Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? More and more research is now surfacing on how poor dental health is directly linked to different illnesses, including chronic fatigue.
This week, I am talking to holistic dentist Dr. Nicole Vane, who has made it her life’s purpose to make sure teeth are being taken care of in a non-toxic way that ensures your health stays excellent. So if you are wondering whether your dental health can be linked to fatigue, and you have a few mercury fillings, tune in, and listen to how conventional dentistry is slowly poisoning your body and your health and whether bad teeth can make you sick.
In this podcast, you’ll learn:
- How you can get mercury poisoning from dental fillings
- How orthodontics can cause other health issues
- How to identify dentists who remove amalgam fillings safely
- Why fluoride is bad for your dental and overall health
- How root canals can cause cancer and fatigue
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Can Bad Teeth Make You Sick and Tired? – Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey, guys. This is Ari, and welcome back. In this episode, I want to introduce you to my good friend, Dr. Nicole Vane, who is a holistic dentist here in San Diego, California. And she has also been a great friend of mine for many, many years. It’s about time that I got her on the podcast to talk about dental health.
There are so many links between dental health and overall health, systemic health, fatigue and energy in particular. So I wanted to bring her on so she could tell you guys all about this subject and answer the question, can bad teeth make you sick and tired?
So welcome, Nicki. Thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Thank you so much for having me.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, so first of all, you’re a holistic dentist, right?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yes.
Ari Whitten: I would love it if you would just tell us a bit about your background, your educational background and how you got into holistic dentistry. And why you decided to look at the question, can bad teeth make you sick?
Dr. Nicole Vane: All right. Well, I knew I wanted to be a dentist at the age of 12. I decided that was going to be my career path. I went to college at UC Berkeley, and I majored in integrative biology. Then I went on to dental school at Tufts University in Boston. In dental school, especially out east, we’re trained in a very traditional format. We placed a lot of gold restorations, a lot of mercury fillings, and did really everything the way it was done 50 years ago.
When I got out of dental school and started my clinical practice, there’s still a lot of practices I worked in that do these really archaic, outdated techniques.
So I became more interested in learning about more current techniques for treating people, things that are white and prettier. That evolved into, “Well, do I really want any of these metals in my mouth?” Or, would I want them in my mouth? And what is a better material of choice for someone besides just something that looks nicer and feels more toothlike?
I started exploring this, I don’t know, field of research, so to speak. I became involved with several academies, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology and the Holistic Dental Academy, and then the IABDM, the International Academy of Biologic Medicine and Dentistry.
I learned all these things that they don’t teach you in dental school. They don’t teach us in any of our dental societies either. So I learned a lot about the connection between metals and heavy metal toxicity and individuals, and autoimmune disorders with the types of materials we put in people’s mouths.
And then also, a lot of the white materials we use that are very toothlike in appearance, are essentially fancy plastics or fancy porcelains. There’s a lot of things that go into the chemical cascade of bonding and bonded restorations that many people are sensitive to. So I wanted to become well informed on what exactly it was I was putting in people’s mouths.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? What the difference between holistic and conventional dentistry is
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. So what are the fundamental differences maybe for people who are not familiar with this term holistic dentistry? What are the differences between that and the conventional model that you were taught in dentistry school?
Dr. Nicole Vane: That’s a great question. Really, what it comes down to is a holistic dentist is typically more informed on autoimmune disease. I had to learn a lot of extra things about how to treat people with Hashimoto’s, or how to treat someone with Lyme disease, or how to treat someone with cancer, who was recovering from cancer.
You also have to be well informed because a lot of naturopaths refer to dentists, holistic dentists who are familiar with the safe protocols for removing mercury fillings. So we’re typically a metal free practice. I don’t have any metal in my practice at all. It requires a lot of extra equipment for safe mercury removal. We typically also have our own machines for milling our own restorations so we can ensure we don’t have any contamination from a dental lab making restoration out of a material that are not known to us or on our material lists that are safe.
The other thing that we do is, I’m a fluoride free practice. So most dental offices are typically going to force you into having a lot of fluoride treatments. There’s a lot of fluoride in a lot of the products we use. So a holistic dentist would need to be knowledgeable in all that. And also have an office that hasn’t been contaminated by … Say, if you bought an old dental practice of 30 years, that there would be a lot of metals sometimes embedded in the surfaces and whatnot if the equipment hadn’t been updated. So it’s really having a safe environment to treat some of these people that are sensitive.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How conventional dentistry is stuck in believing that mercury is not bad and fluoride is good for your teeth.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, you’re talking about things on a very practical level as far as procedures that you’re doing with people, and as far as the setting itself and the actual practice and the equipment used. But what about as far as the paradigm. I think you’re alluding to it with talking about fluoride, for example, or mercury. But there are some core differences as far as the paradigm and the philosophy and the view that they’re taking. Am I right?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I really respect my fellow dentists. I would like to say they respect me as well, but you’re going to get an eye roll from a lot of colleagues when you mention that mercury is not safe. We’re really indoctrinated with the belief that mercury is not bad, fluoride is great for you. It’s going to save everyone’s teeth. It’s so repetitive and redundant throughout all of our literature and what we’re told, that it is a little bit of heresy to speak out against it.
So really, in our community, to be a holistic dentist, we don’t typically do any root canals, and we don’t recommend them. We don’t use any fluoride or metals. I think a lot of dentists tend to reject the notion because what does that say about them if they’re using all those materials? And they were told they were safe. The fact of the matter is, you have to look into researching this path to find out all of the things that I’ve learned over the years because no one’s ever going to tell you in dental school. So even though we had four years of medicine in my program, none of the stuff I’ve learned since that time was taught as part of our curriculum. So you really have to be passionate about pursuing these other paths and questioning the why of things and the how. And then you have to take it upon yourself to learn it.
I’ve had to fly all over the country to learn about ozone and some of the other techniques that we use and integrate into holistic dentistry.
We also do a very specific technique for removing teeth to not create cavitations or foci, they’re called NICOs of infection that can be harbored if you don’t take out a tooth correctly. So the bread and butter of dentistry, doing crowns or caps as they’re called are usually metal based, fillings are, a lot of times metal based. Or they’re made with a plastic that’s impregnated with fluoride, or it’s an unsafe plastic, BPA, if you will. And then removing teeth and root canals. That’s pretty much the bread and butter of what a general dentist does every day. A holistic dentist is going to be very different in the regard that we have a lot of different paradigm shifts in how we use to treat things.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. I want to point out something for everybody listening to this, which is that you’re not an alternative quack. You were actually educated in the conventional dental school in a very well regarded dental school, and you have that upbringing. You started your practice in more of a conventional dentistry type of thing. It slowly evolved into more of a holistic practice. Which is why you can truthfully answer, can bad teeth make you sick?
