Gerson Institute Day 3 Lecture: Dr. Vinograd, Holistic Dental Health

Participant: Could you be a little more specific about the negative aspects of a tooth implant? Is it because of the titanium or is it because of the way it’s put in the jaw bone or what?

Daniel Vinograd: The titanium integrates fairly well into the body and if I was going to have a metal in my body of any sort, it would definitely be titanium. It’s the most biocompatible metal that you can have.

A lot of people that claim from just an electromagnetic point of view, from a Chinese medicine point of view, that you’re actually disrupting the flow of chi when you’re getting large pieces of metal into your mouth, into your body.

I would say if it’s going to really improve the quality of your life and you don’t have any problem with metal allergies, that probably would be the best solution.

There’s also a problem with the interface. Probably my biggest concern is the interface between the implant and the gum. The implant has to integrate quite well to the bone. As a matter of fact, when we actually place an [0:50:00] implant in our office, we wait three months for it to have full integration.

However, when you actually place the crown on the implant, you’re creating a space between the implant and your gum and unless that’s really well-managed, it could create the same problems we were having before that we were talking about before as far as having a lot of anaerobic bacteria getting involved in that area and then creating systemic problems.

Participant: Hi doctor. Can a dentist put an implant even though you don’t have bones?

Daniel Vinograd: If you don’t have?

Participant: Bones.

Daniel Vinograd: Bone. It just depends. Everybody has some bone. There are some implants. There are some shorter implants called Bicon implants that are just as stable as the longer ones that sometimes prevent people from getting implants.

If you’re going to get a long implant, if you didn’t have enough bone. So using this sort of implants, we tend to see a lot more …

Participant: In this case, the bone is very thin.

Daniel Vinograd: It’s thin and the quality of your bone is not good?

Participant: Yes.

Daniel Vinograd: If you have an option, I would definitely look into getting some porcelain bridges but if it’s something that you need to do, the only way to do that would be to actually do a bone graft and increase the thickness and quality of your bone and then that could be done.

Facilitator: She said you’re not recommending it in this case though.

Daniel Vinograd: It’s a case by case situation. If you have the option of doing a porcelain bridge, that’s what I would do in my mouth. Non-metal porcelain bridge, maybe for just a short span. Do a BruxZir bridge.

For me that would be the most biocompatible solution. If you don’t have that option, then you have to look into perhaps bone graft.

Participant: OK. My question is this. Hi. How are you?

Daniel Vinograd: Hi.

Participant: In my field of work, I am in front of cameras and pictures and things like that. How do you feel about teeth whitening? Because my smile is always important with my job. Is it dangerous?

Daniel Vinograd: No, not really. It’s basically just very concentrated hydrogen peroxide. From a biocompatible point of view, really not a problem.

Yeah, sometimes you get sensitivity in your teeth and you have to manage that but yeah, I wouldn’t be that concerned. We have much bigger fish to fry.

Participant: OK. I can [0:52:42] [Inaudible] harmful or not.

Daniel Vinograd: Not really.

Participant: OK.