgam fillings don't last forever. They often eventually get pitted, "corrode," and sometimes fall out. The fillings are almost entirely silver and mercury. The silver doesn't go anywhere. Mercury vaporizes at body temp or close to it, more if you eat or drink hot stuff. Guess where it goes.

I had a filling fall out about 8 yrs ago. Didn't notice it right away due to where it was located. But I realized later that I had a whole constellation of very unpleasant symptoms suddenly explode at just about that time. Long story but it was not fun, and as I tried to determine what was wrong, there were half a dozen clues that pointed to mercury as the cause.

Eventually I got all my fillings (10 of 'em) safely removed, using hazmat procedures. Wasn't cheap, especially as I needed two crowns. But most of those nasty symptoms that were bothering me vanished almost overnight.

Call it zero tolerance if you want to ignore my reality. I was MISERABLE, going half-psychotic, until I dealt with the mercury in my mouth. When the mercury came out, poof! Problems disappeared.

If you have one or two fillings, your body can probably keep up with detoxing it on its own. But I had 10 fillings, so about 5-10x more exposure, and apparently my body couldn't deal with it. I'm much healthier since I got rid of it.

 

[Old Microbiologist]

My last amalgam filling was back in 1969 and I haven't had any dental work done with the exception of a gold inlay I didn't really need but I had a friend (a colonel in the Army about to retire) taking his dental boards and he needed an inlay patient so asked me to be his patient for his boards. That was back in 1979. The Army always used fluoride treatments annually on all soldiers as part of the annual exam. I served from 1971 until 1999 and had fluoride every year. I have never had a problem since the inlay I got in 1979 and I go to a dentist maybe every 5 years or so just to make my wife happy. I never even need cleaning and the dentists always ask me why I came if I had just had my teeth cleaned. All my fillings I received as a kid are amalgam and all are intact more than 50 years later. I did need a plus up on them as I mouth pipetted chloroform while performing emergency barbiturate levels on an overdose patient back in 1982 when I was moonlighting as a medical technologist in a local civilian medical center. Apparently, chloroform is used to bind the mercury and silver together and it rapidly dissolves the amalgam. I went to a dentist (friend) in the morning who just applied a new layer of amalgam over the parts that dissolved after quickly grinding down the parts that had corroded from the chloroform. The whole thing took maybe 1 hour. I had a mouth full of silver sand when I pipetted the chloroform into my mouth. No pain or other issues at all I have needed no work since. Before I get beaten up about it, mouth pipetting was standard up until the HIV pandemic was recognized.

My personal hygiene practice is to chew my tooth brush which apparently is very effective at preventing and/or treating gum disease. I also eat my own formulation of yogurt which contains specialized bacteria beneficial to not only the gut flora but also the mouth flora as well. I believe it is a combination of chewing toothbrushes and the yogurt which have given me my perfect teeth.

A side benefit is that it is highly likely that heart disease has little or nothing to do with diet and everything to do with the bacteria in our mouths. I worked on a small research project back in 1984 (my lab did all the cultures) looking at blood cultures on patients after dental procedures and it was shocking how much bacteria is introduced into the bloodstream and how long it persists. Blood is normally thought of as sterile but in fact a lot of bacteria circulates all the time and having gum disease caused by pathogens has been strongly associated with heart disease and ischemic events. Cultures of plaque removed at autopsy often shows various pathogenic organisms present.

As an aside, back in the old school days a lot of our laboratory equipment measured gas release from components in blood and required a lot of complicated glass tubing containing large amounts of mercury. One such was a Van Slyke apparatus which was still in use in labs until the late 1980's. https://www.aacc.org/science-and-research/analyzer-listing/1950/van-slyke-apparatus

Part of my duties were to clean the mercury once a week using a brass mercury rake after pouring all the mercury in a large metal pan. I cleaned around 2 liters of pure mercury a week. Nobody thought anything at all about it and often bits would escape into the flooring cracks. I wonder just how much toxicity we were subjected to back in the day. It was fun to stomp on small drops of mercury on the floor as it was nearly impossible to collect. Very different times.

 

[Redbugdave]

I have amalgam fillings. The last time I was having crown work done, my dentist mentioned that any of the liquids sucked from my mouth when he was doing any grinding goes through a special filter to collect any mercury so it does not go into the waste water. Waste water plants cannot control mercury and it eventually goes into the rivers. I guess it adds up when you consider it across the country.

I also use a mouthwash with fluoride almost every night after brushing my teeth. I have not had a cavity in years and I used to have cavities before the mouthwash. Maybe the fluoride works and maybe it doesn't, but I will continue to rinse with it at night.

 

[RetMD21]

Removing fillings can be a good business but from the link

The FDA doesn't recommend people remove or replace fillings that are in good condition because the removal can increase exposure to mercury vapor and hurt the healthy tooth structure.

 

[Boho]

I was biting on my toothbrush for a while to get the bristle ends in all my tooth crevices. Now I just brush from every imaginable angle. I tilt the toothbrush so there's like the point of a triangle of bristles against my teeth and I brush my molars like that from all angles.

I string floss, water floss, chew Pur xylitol gum, brush lightly with an "extra soft" toothbrush, use Colgate Total mouthwash, and brush again, morning and night. After lunch I string floss, water floss, chew Pur xylitol gum, brush, and use a fluoride mouthwash. Every other day I waterfloss with the mouthwash before swishing it the normal way, usually after breakfast. I think it was some part of all that that made part of my probably already cracked wisdom tooth chip off.

Prescription fluoride toothpaste (5000 ppm fluoride) hardens teeth more than regular toothpaste, even in non-high risk adults who typically don't get fluoride treatments or prescription toothpaste. I modified this chart from one that was published in a study of toothpastes containing calcium (the study indicates they may not work). Compare the "High-F control" with the regular Crest Cavity Protection Toothpaste. High fluoride toothpastes are expensive though, which isn't reflected in the chart. They made their own formulation for the study.

 

[Out of Steam]

FTFY

True for the dental work. We carry high option dental insurance for a reason.

Actually counted my amalgam fillings last night, I have two small ones left. Plan on leaving well enough alone.