Fed up to the Back Teeth with Medical Misadventure.
Examining the Medical Establishment's Business Plan. Part 1.
I'd heard the stories but it was my first experience with an actual tooth problem. At 27yrs old, before an international trip, I once booked a visit which resulted in a root canal & two porcelain fillings. Strange. My teeth had never given me any trouble at all.
In writing this sorry tale I found that back in 1990, the ADA “suggested” dentists perform thirty million root canals per year by 2000. Sixty million are “required” today.
Five years later when a dentist was genuinely required I realised too late that he was physically unstable — whether DT's, old age or too much medication I didn't speculate but his faded pink walls, yellowed cornices, dusty 80's prints said the glory days were over. Wizened hands shook with the drill an inch from my eyes. I was stiller than still and finally grasped the popular fear of dentists.
It didn't go well of course and I only had myself to blame; my fault for getting the tooth in to trouble (too much stress & gelato), my fault for seeking a cheap dentist within walking distance, and my fault for politely accepting the operation after realising he was likely incompetent. It was an unsettling experience but my first tooth ache was taken care of more or less. With antibiotics and no more gelato, life went on.
Two or three years later, after buying and selling a property, having a baby, and then moving locally and internationally three times in 18 months, the elderly dentist's rooted canal returned with a vengeance. Obviously stress played a leading role.
In that time I had learned and applied a paleo version of Weston A. Price's ancestral diet guidelines from the early 1900's, but any excessive stress meant the tooth flared up. A biodynamic farm gate sold raw milk nearby. Delicious! But the tooth didn't care.
I learned about having teeth pulled, but just having them pulled wasn't good enough; cavitations could form, trapping necrotic tissue in a little bubble of trouble.
They needed to be pulled out, then drilled clean with all necrotic tissue suckedly removed from gum to bone. Yes that's right. Suckedly. As I learned the dangers of root canals, I became furious at my own ignorance, which turned in to horror at the dental, veterinary, pharmaceutical, food and medical systems. But forewarned is forearmed.
When the molar flared again, I went to a dentist with good online reviews in our small university town; she was perhaps twenty years older than me. She wouldn’t have been taught that in 1910 both the Mayo Clinic and Weston Price knew the toxicity of root canals. She would have been taught my role was to open up, shut up and pay up.
Nevertheless, I asked her to kindly pull out my failed root canal and then drill away the surrounding gum and bone to an overall depth of 5 millimetres to ensure any necrotic tissue down in to the bone was removed. She was shocked — shocked! “My dear young lady, I am here to save your teeth!” Dr. De Kay replied.
Removal wasn't going to happen just as the forums online said it wouldn't. Rats.
I'd already paid $150 just for her to look at it. Fine. Do the second stupid $1,800 operation, $500 more than the last failed op. But mark my words LADY, I’d find someone to wrench and drill that $3,300 liability from out of my jaw.
It took another two years and another international move before I found someone to pull it out properly; a Jewish holistic dentist, and one of only two licensed to practice in our city of over five million. The other bio-dentist had a two year waiting list. All that time my back ached. After the extraction I sat in the private waiting room with a small sterile cotton pad packed into the affected area and a skiing magazine on my lap.
Gazing at the snowy slopes the pain in my back suddenly stopped, as if it just dried up. I wriggled my spine — truly — it had gone. Magazine mountain sun beamed on me like a gold mote. Was the local anaesthetic making me high? The pain had gone.
Despite the rough learning curve (the most effective kind), it was supremely valuable firsthand knowledge. Disillusionment coloured my old respect for medical professionals, but its accompanying nous allowed me to speak politely and firmly with them in subjects ranging from teeth, preventative diets, child birth and vaccinations.
Sally Fallon and Mary Enig’s book called, Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, had seen me through two doctor-free births in lieu of the role traditionally ascribed to mothers — a first class education on what to eat and how to cook; it was worth its weight in gold.
One day I caught sight of Sally Fallon's recommendation of a book called 'Heal Tooth Decay' by a concerned father, Ramiel Nagel. He'd noticed his daughter’s baby teeth were rotten and black; he healed her using traditional foods. I’d already mastered bone broth etc. thanks to Fallon, but Nagel specified a remineralisation protocol.
The downside to this personal knowledge was admitting we were living in a deadly, materially corrupted culture and nobody else seemed to know or care; to mention it was social suicide. The knowledge I’d accrued was like a gauntlet thrown at my feet.
As my father always said, if you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself, which meant... if I had a tooth problem, or a broken bone, or my children or husband became ill, I would have to know exactly what to do. It was a scary prospect, but not as scary as the butchers at the hospital, drug-pushers at the doctors office or well-meaning dentists in general… Fast forward to two months ago, Sept.-Oct. 2023.
After hundreds of false starts to the Uranus post over an endlessly hot and average summer, I suffered Scriptus Interruptus so badly my brain imploded; knowing an interruption was imminent (and it always was) drove me to the brink of despair.
I hit the 70% chocolate, gaffer-taped headphones to my head, replaced lunch with butter cookies, chips and many other corner-cutting bastardisations of the damned.
By early mid-October, after correcting a kidney issue (stress-fuelled* electrolyte imbalance) I began research again but with so many details needing triple-checking the stress felled me. My head started aching, shoulder & back were stiff & painful… meditation to find the root of the problem was too brief… in the stress of November birthdays… needing paleo, sugar-free cakes baked… and social obligations with friends… undertaken in cold mountain environments when I finally got the message...
Abscesses in two different teeth.
Part two coming very soon.
* In the 2006 book called ‘Biology of Kundalini’ by Jana Dixon, she notes the difficulty of balancing the hyper-activated sympathetic nervous system post-Kundalini.**
** ‘The Kundalini Trip’ (Parts 1&2) open to all subscribers for the following week.
Can't wait for Part 2 ! could not resist reading this post even though it is making me late!
I did Paleo/Weston Price to lose the weight and eliminate the sugar cravings/fatty liver, then moved to very little animal product Macro and Fletcherism (chew, don't eat when boohoo, check out your poo) as a way to better understand what I was actually feeling and needing.
I think that if we differentiate (potentially long term, even intergenerational) medicine vs. staple, then there is a place for all nourishing traditions. The same substances in different combinations and/or with different attitudes towards them may change their quality too.