Right. Actually, I’m in San Diego, often there are people that don’t have insurance and have a hard time affording, and that is a big question. There is a big problem. I used to have a friend who went to USC with me and opened a practice in Tijuana, and I used to send all those patients to him. I have not seen a lot of really, really great work coming back from Tijuana, although I’m sure there’ some really great people. If you have a really good dentist, please let me know because I’m sure they’re there. I just haven’t found it. So, I couldn’t recommend anybody there. The costs are much less there. The cost of labor is less and insurance and things like that. So, they are able to keep the prices lower.
If you don’t find somebody like that, I would suggest that you compromise. First of all, it’s what we do for our patients is we do a treatment plan. This is where you are right now. This is where I want you to be, where you want to be, in perfect health. Here-to-here, sometimes there’s a little path to go. Sometimes, there’s a huge cast. So, we try to take priorities and start slowly, going a bit at a time, making sure that we’re moving forward.
Aside from that, you have choices to make, and you can replace, for example, with composite materials, or you can replace them with porcelain. Porcelain would be preferable. It’s a much more biocompatible mixture. However, if there are issues with finances, sometimes you can replace them with a good composite material. I think every composite material that I know in the market has BPAs with at exception of one that I think is called beauty fill. That’s the one we use in our office. It has no BPAs. Having said that, I will really encourage people who have very large amalgams not to use that because those materials will break down and erode. When you have smaller restorations, then it’s not a problem. You can use composite very successfully, and we do that, too. We try to be conscientious about people’s financial struggles, too, but that’s a reality. Thanks for bringing that up.
Hello. To take out the traditional root canal or do these replacement with this biocompatible materials, is it a big thing to take out the roots or is it a better thing to fill them with these biological things. I don’t know.
I’m not sure I understand your question but let’s work with this. So, in a root canal, we’re basically. Let me see if I can go back far enough. So, you understand that root canal, they actually just take out the inside here. The tooth stays in place, everything stays in place. They are only taking out this little material here, which is like a little bit of tissue. So, in traditional root canal, they remove this. They enlarge this area a little bit, and then they fill it with material. Now, that’s a root canal.
A biocompatible root canal is, the only different between the two, is a biocompatible material is used to fill this area right here.
But how do you take that out?
Now, a lot of patients come over to try to change old root canals for a new root canal, a biocompatible root canal. Then we decide whether we just want to take the tooth out or if we want to retreat this with biocompatible materials. So, a lot of the times, dentists put very large metal posts to reconstruct the tooth into this canal. When that happens, there’s no way to retreat the tooth, and the tooth needs to be extracted if it’s becoming a problem. If it doesn’t have a large post, and I would say 30% we cannot retreat then and 70% of the team we can retreat them. So, what we do is we have special computerized machinery that they’re rotary files. We go in there, and we actually remove all the material. The tooth still stays in place. Nothing happened to the tooth. It’s only the inside, it’s like a tunnel inside that gets worked on. So, we would go in here and remove all the old toxic material and refill it with a biocompatible material.
Which is not toxic at all?
It’s not toxic. It’s calcium hydroxide-based, and they use that a lot in hip replacements, knee replacements to generate bone. So, if you take this material and place it on the bone, the bone will grow on it quite happily.
Dr. Vinograd, I have one from the live stream. Does rinsing with hydrogen peroxide prevent most gum infections? Some dentists believe it introduces free radicals and may be toxic to rinse with.
Yes. I agree. I don’t think it’s the best solution. It will kill bacteria, and some people will use it, sometimes use 50-50 with water. Some people will use bacteria, but having an option of doing that or ozone, which is pure oxygen, is a no-brainer. Why would you want to use anything that’s irritating and creates free radicals. It will do the job and clean the bacteria, number one, and number two, it will only reach bacteria on the surface if you are rinsing. It’s not really going to help you that much unless you’re water pick with that to really deliver the material deeply into the gums.
So, we have two issues. One is the delivery system. We want to have a delivery system to get to the bottom of the pocket, and second, we want the most biocompatible, clean type of substance that will kill the bacteria. Ozone therapy has been proven to be much more effect than even antibiotic therapy in killing anaerobic bacteria inside the pockets without any side effects. You’re basically introducing oxygen-concentrated water.
How do you remove cavitations when having teeth removed such as wisdom teeth?
