Mercury In My Mouth Be Gone!

After literally years of research and waiting for the right time, I am finally getting the mercury amalgam fillings out of my mouth.

I had seven that I got during the 4 years that I wore braces. At the time the dentist blamed me for not bushing well enough but I do not believe that was the cause. I brush my teeth once a day, I rarely floss and I haven’t used fluoride toothpaste since my early 20’s. My dental practices have not changed since I was a child. I have not had one cavity since I got my braces off when I was 16. In addition, my gum issues that cropped up out of the blue last spring were clearly connected to a cavitation in my jaw at the same spot. Prior to that I was often praised for my excellent gum condition, something that few American’s hear from their dentist. I suspect my cavities had more to do with the foreign metals impacting the ability of my teeth to remineralize than my brushing habits. After all, Dr Price found people in the Swiss Alps with green scum covering their teeth and virtually no tooth decay. (As my father said, “Didn’t they ever kiss? Yuck!”) Clearly brushing does not have the impact on tooth health that we are lead to believe it has.

5 years ago one of my teeth with a filling was giving me a lot of pain. I also had a newborn baby. My dentist thought that my filling had decay under it and that was causing my pain. I waited till my daughter was 6 months old and then had that filling and another one on that same quadrant of my jaw replaced. My dentist is a mercury safe dentist and follows a long list of procedures to protect himself and his patients from mercury while he removes the old fillings. I had a source of oxygen, he wore a gas mask and lots of other details were attended to. Within 24 hours my nursing infant went from a very calm, happy baby who easily put herself to sleep at night to a child who was up screaming for hours every night and clearly unhappy during the day as well. She developed several food sensitivities and reflux at that point (some have been confirmed as true allergies). Clearly a switch was flipped for her at that time and while it may have been coincidental I highly doubt it. Mercury is elevated in your blood for 6 months post removal of amalgam fillings according to Dr Hal Huggins. All of the precautions in the world won’t mean that you have no exposure. It simply minimizes exposure as much as possible. Continuing to have mercury fillings in your mouth isn’t exactly safe either since it continuously releases mercury into your body as long as the fillings are in your mouth.

So now my daughter is no longer breastfeeding and I saved up some money in my flexible spending account to cover the cost of getting the remaining 5 fillings out. I read the book It’s All in Your Head: The Link Between Mercury Amalgams and Illness. I also read the book Amalgam Illness, Diagnosis and Treatment : What You Can Do to Get Better, How Your Doctor Can Help. My dr ordered some blood tests that are suggested in the Dr Huggins book at my request that confirm that mercury is impacting my health. I also waited till after the HealThy Mouth Summit and I learned lots of great information there to help me make good decisions about if and how to proceed. If you missed the summit week you can still purchase recordings of them from this link along with transcripts, Q&A recordings and much more. I have gotten so much from these presentations. I can’t recommend them enough.

HealThy Mouth Summit Recordings

One of the first things that my dentist did when I first saw him over 6 years ago was test my teeth for electrical currents. One of them had a very high current! -28. According to Dr Hal Huggins it is important to remove the teeth with the highest negative current first. So last week that was the first filling I had removed as well as a filling in a neighboring tooth. I ended up getting my first crown at that first appointment as well. (You may call me Queen Patty from now on).

It is important to not “cross the midline” when getting fillings replaced. That is do not do both sides of the mouth at the same appointment. Also it is best to have your fillings all removed within 21 days if possible. No longer than 31 days. Really if you are considering getting your amalgam fillings removed, at the very least, get Dr Hal Huggin’s Book and read it for yourself before you do anything.

Another important step in this process was getting tested for material compatibility. This is a blood test that was mailed to Biocomp Laboratories in Colorado. It was an expensive process but worth it to know that the new materials going into my mouth will be unlikely to cause me further problems. There are lots of different materials available to make crowns and fillings from. It is important to choose the materials that you are the most compatible with before getting your fillings replaced. The best material for one person will not be what is best for another. If you are seeing a biologic dentist they should be able to get you a test kit. Some do it on all of their patients and others, only suggest it for their most sensitive patients. After reading Dr Huggin’s book I decided that I needed that testing done for myself. I didn’t want to risk having something I don’t tolerate being put into my body again.

I have a problem with oxalates building up in my body therefore I do not take vitamin C and I absolutely do not get vitamin C IV’s. Vitamin C IVs are generally recommended to help the body detox during and after amalgam removal. Unfortunately vitamin C degrades into oxalate and in a person who already has too much of a body burden of oxalate adding more directly into the blood stream is not a good idea. Instead of vitamin C I am using gutathione IVs. Glutathione is made by your liver and is an important detoxifier of mercury in the body (among other things). Unfortunately, intravenous glutathione does not last very long in the body, only about 24 hours and at $50 each time I don’t intend to keep it up long term. I am just using it to deal with the immediate increase of mercury in my body after the procedure. There are other ways to increase your liver’s production of glutathione that are much better choices for long term detox. Supplements like NAC and foods like raw goats milk, raw eggs, asparagus and others (full list here.) As well as other approaches to detoxifying the mercury in your body after you get your fillings removed. I’ll share about that in another post.

So wish me luck! Who else out there has been through this process or is considering going through it?