Am I right?
Dr. Nicole Vane: That’s correct. Yeah, when I first got out, I’ve been practicing for 15 years now, so the first 10 were just regular dentistry, except my preference was to avoid doing any sort of metal restoration, mostly because I didn’t like the way that they looked. They didn’t look toothlike to me. And then when I started questioning more about it, I actually went to go work for a dentist whose sole focus … He called himself holistic, was removing mercury fillings, but he never gave me good answers when I asked him the true science of, “Why do you choose this?” Or “Why do you use that?”
So then when I joined all the academies, I really started learning a lot more.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, and one other thing I want to mention here just as my personal observation, knowing you for, I think I’ve known you for seven years now or something like that, is you do a huge amount of continuing education. You’re always off at seminars learning some new technique and the latest technology. It’s amazing. It’s actually inspiring to me just to see how driven you are to constantly educate yourself with the latest science and the most cutting-edge technologies as far as holistic dentistry.
Dr. Nicole Vane: It’s true. Dentistry is really my passion. The more you know, the more you don’t know. I always want to keep questioning things. Is my technique the best? Who can I learn from that can teach me some new sub-facet that I didn’t know before? But also, therein lies the problem of informing the general dental community about it. I’ve traveled to some pretty far-reaching areas of the United States to learn from some of the masters of some of these holistic techniques. Without taking the travel upon myself, I wouldn’t otherwise learn them. I would never be able to answer the question, can bad teeth make you sick and tired?
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? Why your dental health is influencing your overall health
Ari Whitten: Cool. One thing that I think is a really common way of thinking that people have is, they see the mouth, the gums and the teeth as, this is a separate thing that’s my dental health. And then there’s my health. They never ask themselves: Can bad teeth make you sick?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yes, very true.
Ari Whitten: I think there’s a lot of science emerging in the last 10 years really showing all these different links between gum disease and dental health more broadly and all kinds of systemic health issues. Can you just talk a bit about what some of those links are, and what that link is all about?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Oh, absolutely. One of the things that’s gotten the most attention in the past, I’d say 10 years, is the relationship between gum disease and heart disease. So there are certain proteins and factors that are released from the type of bacteria that cause tartar that can cause atherosclerotic [bioxin 00:10:57]. They’re very linked to heart attacks.
So now, in order to get clearance before you’d have any heart surgery, they’re going to ask for clearance from a dentist. So that’s one of the newer things we’ve seen come along, as well as if you’re going to have any hardware placed in your body. They know that the bacteria from the mouth can travel and infect hardware if you’re having a hip replacement or a knee replacement.
So that’s where the link started to evolve. But it’s actually been for thousands of years actually, in oriental medicine, they have a lot of links from the mouth and the teeth to different organ systems. And so, much like acupuncture where you would have one site that links to another site on a meridian. There are tooth relationships to different organ systems as well.
Ari Whitten: Interesting, and have you seen … I would imagine that a lot of that is not necessarily verified by science, but have you seen anecdotally in your practice, that there are some links between specific tooth problems and various organ related problems?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Oh, absolutely. That’s actually one of the things that a lot of naturopaths who are well informed will refer to us also, to have certain teeth taken out, or to have certain metals taken out that can be affecting the particular organ that they’re being treated for.
For me, personally, it’s actually what made me the biggest believer was seeing these correlations, really hearing people who came in who, they could have gone to 10 other dentists who would have said they were crazy. You look at the meridian chart. These things are correlated. Removing, for instance, I took out one guy’s tooth just because it was infected. When we did his post operative check the very next day, he said the ringing he’d had in his ears for 15 years went away.
It’s not typically a tooth pain type of correlation that we’re hoping to cure. It’s things like weird coughs, pain radiating to a shoulder. There’s a lot of things that, when you look at these meridian charts, how many organ systems can be correlated. GI issues, and then you take out the offensive tooth, and then things get better. It’s really powerful once you start seeing it even if correlation is not causation, I can tell you these people were very happy to have some of these infections taken out so that they actually could start recovering.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How root canals can be linked to cancer and fatigue
Ari Whitten: Very interesting. So what else, as far as the science, other than cardiovascular disease, are there any other conditions that have been linked with poor dental health? Can one bad tooth cause fatigue?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Well, you’re familiar with the Price Pottenger studies where they took out teeth that had been root canaled. Essentially, they tried implanting them in animals and found out that cancer evolved. Or they took individuals who had died from cancer, and they found a correlation that all of the individuals who died from cancer had a high percentage of root canals in their mouths. So there have been some correlations regarding that as well.
It’s more, not just the teeth, it’s that, if we put all these metals in some people’s systems, it does cause such a burden on their thyroid, on other organ systems. That they can’t get better with this burden that they have in their mouths at all times. Essentially, their body’s constantly reacting to it. They just are unaware.
Ari Whitten: What are some the effects of poor dental hygiene on your body? Is there a link between gum disease and inflammation, systemic inflammation? And inflammation-related diseases?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Absolutely. It’s really interesting. You can get gum inflammation from all sorts of things. Hormones when you’re pregnant, but I have had quite a few patients. We actually will culture their saliva. You’ll find out that they have spirochetes, amoebas or other more aggressive bacteria in their saliva culture. You’ll actually see first that they have a lot of bleeding gum pockets. So I’ve had some people that I’ve known for years as patients that aren’t even seeing me for my holistic aspects. They just come to me as a regular patient. I’ll see this massive inflammation occur with them. My first thing I go to is a very thorough medical questionnaire. What is going on? Because it does correlate so much with other organ systems, specifically the gut.
So inflammation in the gut is almost always mirrored in the mouth.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, I would imagine. We were talking about this the other day when we went for a walk. You mentioned to me that there are amoebas sometimes found in people’s mouth, which is odd to me. I remember taking pond scum samples, and looking at it under a microscope in biology class in high school and stuff like that. So I know that amoebas can sometimes infect people. But my understanding is that is not a normal resident of a healthy person as far as the microbiology.