Well, cavitations has a lot of different definitions for different people. We don’t use the word cavitations anymore because of its legal implications. There have been dentists that have been sued because they were claiming they were doing cavitations. I will addesss mostly what the concern is, which is when a tooth gets infected, the bone around it gets infected. Sometimes when doctors extract a tooth and don’t really go back in there and scrape that infected bone, it often, especially in wisdom teeth, not only do you have an infected bone, but you also have a little sac that was actually engulfing the tooth as it was coming out. Sometimes that creates a great cyst in the area. So, you have to get in there and get that little sac out as well as any infected bone around it. You just want to have a dentist that will be conscientious and really go in there and clean anything that is infected around the tooth. For example, if you have a tooth that is extracted for orthodontic reasons, really, there is not issue. The issue is when you have an infection in the tooth that’s actually moved into the bone tissue.
I have two questions Doctor. One on root canal. Do you have to be an endodontist to do that?
I’m not an endodontist. I probably do 5 or 6 root canals a week. So, you don’t need to be. There are times when you want an endodontist to do it. I don’t refer my patients to endodontists because I have a friend in San Diego who’s using the biocompatible materials, and nowadays, we have computerized systems.
It’s not what it used to be. Endodontics used to be quite complicated before. We use a rotary system that’s connected to a computer, and I go in there. It tells me when I’ve reached the tip here. It autoreverses. My partner calls it Root Canal for Dummies. So, it’s become a lot less complicated to do a root canal. We usually do a root canal for an hour from beginning to end. Shorter time. Yeah. We have better materials, better instruments, and so forth. Having said that, there might be some cases that are complicated enough that might be referred to the endodontist, and the dentist himself needs to feel comfortable with the endodontic procedure. So, it varies from person to person.
Another question, sir. You mentioned about using the water pick and the mouth wash.
It’s not actually a mouth wash.
No, no I know, I’m talking about mouthwash. When you put the water in the water container, is it advisable to put the mouthwash in there or do the mouth wash after?
No mouthwash at all. The only thing I’m advocating is using an ozone generating machine. You have a little tube. It has a head on it. You put it on the container with the regular water, purified water hopefully, and you let it sit there for 15 minutes, and that becomes your super mouthwash.
Thank you.
We have another one Dr. Vinograd, from the chat room. This is Mary, and she’s looking at you from this camera and she’s asking, are there any problems biologically with the materials traditionally used in dentures?
Yes. For a susceptible person, you really must be quite careful in the materials that you use. Materials have advanced quite a bit. They’ve become less toxic. There are now flexible partials that are being used that are quite benign and also easy to use. So, yeah. You want to make sure that you are using materials that are from the last generation of dental materials versus the old materials that had quite a bit of toxins and heavy metals.
I would like to ask you, what do you think about removing bacteria by oil, that’s my first question, and the second question, whether you recommend or don’t recommend the mouthwash at all, what it does, what’s good on it, and not good.
Okay. What’s good in it is that you make a lot of stockholders very wealthy and also gives you a nice fresh feeling, and then you can join the commercials and jump around with the people who are jumping around in the commercials with good breath. It does give you a good breath for a very short period of time, and the alcohol kills some bacteria. What’s bad about it is that it has a lot of alcohol, dehydrates the tissues. It’s just really not good, and they’re chemically loaded so, I would not use mouthwash at all.
Natural? If you want to use ozonated water as a mouthwash, that will work better and longer than a mouthwash. It doesn’t give you your initial, oh my god I taste like mint or I smell like mint, but it would really be effective. There’s two reasons, most of the time, why you have bad breath. One, it’s going to be dental issues, gum disease, particularly, or GI tract problems. If it’s GI tract problems, no matter what you do to your mouth, it’s not going to solve it because it’s coming from deep inside. If it’s a problem with your mouth, your gums, inflammation, the ozonated water will work much, much better than any commercial mouthwash.
The first part of your question?
Oil pulling.
Oil pulling. There’s a lot of research on oil pulling, a lot of information right there. I feel that it’s a very valid protocol, and a lot of my patients use it, but again, you are going to be much more effective with the ozone if your purpose is to kill bacteria. Much more effective. Remember again, the anaerobic bacteria are the ones that cause most of the damage in the mouth, both in caries and in your gum disease, and those are the ones that are going to be killed by the ozone.
