Of course, you don’t want to continue to have that bacterial count in there, but there was one particular patient, a dear, dear patient of mine. Her name is Judy, and she said, “Doc. I just don’t want to get rid of my teeth.” Her teeth are dangling, big pus pockets, 7, 8, 10 millimeter pockets, and she says, “Doc. There’s no conversation here. I’m not doing anything about this.” I said, “Judy we need to talk about the biological component of this.” So, we got here to get a water pick.
This was many, many years ago, but Judy’s the one individual that really motivated me to develop this technique. Then, we got her to stop by using the water pick. When she started using the water pick and got proficient with it, which sometimes takes a week or two to get proficient with it, we added and ozone machine. I’m sure many of you are familiar with ozone. Many dentists used ozone. My feeling is that ozone is a little bit irritating when it’s in the air, but once you get it in water, it’s very safe.
Ozone, O3, we’re supercharging the water with oxygen. So, if we can actually deliver that oxygenated water into those deep pockets, what’s happening to the bacteria? They’re doing on contact. They hate it. So, the ozone, we know, will kill anaerobic bacteria. We know that, but how do we deliver it to 7, 8 millimeter pockets? We use a water pick.
Suddenly, ozone machines used to be a couple thousand dollars. They’re no longer that. They’re much, much less than that today. Now, we’ve gotten a lot of our patients on this protocol, the ozonizer with the water pick, and by the way, Judy still has her teeth. The 10 millimeter pockets became 8 millimeter, and the 6 millimeter became 4s. There’s improvement, but 8 millimeter pockets are still not a good place to be. She could go every day and clean them out. So, those bacteria that could possibly travel into your system are no longer a challenge for her.
A lot of people asked me last time I was here, where do I get these ozone generators and so forth. So. I’m going to tell you generally what you want. You want to use them in a well-ventilated area, first of all. Then, you want one that is a Corona discharge. This is the kind of machine that if you used to do it, I want you to look for. You want 1000 milligrams per hour, which is a powerful machine enough that you don’t have to sit for three hours ozonizing your water. This will probably do it in 15 minutes, and then you want a sealed box around the elements because there are a lot of people making them at home now. I do not recommend that you actually get a home-made unit. You need to get one that’s well-sealed in a box.
Now, this is actually my son’s company, and I asked him to source the machine that I wanted. If you don’t find it anywhere else, you can always find it with him. I’m not promoting that you get it from him. If you get it cheaper everywhere else, it’s fine, but I asked him to get the machine that I wanted in his website. You could always get it there if you find it nowhere else.
Now, what about the water irrigation device, the water pick. You want to get as inexpensive a device as you can get. It really doesn’t matter. What you need to get is one that has a container because they have some that are just individuals. You don’t want that, the travel kind. You can’t get enough water in there, but anything that has some kind of reservoir where you put water and use that water for the water pick is good. You can get it fairly inexpensive now at any of those big box stores.
You want to use the middle pressure. You don’t want to go to the high pressure when you do this because you can actually start creating more of a deepening of the pocket with the pressure. So, medium’s enough to reach the bottom of the pocket, and you don’t have to have gum disease. Two to three millimeter pockets are also quite receptive to getting cleansed with our irrigation device.
Lastly, this is great thing to do, but you still want to go every six months to get your gums checked. If your dentist is not checking your gums every time that you go for a checkup, you need to switch. You need to find somebody who will be very conscientious of your gums and of gum disease because that’s really one of the biggest challenges for your health.
Okay. This is another big, big questions. For me, it’s been one of the challenging issues in my practice. This is the root canal controversy. Who in this group has hear that root canal is not good for you? Okay. What do you do when a tooth is killing you, you’re in terrible pain, you go to the dentist, he says you need a root canal. It’s a first molar, and you have to decide. What do I do? Do I do a root canal? Do I extract this tooth? If I extract this tooth, how is that going to impact my chewing ability, my quality of life? If I extract it, do I replace it? Do I not replace it? This is a challenging question, both for the dentist and for the patient.
So, these are some of the choices that we have to make. Now, what is happening when somebody needs a root canal? In most cases, we have a tooth. Inside of here, we have a vein, an artery, and a nerve in a package going on the inside of the tooth. Usually when we need a root canal is when we’ve had a breakage on the integrity of the tooth, the white part, that has given the ability to bacteria to introduce themselves into the canal where there’s a lot of blood supply, a lot of nourishment for them. So, it creates great inflammation.
As you can see, if you get a tummy ache, and it starts hurting you, you get the distended stomach. It just awful, the pressure and the pain. In the tooth, if you get that area inflamed, there’s no place to go. It’s against hard structures. That’s why toothaches are so terrible. They’re so difficult to manage.
So, what are the options to replace extracted teeth? Well the first question is, do we extract it or do we do a root canal? Now, a root canal, traditionally, a dentist will come in and remove all this tissue, which is soft tissue, infected tissue, and will actually fill this canal up to here optimally with a material. Some of the objections to root canals in the past, number one is that you no longer have that blood supply from the inside of the tooth. Is that the only blood supply to the tooth? No, you also get blood supply from around the tooth, but yes, if you have a root canal, the tooth becomes a little bit more dehydrated, more brittle with less blood supply. The biggest issue is not so much that.
