Transcribed P1: June 2013: Holistic Dentistry & Biocompatible Protocols (Lecture to Gerson Institute)

I think many people over the last several years, as information has become more available, have become aware that there is a large number of people in the field of dentistry who don’t seem to understand that the mouth is part of the body. It’s something completely separate and doesn’t relate to any of your other physiology whatsoever.
We’re very lucky to have with us today someone who does. Dr. Daniel Vinograd is a Holistic Dentist, and he is the dentist to many of the staff at the Gerson Institute as well. He is going to tell you how it might be done in a better world.

Dr. Daniel Vinograd:
Thank you so much. Hello everyone. I’m glad to be here with you all. With this weather, I would expect half of you would be down at the beach so I got to commend you for being here. Who do you trust? We’re going to start out thinking big here to start off the session, but who do you trust?
We have so much information nowadays, sometimes too much information. It used to be that if we had to find something out, I remember, as a young person, I had to actually hire a research team to find out anything I wanted to know or go to library. Now, it’s right here.
So, I get a lot of patients coming in and saying, “Doc, I read this, and this is what is best. This or that.” It seems to me that some people have done some great research, but all of a sudden, they have too much information. They don’t know what to do with it.

I think a lot of that applies to dentistry. What’s good? What’s bad? What materials? Root canals. This. That. So, again, the question is who do you trust? Should you trust me because I’m standing here? Absolutely not, and I’d like to propose to you that if we really start thinking big outside the box, whether you’re religious or not, there’s a concept that I think is important to understand. It’s that if you have a very scientific mind, you have to understand that we are, right now, us, sitting here, each one of you, we’re a result of a billion and a half years of evolution. Wow! Don’t get about thinking big, right?

If you have a religious inclination, there’s incredible godliness in each one of us. So, when I say, “Who do you trust?” There’s really no better answer than yourself. We just need to learn how to listen because we are full of information. Every cell in our body, as a scientist, I think, has a billion and a half years of evolution. What does that mean?

That means learning. Every cell has been learning up to this point. So, when people say, “I have this feeling,” or there’s some intuition, we’ve been learning how to disregard that. The only thing that we should really pay attention to is what our mind dictates, and I think that’s a mistake.

In Chinese medicine, they talk about heart-mind as one entity, and I think they got it right. We tend to disregard and just think up here, make decisions from up here. I think it’s very important for us to really understand to trust our decisions, to trust ourselves, and to trust our instincts. Does that mean that you’re going to make decisions all by yourself without any knowledge? No. Does that mean that you don’t want to rely on experts? No, but you have to use that intuition to know who you trust, what information you trust, who’s trying to sell you something, and who’s really trying to give you information that you can rely on.

Having said that, this is my first point: We really must take responsibility for our own health. We just have to. Why? Because there are so many interests out there that are really looking to get our hard-earned dollars, and they’ll say anything to get into our pockets.

Having said that, there are wonderful people out there. I’ve spent many, many years going down to Guatemala, Peru, and I’ve had interaction with incredible doctors, dentists that give up their time, are incredible people. So, there are lots of people out there that are just incredible people, but corporate America is not necessarily looking out for our interests.

So, from now on or maybe 10 years back, when the corporations basically started taking over and influencing governments to push their agendas, we have to start advocating for ourselves. You cannot trust what people tell you on TV, on the radio, on print. It’s just unreliable now. Is there some truth in some of that information? Yeah, of course there is truth to some of what they’re saying, but we cannot count on that.

So, let’s now talk a little about dentistry, how that relates to everything that we’re actually talking about right now. I remember one of my very, very dearest friends Boris Schwartzman, nice guy from Mexico City. He was studying at UCLA, and he was part of the dental materials program. He kept on telling me, “Daniel, we’re studying this material, and I have to tell you I’m so excited. It’s got so and so compression strength and this bonding capability and this shear strength and this dimensional stability.” He’s talking to me. I say it sounds like I’m talking to an engineer, not a health professional, and, not him, but the whole department is looking at this.