Dr. Nicole Vane: No, it’s not. Exactly. We culture it the exact same way you would culture if you went to your doctor and you’re like, “I don’t feel well.” And you had elevated white blood cells. The doctor would then say, “If you have elevated white blood cells, clearly your body is trying to fight something off.” It’s the same when we see a lot of bleeding in the tissues. The body is trying to mount a defense by bringing red blood cells, white blood cells, all of its little scavengers up to the surface to try and fight off the bacteria that started to overwhelm your mouth. It’s also true in your gut.
It’s really interesting to be able to treat those things. That’s one of the applications we use for ozone, because it is one of the things that can kill spirochetes and amoebas.
Ari Whitten: So one of the things that I often see when I’m working with people and members of my program is, a lot of people talk about root canals in their history. I see it very commonly in people with chronic fatigue syndrome. Root canals, and there are other dental health issues that are mentioned, but root canals specifically are a really common thing in the medical history of people with chronic fatigue.
Why do you think that is? And what’s so problematic about root canals?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Well, when we get back to the oriental medicine side of it, it’s that you hae something dead inside of you, is part of the philosophy on it. That your body, it’s energy channels shift. Now if you don’t want to get that out there with it, if you want to go just to the bacteria that can be harbored within a root canal, essentially on the inside of the tooth, the healthy alive tooth is your pulp right in the center of the tooth.
If you picture this pulp, which is essentially a lot of blood vessels, it’s braided in with a lot of nerve fibers that go directly to that tooth. But they also branch out from the end of the root into the main nerve trunks of your face. So your maxillary mandibular nerves and your maxillary artery. There’s so many branches to that that go from your face throughout your body. So when we do a root canal, we take these little instruments, and we remove the inside of the pulp. So once we pull that pulp out, your tooth should pretty much have no feeling.
Then on top of the main nerve trunk where the pulp sits, there’s thousands of other offshoots. I like to say that if you cut a tooth in half, it looks like thousands and thousands of drinking straws stacked on top of each other. From that pulp, it radiates out with little tentacles into all those drinking straws. So for extricating the pulp when we clean it out, we actually then soak the tooth, traditionally in bleach. That’s not the best thing for you either, but that aside, the main thing against root canals is that we’ll never get all the bacteria that’s harbored inside of all of those tubules.
So then, after we soak it in bleach, we shove in a rubber material called gutta-percha, which doesn’t seal the inside of those tubules or the main nerve trunk very well. So the theory is is that a lot of bacteria, harmful bacteria, especially because it’s anaerobic bacteria that tends to release more exo-toxins and whatnot, just sits inside of your tooth and festers. The problem is, and the problem with why people view dentistry as so separate from medicine in general is, they really only correlate things being necessary until it hurts. So, “Oh, well my tooth’s not hurting me.” Or, “My root canal’s not hurting me.”
What ends up happening is we take X-rays of these and it’s crazy how much infection can be sitting in someone’s jaw bone.
Ari Whitten: Without them feeling anything.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Without them feeling anything, yeah. That’s one of the reasons we take a full mouth series of X-rays is to see the end of every root, so that we can check for things like that, because once a tooth is dead, a lot of times, it doesn’t give you any sort of pain or problems. And people aren’t aware too that they’ll have pus draining. Essentially every time you’re swallowing, you’re getting this pus going throughout your system.
So the issue with root canals is that they harbor a lot of toxic bacteria. There are a couple tests we can order, dental DNA tests too, where if a patient was particularly curious where we can actually essentially swab the inside of the sulcus around a root canal tooth. 99% of the time, it’ll come back with a really bad, aggressive type of bacteria.
Ari Whitten: How interesting. 99% of the people with root canals? When you do that test.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, that a lot of people just aren’t aware. Root canals can be successful, but it’s a very, very specific technique that would have to be done. And it can only be done if a tooth hasn’t died yet, because once it’s died, essentially the bacteria is so soaked inside of those tubules that we really feel we can never sterilize it.
Ari Whitten: Even if you soak it in bleach for a week
Dr. Nicole Vane: Exactly.
Ari Whitten: There’s still going to be something locked in there.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, yeah. And that’s one of the reasons where we’ll use adjuncts like ozone and whatnot that have a much higher permeability to get into some of those microscopic crevices.
We do have a lot of things now too with conebeam, which is like an MRI of a tooth. So three dimensionally, we can now see the inside of a tooth and its position in the jawbone. The other issue besides these dental tubules, is a lot of nerves have an odd anatomy, little curves and whatnot. So no matter what, we’re usually going to be missing a good percentage of the nerve tissue, which will then be left to fester.
Ari Whitten: Very interesting. Are there alternatives if somebody’s in a position where if they went to a conventional dentist, they might be told they need a root canal. Are there alternatives for people in that situation if they go to a holistic dentist?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Oh, absolutely. One of the things that really piqued my interest with pursuing this holistic path was doing the most conservative dentistry from the get go. So that’s one factor.
We’re typically taught, essentially extension for prevention. Extend that restoration all around. Drill that tooth down to a nub so there’s nothing left that can break is the old, conventional theory. So that alone puts the tooth at high risk of having the nerve die, just because of the aggressive drilling.
So one is preserving more of the enamel and the dentin to keep the pulp from dying. The second thing is, is if a nerve does have a close proximity to decay or to a fracture, I like integrating a lot of use of ozone for stimulating nerve healing as well as a laser to try and get the nerve to just cauterize the one part that’s infected versus killing the whole nerve. I’ve had a lot of success with that.
And then I was telling you as a side note earlier, that there are some new pulpal regeneration techniques that some endodontists themselves are coming up with, to again, try to preserve the bulk of the nerve tissue. Whereas normally, if we have decay or anything that gets even close to the nerve, we’re told and taught just to kill the nerve so that the patient doesn’t end up having pain later.
I actually think that’s just aggressive over treatment because I’ve had so much success with a lot of these restorations not having the nerve end up dying if you treat it in the correct way.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – Why fluoride is bad for your health
Ari Whitten: So, can bad teeth make you sick in other ways? What other types of dental procedures or dental scenarios or dental health issues are particularly problematic for people? I know a couple areas offhand that I’m aware of are fluoride, which you’ve already mentioned. And mercury issues, so let’s go into those a bit more in depth.