The biggest issue is that the filling materials that have been used in the past have been number one, been hydrophobic, which means they hate moisture, and there’s always going to be moisture.
So, they actually contract and create spaces between the material and the tooth. The second problem is that they’ve been incredibly toxic. The materials used in root canals have been incredible toxic in the past. So, I, for many years, stopped doing root canals.
I began seven, eight years ago with the advent of new materials where we make a decision based on the individual. If you are a strong individual, not immune compromised, not dealing with a severe illness, I would consider doing a biocompatible root canal where I would fill those root canals with a biocompatible material that’s hydrophilic, expands, and seals the material really well, not giving place to those gaps that we had before where the bacteria used to get in there and colonize.
If I have somebody that’s immune compromised, somebody who’s dealing with a severe challenge with their health, then we have to look at the big picture. We don’t want to keep a possible focus of infection in the mouth when you’re dealing with such a severe issue. So, again, trust yourself. Trust the people that you’re around to make good decisions. Look at the big picture. Don’t just go with that you read in the internet. So, I’m giving you information here so you can actually make good decisions together with your health professional.
Once we’ve decided to extract the tooth, what do we do? Implants? Fixed bridges? Removable bridges? Maryland bridges? Those are the four most common options that we consider in our practice. Implant. Advantage of the implant, they’re solid, they integrate really well to the teeth right now. They have about a 97% success rate. Some of the challenges with the implants. First of all, they’re made out of metal. Do you want metal in your bone if you’re dealing with big issues and allergies and metal problems in your mouth? If you’re immune compromised, I would not suggest that you get that. If you’re healthy and this is an important tooth to replace and you have no major issues, that’s a possibility. Some of the problems in the past was that there was leaking in here, right between the implant in the tissue where there was leakage and bacterial infection.
Nowadays, the designs of the implants have improved where that’s become less of a problem, but again, decision time. Don’t just think it’s always this way or always that way. Use the information that you have to make good decisions.
Removable bridges. Probably, they’re very, very noninvasive. You are basically placing something in there as long as you have relatively good biocompatible materials, but they’re not necessarily the best for your quality of life. It’s something that you have to put on and off all the time, and as people who have them will tell you, some people adjust really well to them. Some don’t, and they usually end up in the drawer with all the other gadgets that they bought and they can’t use.
Fixed bridge. We would actually take two teeth on the side. We would reduce them, and then we would actually place a bridge in there. Nowadays, we’ve actually gotten to the point where we can actually do bridges without any metal whatsoever. Biocompatible bridges. New material called bruxor that is as hard as they come is actually not a hybrid material. It’s very biocompatible, and you can take a hammer to that material and try to break it. You can’t. The disadvantages are that you may sometimes have two pristine teeth on the side. You don’t want to grind those teeth, but if you have two crowns already there, it’s a no brainer. Again, use the information to make good decisions.
Lastly, a Maryland bridge, where if you sometimes have certain parts of the mouth where you can get enough retention. You don’t have enough 300-pound wrestler that’s going to put a lot of pressure on every bite, sometimes we can actually get away with not having to grind the whole tooth and just doing a partial design and just do a Maryland bridge. It used to be en vogue 30 years ago. Then, people stopped using them. Now, with the advent of better bonding materials, we’re able to come up with those types of designs successfully.
That’s basically what you have to do. Instead of preparing the whole crown, you just have to remove much lesser amount of enamel of the tooth to get that bridge. Now, what materials can you use in crowns and bridges? Porcelain to metal, and the metals are non-precious, semi-precious, and precious. No matter what metal you’re using, unless you’re using pure titanium, they’re all different amalgamated metals. Not to be confused with metals. There is really no mercury there, but a lot of them have platinum, nickel, so forth. Then you have no metal crowns. Some, lava, emax, and empress, that are bi-layered, which means you have a core and a beautiful overlay of porcelain. Then you have the pure zirconia. The pure zirconia is, by far, the most biocompatible material and the best crown from the health point of view.
However, sometimes we don’t use them in the front because they’re not quite as beautiful as the bi-layered. So, again, if you don’t really want to have a dead-looking bridge or some crowns in front, then you may want to choose to go bi-layered. If it doesn’t show or you really just don’t care, you can always use the zirconia called bruxer crown.
Again, it’s about creating a good team around you, trusting the right people, trusting yourself, most of all, to know when to trust and when not to trust.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I have a personal website where I talk a little bit more about my urban farming, my tilapia growing, my trees, a lot of my meditation practice, and a little bit about my philosophy on dentistry, and then, of course, office website and e-mail. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you have if you feel shy to ask them now or if you come up with questions later.
I’ll leave that up for a couple of minutes, then I’ll put this back.
So, I hope that I brought some good information for you guys, and you can go back and really learn how to really trust your own instincts. With some information, put those things together, like the Chinese, use your heart, use your mind at once.
Thank you very much. So, I’ll open the forum. We have about 10, 12 minutes for questions if anybody would like to. Unfortunately, because of my dentistry, I’ve lost a little bit of my hearing (that zzz). It’s not only bad for the patients, but we lost our hearing a little bit. So, if you could speak up, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks for your information, but whenever there is a dental treatment, there are issues of affordability, especially if you have 4, 5, 6 issues in your teeth. Are there any affordable version as well as better healthy options, especially if somebody wants to go to Mexico and those kinds of things.