I say has anybody really thought about the physiological effects of these materials? After all, we’re not going to be constructing robots. We’re putting them on people’s mouths. So, I kept on asking, what about the biocompatibility of these materials? Is anybody studying that? You know, I mean, I wasn’t born yesterday, so it was about 30, 35 years ago that we had this conversation.

So, this is the result of that kind of thinking. Where they thinking evil thoughts about poisoning people? No, I don’t think so. It was just the disregard that the thinking was one of looking at materials to see what is going to be strong enough to withstand masticational forces, which is really a big part of dentistry, too. You have to have that as well. So, that resulted in dental amalgams, formaldehyde being placed in children’s mouths. It’s just a great deal of evidence showing how a lot of these materials are so toxic. You wonder, how is it that we even thought of putting them in people’s mouths to start off with.

We’re going to show a little bit of evidential studies that show how the body, the mouth and the body are connected. Part of the Industrial Revolution and the specialization created doctors who became more and more specialized, and all of a sudden, this guy was a specialist in lungs. This guy was a specialist in the right toe, and by the end of the day, we’re looking at little microcosms of things that we really stopped separating everything. We started separating the fact that every part is connected? Everybody knows that song, right? There should bone’s connected to the… Right? It’s all connected.

So, again, traditional root canals were a result of that as well. People just looking for some kind of very practical way to solve a problem. Did they solve some problems? Absolutely. Did they bring other problems? About absolutely.

Let’s talk a little bit about mercury amalgams, and this is quite interesting. In 1833 is when they first came. Amalgams were brought to this country by a couple of Frenchmen, and people started going crazy for amalgams because all of a sudden, you had something hard that you can place and people can go back and chew. So, that was yay! Let’s hear it for amalgams, but these were our heroes. The Society of Dental Surgeons, ASDS, those are the first guys that dressed up in Batman and Superman uniforms, they had this awareness back, in 1844, in saying mercury is one of the most toxic substances known to man. If you wanted to be part of them, and they were the most prestigious institution, if you wanted to be part of them, you had to sign something saying that you would not use amalgam.

So, wow. Back then, somebody had some awareness, but soon after that, by 1856, this group disbanded. The present American Dental Association took over. Is the American Dental Association the enemy? No, but again, they have a certain focus. They have a certain history.

There was a big component of the new American Dental Association that was called, the American Amalgamist Association that was really a subgroup of this that were really pro-amalgam, and this really where the foundation of the use of amalgam. However, we know that mercury is one of the most toxic elements known to humans. How are we living with that? Some people are saying the amalgam gets mixed, the mercury gets mixed with a lot of silver and cadmium, and it gets fixated. Who knows? I don’t know that, and whether it’s true or not true do I want to have that in my mouth?

There’s good studies that show there is leakage of mercury. So, I’m convinced. Even if people are not convinced, they say, amalgam’s really stable. It doesn’t hurt anything, but why would I want to take a chance of putting something that 50% mercury in my mouth?

Now, this is not me. This is not some holistic dentist telling you this. This is the department of health and human services, the United States government is telling you that mercury is the number three toxic element that they have found. So, in 1970s, I began asking my colleagues to stop using amalgams. Do agree that mercury is toxic? Yes, I agree that mercury’s toxic. Well, whether we find out or don’t find out, why would you want to start using this? Why would you want to use this at all? Mostly the answer that I got.

Why isn’t your dentist telling you what’s on the label? These are the labels from amalgams. You can read for yourself what the manufacturers are telling you, or me, as a dentist, about amalgam, and I know, in this country, amalgam is still widely used.

So, we can’t change the world all at once, but it’s people like you that have awareness, that care, that are here instead of sitting out on the beach, that this message is important for.
This is what I see in my practice every day. These are amalgams. These are restorations. There are a couple of problems with the restorations. One, from a biocompatible point-of-view, we’ve already discussed the content of one of the most toxic materials there are, and as time goes by, they get oxidized. They break up. They start leaking. So, this is very common place in every dentist’s practice. This is what we’re seeing after amalgam’s been in the mouth, and you’d be surprised. I’d ask a patient, how long as this been in your mouth? Some of them would say, “Since I was a little kid.” Other people would tell me two or three years, and amalgams start looking like this.