And then maybe there’s some other stuff that I’m not aware of. I’m sure there is. There’s a million different things that you know how to do, and my understanding of dental health is pretty superficial compared to yours. So let’s talk about fluoride first. So what’s the deal with it? I know that it’s something that’s added in the water supply in the US with the idea that it’s going to improve our dental health. And it’s very commonly used in dental practices. What’s the science on fluoride?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Well, it’s funny because we’re given so much of this in our science course in dental school that fluoride’s great. But actually, this many ears later when I read some of the studies, it’s really not solid science.
Around the 1920s, they discovered that fluoride would, they said, harden enamel. So then the theory was, “Well, if it hardens enamel, and enamel’s soft with decay, then maybe it’ll help prevent decay.” The issue is that, well, it’s multi-factorial. But when fluoride started being put in the water as a public health service essentially to reach impoverished communities that had a higher cavity index, we started seeing a lot more problems developing because that was the same time we started putting it in toothpaste and other water sources.
So fluoride used to be used to treat thyroid disease, as you know. But they would give it in high doses to suppress the thyroid. I’m seeing a lot of people with hypo and hyper fluorosis, which is the fluoride’s actually altering the state of their enamel in a way that it’s mottled, it’s ill formed. I’ve seen that a lot in a lot of young kids now.
What people don’t realize is even if they avoid fluoride from the drinking water, “Oh, I only drink bottled water. Oh, I’ll skip that toothpaste.” It’s actually in everything. If you get your Starbucks coffee in the morning, it’s probably made with fluoridated water.
Ari Whitten: Tap water, yeah.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, if you get orange juice from concentrate depending on the state, when they concentrate it down, it’s getting a lot of fluoride in there. So there’s a lot of hidden sources from it. But the science itself is that they believe it was correlated that fluoride would harden enamel.
So now dentists use it for everything. If you have sensitive teeth, if their restoration they did isn’t working out that well, they’ll just put a coat of fluoride varnish on it. It’s evolved into this cure-all when it actually isn’t curing anything.
Ari Whitten: Right, now I think there’s also a distinction between topical use of fluoride as far as a mouthwash or some kind of paste or something like that, a toothpaste even. Or various other dental treatments that they might do with fluoride directly in the mouth. It’s another thing to put it in the drinking water where you’re consuming it, and now it’s going systemic.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Right.
Ari Whitten: So I’ve done quite a bit of research on fluoride. I know it’s a mitochondrial toxin. So there’s a clear link with that in fatigue. There’s also a link with fatigue in the sense that, like you mentioned, thyroid suppresses thyroid function.
I know Isabella Wentz and my friend Dr. Alan Christianson have talked about that quite a bit. It’s quite a bold move, I think, to go from saying, “Something’s good for your teeth, so let’s start drinking it where it gets absorbed into your bloodstream all the time as a daily basis in all of the water you consume.”
Dr. Nicole Vane: I don’t know much about the fluoride process of extraction back when they did the initial studies back in the ’20s. But now, they’re using a lot of fluorine also and trying to convert it so essentially you’re getting fertilizer type properties that are also being, now ingested into our water. So it is a powerful toxin though. We’re told, “Do not let your patients swallow this, especially when we’re giving any of the topical varnishes or whatnot. We can’t give it below age three. The kids aren’t allowed to swallow the toothpaste. But the fact of the matter is, it happens quite often.
Ari Whitten: Or at least the residue. Even if you spit it out, there’s still residue that they end up swallowing.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Right, right.
Ari Whitten: But it’s also crazy. There’s actually warnings even from governmental bodies saying, “This is a known neurological toxin. Do not swallow this.” As you’re talking about. We know that it’s a toxin and that you shouldn’t swallow it, and yet it’s in the drinking water where people are swallowing it all the time.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – Side effects of mercury fillings in teeth
Dr. Nicole Vane: It’s so crazy to me. Same rationale with the mercury. We’re required not to put in a waiting room that mercury is a known neurotoxin also, and that it’s harmful to a developing fetus. However, we’re told that it’s just fine to put it in someone’s mouth.
Ari Whitten: Right. So isn’t it weird that there’s the mixed messages where we have this recognition that is it a toxin, and yet you put it in people’s mouth. And then they’re taught that once it’s in your mouth in a filling, it’s perfectly safe.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, I find that quite baffling. If I took a mercury thermometer and I broke it in half in a school, they would evacuate the school. But I can take the mercury from my carrier in my filling. Again, I’m supposed to not touch it. I’m supposed to be very specific about how I dispose of it. I’m supposed to have traps so it doesn’t get out into the water. Yet, I can take it and put it directly into your tooth, undiluted, and it’s fine. I just have problems with the way that the science they’re using to determine that it’s not bad for you at all.
Ari Whitten: Right.
Dr. Nicole Vane: It does seem counterintuitive.
So you had asked if I do anything to protect myself from the mercury. It’s interesting you brought that up. That’s one of the things that’s made me so much more passionate about this whole holistic path is that, when I started getting into the mercury removal, I thought, “Well hey, I’ll have my mercury tested just so I can find out how the results come in and what it’s like to be tested.” We have the tests in our office. There’s a whole detox protocol that you can put patients through. So I thought, “I’m going to always practice what I preach. I’m going to test myself.”
So I got the results back. I was in the 95th percentile of toxicity, mercury toxicity. At the exact same time, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. At the exact same time I was diagnoses with leaky gut or dysbiosis. I thought, “Well, this is a strange mis-test.” I actually called the company. I said, “You’ve given me a false positive. I would like for you to pay for another test. Clearly, there’s some cross contamination.”
It turns out, I was toxic. I was also toxic on arsenic, which led me to find out, I have a specific gene, which is the MTHFR gene, which a lot of my patients actually that I treat, have. That aside, I found out that I’m mercury toxic, and I’ve never even had a mercury filling. It was just from being around it. There’s actually very specific ways we need to handle it that, 10 years, 12 years ago, I wasn’t as safe as I am now.
Ari Whitten: Right. Do you think it’s mainly from working on people’s teeth with mercury fillings from when you weren’t wearing the Darth Vader mask?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yes. Yeah, that’s the only thing I can assume is that my safe practices now are very different than what we did before. Before, we’d drill it out, and the patient would just be gulping down all this water with their whole mercury filling in it. All the pieces, not that much of it goes up the suction. A lot of it just goes into the patient’s system. And you wouldn’t know, just like I didn’t know, if you can’t purge mercury, it doesn’t manifest until later in other ways. Different types of heavy metal toxicity, and we’re seeing a lot in kids too with autism’s really increased people’s focus on heavy metals and leaky gut. But there’s a lot of other disorders that are correlating with it as well.
