For those who have been following my blog, you probably have guessed that I might be experiencing some kind of tooth problem. I was getting a lot of pain from my lower right molar tooth recently. The pain was so bad that it woke me up at night.  I went to my regular dentist and he figured the composite filling on the tooth might have been worn off so he redid the filling. The pain didn’t go away and my right face started to swell up. I went back to him and he told me my tooth was infected and I needed antibiotics treatment and a root canal therapy afterwards to save the tooth. Having been studying and working in the complementary health industry, I know that a root canal might not be the right way to go. However, I did not know exactly why. So I did my own research and find out why so many naturopathic doctors and biological dentists fight hard to stay away from this treatment.   
 
In order to understand the serious ramifications of root canal therapy, I have to mention two doctors that I came across when I did my research. Dr. Weston A. Price, a brilliant dentist who has done twenty-five years of in depth research about dental conditions and Dr. George E. Meining, an endodontist (root canal specialist) who wrote a very important book Root Canal Cover-up after his extensive research into Dr. Price’s work. 
 
Dr. Price noticed many patients with crippling degenerative diseases did not respond to standard treatment and suspected infected root canal teeth as the culprit. He then removed a tooth which had had a root canal from a person who was suffering from the disease and surgically inserted the tooth in a rabbit. The rabbit then developed this same disease and in many cases the human patient was cured from the disease. Later, Dr. Price embedded small pieces of the root or pulverized the teeth and injected the powder and caused the same results. He also cultured the bacteria found in a root filled tooth and injected the toxins from it into test animals and reproduced the disease from the toxins alone. Last but not least, for comparison, he implanted sterile objects or uninfected natural teeth and did not find any adverse health effects. 
 
The dentin which makes up the tooth’s structure is actually made up of microscopic tubules that deliver nutrients to all parts of the tooth. That is why it is very hard to sterilize the infected tooth by a root canal therapy. The bacteria that caused the infection was embedded in most of the dentin tubules and was not destroyed during a root canal therapy. If you have a healthy immune system, you probably won’t develop immediate health threats from a root canal therapy. The organism that cause the infection seems to target tissues or organs that are already compromised and that’s why some patients will experience health issues after root canal therapy and some patients with a healthy immune system will do fine. Now, the question I need to ask myself is do I want good looking teeth with a root canal or do I want a healthy body without a root canal? I chose the latter one.