Dr. William Campbell Douglass'
SECOND OPINION

The Root of the Problem

Dentists have always had it easy, in a sense.  They relieve the unbearable pain of toothaches;  they save your teeth so you can chew those wonderful steaks;  they make your mouth look pretty;  and they scold and lecture you about brushing, flossing, picking, swishing, and squirting, like a mother hen.  Not that all this "hygiene" does much good, but you know your dentist is sincere and he's really on your side.  There's no doubt about it.

But now the poor dentist, the guardian of your root and enamel, is being accused of causing everything from arthritis to cancer and heart disease.  And he thought he was so benign -- and so did we.

In his new book, Root Canal Cover-up Exposed!, Dr. George Meinig examines the work of Dr. Weston Price and shows how a simple root canal can affect your heart, kidneys, lungs, eyes, stomach, brain, and just about any other body tissue you care to mention.  Actually, it's not the root canal that causes the problem, but rather, the germs trapped inside the tooth.

To understand what Dr. Meinig is talking about, we have to go back to research which was suppressed, from the early 20th century.  Dr. Weston Price, a dentist, was one of the great medical researchers of the past 100 years.  His work on the relationship of nutrition and physical degeneration, especially as it applies to the teeth, is well-known by sophisticated nutritionists the world over.  Some of these knowledgeable people are medical doctors and dentists -- most of them are not.  But Price did other research that was even more monumental than his nutrition studies.  And even sophisticated nutritionists didn't know about it until Dr. Meinig reviewed Price's writings and found that his most important research had been completely ignored.

The best way to impress upon you the importance of Price's discoveries is to tell you about the rabbits.  Then we'll work back from there to explain why the experimental rabbits, you, and many of your friends and family experience serious and often fatal diseases from your well-meaning dentist.

Dr. Price had a hunch that root canals often harbored infection that was not readily apparent.  He also surmised that this local infection was acting as a "mother lode" of infection that was traveling to various organs of the body causing heart disease, arthritis, and almost any other disease state, depending on where that particular strain of organism preferred to roost.  This sounded preposterous and no one paid any attention to him, even though he was recognized as one of the foremost dental and nutritional researchers of his time.

Price's findings were so astounding that one wonders how they could have been ignored, but they were.  After seeing hundreds of patients with severe and chronic diseases that could not be cured by the medical profession, Dr. Price began research that, even by today's standards, is nothing short of brilliant.

A woman who had been confined to a wheelchair for six years with severe, crippling arthritis came to Dr. Price for help.  After finding that she had a tooth with a root canal, Dr. Price suggested that it be removed -- even though it looked perfectly normal and showed no evidence of infection.  He was really going out on a limb but Dr. Price was convinced that it was probably "the root of the problem."

Now comes the momentous step that should have won the Nobel Prize for Weston Price:  After removing the tooth, he implanted it under the skin of a rabbit to see if the rabbit would develop a disease similar to that of the patient.  The rabbit developed the same crippling arthritis as the patient and, ten days later, died of infection.  The patient, on the other hand, made a complete recovery from her arthritis after the extraction.

Price repeated this experiment many times, with the same result in almost every case.    If the patient had kidney trouble, the rabbit developed kidney trouble.  If eye problems, the rabbit developed a similar problem.  Heart trouble, arthritis, stomach ulcer, phlebitis, osteomyelitis  (infection of the bone), all would be mimicked by the rabbit after the insertion of an infected tooth (although, in the case of a root canal tooth, the tooth might not look infected) under the rabbit's skin.  Because rabbits have a poor immune system, most of them died within two weeks.

A classic illustration of this mimicry of disease was a woman with extreme weight loss.  Her usual weight was 130 pounds, but when first seen by Dr. Price she weighed 72 pounds.  One of her infected teeth was extracted and then inoculated into a rabbit.  The rabbit lost 20 percent of its weight in four days.

But Price made another discovery at this time that should have horrified the dentists and microbiologists worldwide.  He took the infected tooth, crushed it, and then filtered it through a Berkefeld filter.  This left a fluid that contained no bacteria.  He then injected this fluid into a rabbit and obtained the same response as when he injected the infected tooth into the rabbit -- a rapid weight loss and death in five days.

This proved that it wasn't necessary for bacteria from an infected tooth to migrate out of the tooth and into the rest of the body.  The toxins from the infection were all that were necessary to create serious health problems in persons with a weak immune system.

Price also proved that the entire foundation for sterility in root canal work was tragically flawed;  that dentists were using criteria for sterility that were grossly inaccurate.  Dentists put sterilizing medication into the tooth when performing root canals in order to eliminate infection.  Once cultures demonstrate that the canal is sterile, the surgery is completed.  Dentists have been taught that a negative culture is absolute proof that successful sterilization has been achieved.  But 70 years ago, Dr. Weston Price proved that few root canals were free of infection after 48 hours.  These seven decades of cover-up and self-delusion have led to massive illness, suffering, and, many times, an early death for millions of people -- and few of today's dentists are even aware of the tragedy.

SECOND OPINION is a newsletter containing general comments on health, nutrition, and medicine.  Readers are advised to consult with their own physician before implementing any health idea they read about, whether here or in any other publication.

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This is the article I read that caused me to make an appointment to get
my root canal pulled.  This article used by permission from Second Opinion.

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