The majority of my patient base when I first started removing mercury fillings was lethargic females around the age of 40, whose hair was falling out. Their doctor had sent them to me to help figure out if this was a piece of the puzzle that they weren’t seeing.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How to get your mercury fillings taken out safely
Ari Whitten: For sure, yeah. Fatigue and autoimmune conditions are massively linked with heavy metal exposure. So if someone is watching this and they have mercury fillings, what should they do? What would you recommend as standard procedure? Should they leave them in? Should they get them taken out? And if they get them taken out, how should they go about that in a very particular way?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah. So the IOMT has a very specific protocol that you can become certified in mercury removal. It’s very similar to Hal Huggins’ protocol.
Hal Huggins, I don’t know if you’re familiar. He was one of our dental pioneers with mercury removal. He actually lost his license in the ’80s for speaking out against mercury being used as a dental restoration. His specialty became just removing these mercury fillings. Part of that technique is just to have … You can look on either of those websites actually to see which dentists are certified or whatnot. Or just make sure that the dentist has some sort of certification on their wall. I have the plaques on my wall that show that I’m certified in all of this, because you have to use a rubber dam to isolate the tooth. You have to use, again, the special vacuum system, the special mask.
But getting back to, you asked how would you know which ones you need to have removed. Part of the Huggins protocol is you use something called a redometer, which measures the electro-galvanic current that’s coming off of the fillings. So essentially, a more negative charge is correlated with the ones that we need to remove first. They’re saying that those are the ones that off-gas the most mercury. Those are the ones that are the most potentially harmful.
Ari Whitten: So you can actually do this test to determine which ones are off-gassing more.
Dr. Nicole Vane: And actually, believe it or not, sometimes there’s no off-gas. Sometimes there’s just a zero reading. Other times, it’s a negative of 138. It actually usually correlates also with how the teeth don’t usually look in good condition when they have those huge negative charges.
Ari Whitten: Is that a function of the specific mixture of metals that they used in the filling?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, so mercury fillings are 55% mercury, 9% silver, and then there’s tin and some other metals that are in there. We don’t know the exact formulation. There’s usually more of a mercury content correlated with how easy it was for us to pack it inside of the tooth. Some dentists and different brands have different amounts based on the dentists’ preference on its workability.
Ari Whitten: So that determines whether a filling is off-gassing a lot or very little? Is it based on that mixture? Or is it other factors?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, well it is based on the mixture. It’s not determined by the age of the filling either. A filling can be 50 years old, or a filling can be six years old. They could be the same high negative charged reading. Essentially, the longer a mercury filling’s in your mouth, the more it’ll start to corrode over time. It gets this coppery appearance. That’s typically when it tends to off gas more.
But the meter will tell us exactly, it actually will tell us if there are mercury fillings that are underneath crowns too. I don’t know if you know this, but when we look at our X-rays, mercury fillings will show up as a bright white. They’re essentially anything really hard is going to deflect more X-rays and they’ll show up very radiopaque on the X-rays. Well a lot of the metal crowns that are used are actually porcelain baked on top of metal. We can’t see through them.
So a lot of people, when they’re having their mercury removed, can have mercury sitting underneath a porcelain fused to metal crown, and not know it. The other complicated part of that is that the more metals you have in your mouth, the more galvanic current can go on.
Besides the mercury, the more current going on, some people find it very disruptive in the same way, again, that acupuncture. If you put a needle in your hand, it might affect the energy flow to your liver. It’s the same with, if you have too much current going on, it can really disrupt some of the communication of your body’s messaging system.
Ari Whitten: Very interesting. So in general, you would do that test to determine whether the mercury is off-gassing a lot or very little or not at all.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Right.
Ari Whitten: And then base your procedure on whether to remove that filling or not based on that test?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Correct. Typically what happens is, people, come in and say, “I want this out of my mouth.” It’s either ugly, or I’m worried it’s going to correlate with something. Then we can do the reading. The reading’s also used to determine the sequence with which we remove it. You can’t remove teeth in different quadrants at different times. You shouldn’t cross the mid line. So if you have two bad fillings on one side, you actually should wait several days before you can go and cross over to the opposite side. You can do as many as you want in one quadrant at one time, but you can’t jump all around the mouth if someone wants them out. So that’s another part of the protocol is just how well your body can heal from it.
Then if we do find that someone’s toxic, we can actually do something called a mercury tritest. It’s blood, hair, and urine to find out how much you’re able to excrete it. Someone like myself, I’m not able to excrete it at all. Typically, it’s through the feces and urine, but they use the blood test, and then obviously a hair sample is going to show how much of it’s embedded in your system. And then there’s a series of supplements we can use. Or you can send them to a naturopath to be fully detoxed.
Ari Whitten: It’s interesting because a lot of the people you get in your office are health conscious people who are coming in with an awareness of, they already know mercury is potentially very harmful to them. So I would wonder how much of a concern of a nocebo effect there is there, meaning if you say, “Hey, this one’s not off gassing, we don’t need to remove it.” Do you sometimes do that? Can the fear of “can bad teeth make you sick” cause you to ge bad teeth?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Okay, so I still wonder if they’re of the mindset, “Hey, this thing if harmful to me.” I wonder if they would cause themselves some nocebo effect.
Dr. Nicole Vane: That’s entirely possible, yeah. Typically people just want them out anyway. They’re like, “I know this is bad for me. So even if this one isn’t as bad, I’d still like for you to remove this.”
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How mercury fillings can crack your teeth
Ari Whitten: And do you do that when they request it?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, absolutely. The other bad side of mercury fillings is they crack teeth. They don’t expand and contract the same as enamel and so over time, that’s almost 100% the reason why we end up doing crowns and other larger dental procedures is, large fillings that were done as silver that can crack teeth.
The complicated part though is if someone is sensitive to mercury, then they’re typically, or they’re autoimmune already, sensitive to other chemicals. So you really have to be well versed in the resin systems that you’re using. It’s mind boggling how much stuff goes into this.
I’m a biology major, but the biochemistry of what goes into that is something only a biochemistry Ph.D. or a chemist would be able to truly understand. So we have certain tests we can order that would tell us, essentially, which plastics are harmful specifically to that patient. There’s something called a biocomp test and a plicker test. They’re very similar. I prefer the biocomp test, but you would have your blood drawn and then next run as a panel of reactivity against hundreds of dental materials based on category.