Question for you. I recently visited my dentist, and we had a discussion about mercury fillings. I said I want to take them all out, and he advised against that because he thought that the ones I had, he had taken one out and put a crown in. The other ones didn’t show any leakage and looked good. I just wanted your opinion on that. Would you leave them in, or would you have them out?
You know, in my book, the only good amalgam is dead amalgam. Eventually, those amalgams are going to cause you trouble so the question is do you want to take a chance, play Russian roulette, whether to decide what to do in the long run, he was right or he was right? Maybe he’s right. They’re causing no problems. It could be 100 years from now, 200 years from now, maybe we’ll have the answer, but why would you want to keep something in there that is 50% mercury, third most toxic material that we know, and that eventually is going to end up cracking your teeth?
Isn’t it better to really remove them now before physical damage takes place? When you still have the question mark, in my book there’s really no question. I would not keep a single amalgam in my mouth. So, a lot of the larger amalgams would inevitably, I am putting money on the table right now, that they will crack in time, sooner or later. So, it really is a no brainer.
For some of us that don’t have the ozone water right now, would you recommend the acidic water versus the alkaline water to rinse your mouth that way?
That’s not going to make a lot of difference. Having said that, there are a lot of people that have slightly higher pH than others. If your pH is slightly higher, you will know that because you tend to build up a lot of tartar on your gums and have very little problem with decay. On the other hand, if you have very acidic saliva, you will tend to have a lot more decay and very little tartar. Those are the two extremes. Of course, there are people in between.
If you have a very alkaline saliva where you’re building a lot of tartar in your gums, I would use probably use water with a slight lemon in it or anything that will acidify it or perhaps some apple cider vinegar, just a little bit, just to bring the pH down a little bit so you don’t have the issues with the tartar formation. If you, on the other hand, you have slightly more acidic, and you’re having a lot of problems with decay, there are two things you could do. One is put a little baking soda in the water to rinse. The other thing you could do is use xylitol chewing gum that’s really been proven to decrease decay and is fairly a natural sugar. My son uses it. I wouldn’t have any hesitation using that. Having said that, most of us can get an ozone generator, a couple hundred dollars on the internet.
Okay I think we’re going to try to sneak in one more.
Okay.
Doctor. For a younger kid who has a hypothyroidism, has amalgam on some of the temporary teeth, the baby teeth.
How old is the child?
Nine. What do you recommend? Just to wait it out?
Nine years old. By 11 years old, he’s going to shed most if not all of his baby teeth. So, being nine years old and having had the amalgams for a long time. He had those amalgam fillings for a long time?
Yes.
If he came to my practice, and he’s nine. If he had fairly normal patterns as far as the timing of the teeth coming out, I would probably not take them out. I would let them come out on their own because in a very short period of time, he’s going to have them out. If the amalgams are not being taken out properly, it’s going to do more damage than good. So, at nine, I would probably wait it out.
Well that’s going to about do it, but I think we all appreciate you coming to us today. Let’s all give Dr. VInograd a big hand.
Thank you, and I want to thank the Gerson Institute. They do an awesome job, and I’m proud to be associated with you guys.
We’re going to include, in the e-mail package that we send to you next week when we get around to it or when it’s all compiled, we’re going to include Dr. Vinograd’s powerpoint presentation so you will have all that also. He just agreed to do it. Yay!
If you guys just want to take a couple more minutes to finish filling out your evaluations, and when we leave, we’re going to put them out in the holder that’s out there in the hall. I just want to take a moment to tell you how honored we were to have all of you here this weekend. It was absolutely fantastic. We were so excited that you came, and everyone at the Institute is grateful for your participation in all of this. I also wanted to let you know that you may be leaving here this weekend with a mental illness, and I’m not making this up. Right now, the psychiatric community is debating whether or not to include a new diagnosis called orthorexia into their diagnostic and statistical manual.
They’re writing papers about it. They’re trying to gin up a lot of enthusiasm about this, and what orthorexia actually is, by their definition, is an unhealthy fixation on clean and healthy food. It is an offset of anorexia, which is people who don’t eat anything, and they’re claiming that this can potentially become a diagnosable mental illness for which they can prescribe psychiatric mediation. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am perfectly happy to spend the rest of my days in the looney bin with the rest of you toasting each other with glasses of carrot juice.
Thank you all so much. Be well, stay bold, and safe home