So if you needed a denture or you needed a filling or you needed a crown, it would tell me which materials you’re reactive to.
Ari Whitten: Interesting.
Dr. Nicole Vane: I have patients who would opt out of that test at times. It’s a $300 test. It’s not paid to me. It’s a separate company. And then later they’d come back with obscure symptoms like a weird feeling in their tongue and whatnot. And then when we finally ran the panel, we found out they were reactive to all of those materials.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How the way your dentist removes your tooth can cause health problems
Ari Whitten: Very interesting. So we’ve talked about fluoride. We’ve talked about mercury, root canals. Are there any other biggies as far as procedures or dental scenarios that people need to be aware of that are commonly problematic.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Absolutely. I feel like you can get yourself on a dental treadmill essentially. If you find one thing out, and then you’re like, “Well now I want my root canal removed.” Well guess what, that last missing piece that you were talking about is, how do they remove the tooth. What technique are they using, because that can cause you a whole other slew of problems.
So there’s something called a cavitation, which is, around the tooth, it’s held in the bone by the alveolar bone. And then around the tooth is the periodontal ligament. So the PDL. So when we remove the tooth, we’re taught just to pull the tooth out. Well, holistically we’ve found that if they leave a lot of that periodontal ligament, or if the reason the tooth failed, like an abcess or whatnot, we’re essentially pulling the tooth out, and then we’re allowing the body to, we’re hoping, fill in the area with bone. If we leave some of this granulation tissue or the periodontal ligament, you essentially, instead of having the socket invaded with bone, you get really gunky, yucky tissue that’s the first sign of infection.
So you heal on the surface it looks okay. We’re finding these areas that are hugely correlated with some longstanding illnesses that people haven’t had diagnosed. The problem is, it’s not just an infected tooth. It could have been having your wisdom tooth out 25 years ago. Or for me, I’ve had four teeth pulled for my orthodontics. If those weren’t removed correctly, it can cause problems 30 years later in your health. When we go into these areas, it’s actually a really soft, unhealed area of bone. We can culture those, and we find a lot of harmful bacteria that can be harbored in some of these sites.
So it’s important that the dentist is trained on how to correctly remove the tooth. And then also, for me, I feel like I have a belt and suspenders on when I’m using ozone also, because the ozone will oxidize any harmful bacteria that’s left in the site. It also will help the area heal. It helps regenerate capillaries and whatnot. So it’s increasing your body’s healing capabilities while also killing off any of that harmful bacteria.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. Any other procedures or dental scenarios that you think are worth mentioning here?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Well, mercury gets so much attention. One of the things that I find very curious is that our porcelain fused to metal crowns, which was the dental standard is, they look porcelain like. Most dentists will say, “You’re getting a porcelain crown.” People don’t know there’s metals. 40% of people are reactive to nickel, beryllium, cobalt. And that is what the metal crown is made of. So even if it’s not causing them a systemic problem, when you look at the tooth and the tissue, their tissue’s incredibly inflamed and raw around these teeth.
So there’s a lot of low level reactivity too. Essentially, someone’s like, “Oh, I have a deep gum pocket. I guess I’m going to have to undergo all this extra treatment, because my hygienist said I’m not flossing.” Actually, your body is having a localized infection or reaction to this metal that, essentially, your body is trying to pull away from.
So we see that a lot in our practice as well.
Ari Whitten: Wow, it’s a mess. There’s a lot of messy dental scenarios that people can get themselves into.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah. It’s just if you could rewind with the way I even treated things 10 years ago, you’re just like, “I wish I could do things then. I would have done things then the way I know now.” Just because, not only to protect myself, because clearly, I was mercury toxic. It took a while to detox. Also, for some of our patients. I think there’s a lot of good dentists out there that just don’t know the harm they’re doing.
I trained out east. A lot of my classmates are still placing the mercury fillings. They’re like, “Well, it’s because you live in California. We live out here.”
Ari Whitten: You’re just a hippy, California hippy.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, exactly. Insert eye roll from them on what I do. I really know if they saw what I saw in terms of how these patients heal and actually were a little more open minded about it, it’s quite profound.
The other thing is that, not just to say teeth are the greatest, most important thing in the world even though they are to me. Is that I really like the analogy with a lot of naturopaths or the eastern vs western medicine that, in western medicine, if a tree starts dying, we glue all the leaves back on. We spray paint the leaves green if they turn brown. We’re like, “There. Look it, it’s a healthy plant.”
Eastern medicine is going to look at the soil and the root structure and say, “Why is this tree not thriving? What’s wrong with this tree?” I really think that’s the problem with medicine in general, but also with dentistry being left out, is that so often if you go to the doctor, if something’s wrong with your heart. You go to a heart specialist. Then something’s wrong with your kidney, you go to a kidney specialist.
Well maybe your heart medication is causing your kidneys to shut down. But everything’s so separated that people aren’t really looking at the overlap, and they’re not looking at the individual as a whole. So hence the holistic dentistry, right? I’m looking at the whole body. I’m looking at how each tooth can affect each organ and how each of my materials can then affect you, not just now, but longterm.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? How orthodontics can influence your health
When yu ask the question, can bad teeth make you sick and tired, you might not even consider the factor of orthodontics. The more I look into it, the more I see the correlation. So it’s really interesting. There’s so much now just even when you had mentioned what other facet of industry, I forgot that I left out orthodontics.
Everyone has had … Pretty much, braces is certainly the California standard. Everyone gets braces. The commonality for treating crowding is to extract a lot of teeth and use a lot of headgear to shove the teeth back in the face. In my case, it gave me a horrible profile. It makes my jaw click. It’s given me a lot of craniosacral and chiropractic problems because of my neck posturing based on the way my teeth were set.
So I have a nice smile, but I have a lot of other problems that relate to that. We’re seeing a lot more crowding now in kids because of the soft western diet. It’s becoming even more of a problem that essentially, if we treat it the conventional way, which is to pull out a lot of teeth and use headgear, a lot of these people are ending up with airway issues also, sleep apnea in the future. Sleep apnea is highly correlated to heart attacks. Again, it’s a silent killer. People just don’t know all this stuff’s going on in them until they have some other problem that manifests loudly enough that they seek treatment for that.
I don’t think they see all those correlating factors, so there’s a lot of really cool techniques we can do for treating orthodontics and craniofacial growth and development that can, I hope, prevent a lot of these kids from going through some of the problems that I currently have based on the way my teeth were treated.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How specialization can be a setback in relation to treatment of imbalances
Ari Whitten: Yeah, beautiful. When you were talking about the different scenarios where one thing’s affecting another, and you’re seeing specialists in one area. I just wanted to mention that it’s shockingly common. It is so common for someone to have a health problem in one area, and they go to see a specialist in that area. They can’t get help. They go to see another specialist in another area. They can’t get help. Or what they get from one specialist causes a problem in another area. Then they have to go see a specialist for that area.
It’s so rare, in today’s day and age that you get to see people who understand the big picture of how all the systems relate to one another. There’s a quote that I really like. I don’t know exactly who said it but, it’s talking about this tendency in our culture towards greater and greater specialization.
Back in the day, you used to go to the doctor a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, you went to the town doctor.
So, can bad teeth make you sick, and if so, is the treatment from specialists potentially causing more harm than good?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Right or witch doctor or sherpa.
Ari Whitten: Right, well whether you had a broken bone or you had pain in your chest, or you had headaches, or whatever, you had a knife wound. You went to a doctor. They had an understanding of how to deal with emergency scenarios, how to deal with infections. They had an understanding of how a lot of different things of the body relate to one another.
They had all of those areas of expertise encapsulated in one person. Now it’s becoming splintered off where everybody is an expert on this little sliver of the pie. Somebody else is an expert on this little sliver of the pie. So this quote says something to the effect of, “People know more and more about less and less until you get to the point where you know absolutely everything about nothing.”
I just think it’s a profound way of looking at that thing where you can be an expert in this one little area of the body’s function. But when you’re such an expert in that and nothing else, you can’t put the pieces together.
Dr. Nicole Vane: That’s so true, so true. And it’s sad, because for instance when we talk about leaky gut. If you went to a gastroenterologist who specializes in that, they’re not going to tell you anything about how to do a heavy metal detox or to look inside your mouth. It’s quite sad because you’ll actually never get better without addressing each of those parts.
I often laugh when I see the IBS commercials on the TV because really so much of that is just treated by proper diet, proper detox and all these symptoms go away that we’re treating and masking now with so many medications.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, but when you’re only an expert in the research around how a drug affects IBS, you’re not educated in all the nutrition and lifestyle factors. If that’s your only tool in your tool belt, then you’re going to see that person with IBS and say, “Here’s a drug.”
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, or you’re going to see that person with thyroid disease and say, “All you can do is take Synthroid.” I was thankful that I was able to treat mine with a natural approach. I’ve been fine for years now. Ironically, I have an identical twin with the same disorder who went the western route, who had far more problems from just the guess and check methodology on how they treat some of these diseases.
It’s like, “Oh, that didn’t make you better? It made you worse? All right, let’s dial that medication back, and we’ll try something else.”
Ari Whitten: Yeah, that’s pretty cool to have an identical twin like that.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, control study.
Ari Whitten: Exactly. It’s like a randomized control study.
Dr. Nicole Vane: That’s how I look at everything because she’s much more western than I am. I’m a lot more eastern, so we have a lot of differing philosophies. It is kind of fun to see the interplay of whose result is better. Of course, I believe mine will be, but who knows?
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How to improve your dental health and prevent fatigue, today
Ari Whitten: Yeah, I’m sure yours will be too. So let’s get into some practical stuff just to wrap up. As far as day to day, optimal dental hygiene, toothpaste, mouthwash, oil pulling? Flossing, what are your top recommendations as far as best dental hygiene practices?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Well, one thing I always recommend to my patients is to get an electric toothbrush. They are so much more efficacious than most people every realize. It’s the only way most people even brush for two minutes, which is the recommended amount of time. So they’re timed for two minutes. And then the Sonicare, which I like has 32,000 strokes per minute. I think that’s great. It’s stimulating the tissues. That way, regardless of what you use as the toothpaste or mouthwash, at least the teeth are being more thoroughly cleaned when you’re cleaning them.
In terms of mouthwashes, there’s not many I recommend. A lot of them have a lot of alcohol or a lot of chemicals in them. One I like is an under the tooth and gum tonic that’s natural with a lot of essential oils in it, but no alcohol. Some people are using thieves and peppermint oil, because thieves has a lot of antimicrobial properties. They’ll make their own dilute mouthwashes.
Ari Whitten: You say thieves?
Dr. Nicole Vane: The oil of thieves, which is-
Ari Whitten: Oil of thieves.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Essentially it’s clove oil based. Or they’re adding drops of that and making their own toothpaste. There’s a lot of great recipes for making your own toothpaste out of coconut oil. You can add neem powder. Neem is another powerful antimicrobial properties. A lot of times adding the clove, well it has a lot of antimicrobial properties, a lot of those are just more for taste, adding the peppermint oil just so it doesn’t taste terrible when you’re using it.
Baking soda has a lot of … Why historically it’s been better is actually it’s alkalinity, because most infections or inflammation are acidic. So having something that’s a lot more alkaline can balance that in addition to its pumice like effect it can have on the teeth.
I do think oil pulling is great. Personally, I’m not able to hold the oil in my mouth for 20 minutes without gagging.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, 20 minutes is a long time.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Even my own saliva without anything in it. If you asked me to swish for 20 minutes, I would eventually start to gag. I’m not able to actually do it myself. I’ve seen patients that are able to do it. They get great results with their tissues. Some of the things people are saying about it reversing their decay and infection. It actually cannot penetrate the tissues to an effect where it can stop decay if it’s deeper inside of a tooth and whatnot.
Ari Whitten: Inside the actual tooth.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah, people will say it makes my teeth 10 shades whiter, or I have all of this rampant decay, but now I’m oil pulling, and that’s going to stop everything. We haven’t actually seen a good result with treating, maybe a superficial cavity, but no deep cavities or cavities underneath crowns or restorations are going to be improved by just the oil pulling itself?
Ari Whitten: What about with gum disease?
Dr. Nicole Vane: With gum disease, so one of the nice things about coconut oil is, when you swish with it, it leaves a residue with a lot of great enzymes in it that can help improve … Actually, it’ll not only help improve by lowering the levels of bacteria that are in your mouth, but it actually is just great. Your tissues respond really well to it. So I think that that’s one really positive aspect of coconut oil pulling. Or actually, you can use sesame oil as well.
Ari Whitten: Oh, really? Okay. What about xylitol? Is there some good research around xylitol and maybe using it in the form of gum? Or maybe even just pure xylitol?
Dr. Nicole Vane: There’s a lot of excellent research on xylitol. So when some people are making their homemade toothpaste, they’ll add xylitol to the coconut oil and brush with that.
Ari Whitten: That’s what I do, yeah.
Dr. Nicole Vane: But the only problem with xylitol is that if it’s ingested more than five doses a day, a lot of people get diarrhea. So for instance, with treating a lot of the pediatric decay that I have, I’m able to buy this one brand of suckers that are made with all natural fruit and vegetable dyes and xylitol, which is great for adding to their lunch box, or adding a piece of xylitol gum. It’s a great way for people to introduce this sugar alcohol, which can’t be metabolized by the bacteria in the mouth the same way as sugar can, in terms of lowering their decay rate and the acidity of their mouth, xylitol is excellent. But again, if you overdo it, there is a fine line where it can cause some bowel distress for some people.
Ari Whitten: We call it disaster pants.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yes, exactly.
Ari Whitten: If you swallow it.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yeah.
Ari Whitten: Just spit it out.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Exactly, exactly. And there are some great xylitol gums that are out there that I really like. And then a lot of the toothpastes I recommend, have xylitol in them as well.
Ari Whitten: Great. Any other things you think worth mentioning as far as day to day dental hygiene practices?
Dr. Nicole Vane: I like to keep things as simple as possible. I think if we go too extreme, then most people aren’t going to do it. So really even if you just change to an electric toothbrush and wanted to make your own toothpaste or use something with xylitol in it, you’re going to notice an improvement even just from doing that.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How to find the best dentist for you
Ari Whitten: Cool. So any final tip or tips, just thoughts that you want to leave people with as far as, maybe people are watching this, they have a history of dental health problems. Is there anything that they should take away from this presentation? Any last thoughts on the question, Can bad teeth make you sick?
Dr. Nicole Vane: I think the most important part is to research the dentist that you’re going to. When you had mentioned the quackery earlier, there is that out there. I’ve met people at my holistic meetings that are practicing quackery. They’re preying on people’s fears. They’re not following any of the proper techniques and protocols. They’re looking at it as more of a cash cow, like, “Hey, you’ll pay me cash and do something that’s not covered by your insurance.” They’re not as interested in making the patient better.
I think when you research someone, you’ll see if they’re a member of some of these academies. Are they traveling for their continuing education? Have the invested in all of this extra equipment, because it’s quite expensive. So if you’re looking for the, what is the saying? You can have it fast. You can have it high quality, or you can have it …
Ari Whitten: Cheap?
Dr. Nicole Vane: Cheap. But you can’t have all three. So if you’re wanting high quality and someone who’s done all this research, then they’re not going to be necessarily the cheapest clinic around the corner who is open on Saturday nights to see your dental emergencies. So I think the most important part is to research your dentist. Also, really look for someone who’s well versed in the dental materials. That’s one thing I’ve found in trying to find a good subset of colleagues that I can work with, is that a lot of them aren’t knowledgeable in a lot of the things that I’ve found to be very important in getting patients better.
Can bad teeth make you sick and tired? – How to find a dental implant that will not make you sick
We were talking earlier about the proper technique for tooth removal and should you get your root canals removed. That’s one thing I forgot to mention is then people are like, “Well, what do I do now? I don’t have a tooth there, and I would like a tooth whether it’s a cosmetic issue or a functional issue.” So then that leads into the issue of implants. Should I have a dental implant?
Most people aren’t aware that there’s now a second type of implant. Most implants are traditionally titanium based. People with metal concerns are then worried about having titanium in their body. There are zirconia implants now on the market. About five years ago, they weren’t as good. They didn’t have as many parts and pieces for it to be the correct shape and fit for certain tooth sockets. Now it’s really evolved. So zirconia tends to be more bio inert, so people who are really worried being overly reactive to dental materials can now have a second option.
It is a little more challenging to have a surgeon or find a surgeon that’ll place zirconia. Most surgeons just aren’t well versed in all the parts and pieces for them. The other issue is that if you are going to have a tooth removed, also is having a surgeon who is not grafting. A lot of times, they’ll graft the site with bovine material or cadaver bone that’s been sterilized. A lot of times if you’re autoimmune, especially Lyme and some of these other autoimmune conditions or diseases, the areas just don’t heal well. So it’s a bad site. Again, a foci of infection. And then if you’re putting titanium or something on top of that, it can cause you a lot of reactivity in certain people.
So some people actually aren’t even candidates for implants based on whatever their medical background might be. And then we offer them zirconia bridges. So really just to have an awareness that there are options for tooth replacement. But again, it might need to be specific for the individual receiving them. Not all dentists know about all of the different options.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. It’s interesting. I’ve had so many people over the last year with chronic fatigue issues come to me and ask dental related questions. Even a lot of requests for me to have someone on the podcast who’s an expert in the subject, who could answer, can bad teeth make you sick and tired? So I’ve finally done it now, which I’m very happy about.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Yay.
Ari Whitten: And I know a lot of people watching and listening to this are going to be very happy to hear all this information. Thank you so much for doing this.
Dr. Nicole Vane: Oh, my pleasure. I could talk all day about this.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, no. Me too. This is super, super interesting. On a final note, what I want to just say is, Nicki is actually my personal dentist, not just my friend, but also my dentist. She’s phenomenal. Not just saying that because she’s here, and because she’s a friend. She really is brilliant.
Can Bad Teeth Make You Sick and Tired? – Show Notes
The difference between holistic and conventional dentistry (3:07)
Why your dental health is influencing your overall health (10:01)
How root canals can be linked to cancer and fatigue (13:18)
The disadvantages of fluoride for your health (23:10)
Side effects of mercury fillings in teeth (27:52)
How to get your mercury fillings taken out safely (31:55)
How mercury fillings can crack your teeth (38:12)
How the way your dentist removes your tooth can cause health problems (39:53)
How orthodontics can influence your health (45:32)
How specialization can be a setback in relation to treatment of imbalances (47:08)
How to improve your dental health, today (51:06)
How to find the best dentist for you (56:23)
How to find a healthy dental implant (58:13)
Links
If you want to learn more about how bad teeth can make you sick and tired, and how to recover from it, Check out Nicole’s work here.
