Exposing the Truth About Mercury Fillings (And What Your Dentist Won’t Tell You)

Mercury Fillings and Wendy's Recovery 0:00

Did you know that the silver fillings in your mouth may actually contain more mercury than a thermometer? It's true. We call them silver fillings. In dentistry, we call them amalgam fillings. I actually call them mercury fillings because the largest ingredient, 50% of what is in those fillings is actually mercury. The silver has a smaller percentage than that. This has been a concern for me personally. If you followed my story, you know that this is what made me sick, but this is what made so many of my patients sick as well.

I'll always remember a patient named Wendy. She had chronic migraines. I'm talking almost every single day and it was debilitating. She was a grandma. She loved to take care of her grandkids and help but she just couldn't do it anymore. So she came to visit me and we looked in her mouth and I identified a few different things. She actually had an infected tooth but the big thing that she had going on was those silver fillings. She had a mouthful And here's the interesting part about the story. She had been to two different dentists in the past and had asked them to remove these fillings.

She had heard through social media or whatever that they might be potentially a problem for her health. So she'd gone to the dentist. She said, will you please get these out? And they said, your fillings look fine. All that stuff about these fillings not being safe. That's not true. and they refused to remove her fillings. Now backing up, I told her, I'm really glad that they refused because they wouldn't have done it appropriately. They wouldn't have used the right precautions and she could have gotten a lot more sick after that removal.

It's really important that they're removed the right way. So when she arrived in her office, she told me the story and she said, are you going to just tell me the same thing? And I said, no, you're in the right place. I 100% believe that that mercury could be a problem for your health. So we'd used all the precautions and we removed all the fillings. We did one half at a time, right side first. left side second, and slowly the headaches started going away. I saw her at about six months out. She said headaches are gone, completely gone.

She would maybe get one a month if she was in the sun a lot. But she said, I know that that mercury was a big piece of my problem.

How Amalgam Fillings Were Introduced 2:25

She was now back to playing with her grandkids. In fact, she was watching her grandkids a couple of days a week, which she loved. And her kids were so thankful that they got their mom and their kid's grandma back. So these fillings have the potential to impact your health in huge ways. Let's dig into how. So what even are these fillings? You know, I've told the story a lot, but in the 1800s, barbers were doing dentistry and there really was only one option, pull a tooth. Well, that's not really that easy.

And if you think back to what barbers were doing, they were doing it in their barber chair, no anesthetic. This was probably pretty miserable for everyone involved. So they figured out you can mix silver shavings with liquid mercury and it would make a kind of a moldable paste. They would push it into the tooth, form it up a little bit and then it would harden. would keep the tooth in the mouth so they didn't have to pull it out you know a year from then when that cavity got even bigger well it worked great and this is the introduction for these mercury fillings into dentistry unfortunately that's not the whole story at the same time doctors were doing dentistry as well there was no such thing as dentists at that point and doctors said we're really concerned with the safety of the mercury that's in these fillings.

They were treating the hat makers that were using that same liquid mercury rubbing it on fur to make felt and they were making felt hats. Well this is where the term mad hatter comes from because those hat makers were literally going mad. That mercury was affecting their entire nervous system They would shake so bad they couldn't feed themselves. They couldn't talk sometimes. They were very, very sick. And the doctor said, is this really wise to put mercury into mouths? But it was effective. It filled holes.

The barbers kept doing it. And this was introduced to the United States as a basically standard of care treatment to use these fillings. Now what's really in there? Still today, they are 50% mercury. Why? Well, that mercury is what makes them malleable at first, but then the mercury combines with silver, tin, copper. Those are usually the other metals that are in there and it turns hard. People ask me all the time, well, no, no, they've been banned, right?

Health Risks and Mercury Toxicity 4:49

They're not used in the United States anymore. No, they absolutely are used in the United States every single day in dental practices around the country. Now there are a lot of forward-thinking dentists who don't place these fillings anymore. We're going to talk about the fact that they do remove them though and that that needs to be done safely. So a lot of dentists don't place them, but there's still a good amount that do. Should this be completely outlawed? It has been in a lot of European countries.

So I'll let you come to your own conclusions about that. Some of my symptoms that I was experiencing when I had mercury toxicity was gut issues, really bad. I couldn't drink water without pain sometimes. Brain fog to the point that I couldn't complete sentences and really bad numbness in my hands. These are common things that have been attributed to mercury poisoning. Some of the other things are arthritis, cognitive decline, which is that brain fog I was experiencing, autoimmune conditions and a lot of other systemic diseases.

Now, it's always been very interesting to me that there's a lot of concern about mercury and things like fish and vaccines, but nobody's talking about it in fillings. And this is the largest contributor to mercury in the environment. Are these fillings? Now there's an organization called the IAOMT. So you can go check them out at IAOMT.org. They're the organization that I found when I got sick. There's an entire mercury research paper there with all of the studies that are coming out and they continue to come out about the effects of mercury on the body.

Now at one time when I first started learning about this, I couldn't actually safely tell you these things. But now that mercury is being researched and research is proving it's so toxic to the body, I can tell you that these effects do happen. What symptoms have you had? Drop them in the comments. What symptoms do you think might be related to your mercury fillings and are you excited to get them out? Let's learn how to do that safely so you don't get more mercury into your system during that removal process.

That removing safely piece is absolutely crucial. and again from my story I didn't have mercury fillings but I was removing them and I was breathing in all the vapors that were released during that removal

Safe Removal and SMART Protocol 7:10

process because to remove a mercury filling what we as dentists have to do is we use a hand piece or a drill bit and we grind that filling out. When that grinding happens a couple of things happen. First of all, vapors are released from that filling and this is proven again. You can go to the IAOMT site and you're going to see a video all about this. They filmed those vapors being released from the filling. So that was my reason for getting sick is all those vapors were coming up. My patient's head was below me.

Vapors rise. but they also get into you as a patient. The next thing is mercury can be absorbed through the skin. So that vapor gets on your face. It gets on your arms. It gets on other areas. That's the source of contamination. You're breathing, right? Your nose is working, your mouth is working during the procedure and you're breathing in the vapors. You also swallow a lot of chunks. When we're removing these mercury fillings, just from an efficiency standpoint where you try to remove them with chunks and big chunks, from a safety standpoint, that actually is one of the most important pieces we do, but any dentist is gonna try to take it out in bigger chunks so that you have to drill less.

Those big chunks often get underneath the tongue, Get into areas in the mouth. When you sit up and you swallow, down they go. There's a lot of potential for mercury contamination during this procedure. That IAOMT that I talked about, they have created something called the SMART protocol, Safe Mercury Amalgam Removal Technique. And there are certain protocols that the dentist should follow in order to ensure that this is a safe procedure for you. So when you go to the dentist, if you are choosing to have a mercury filling removed, number one, first of all, go either to my directory at livingwellofdrmichelle.com or the directory on the IAOMT site and find a dentist that will follow these protocols.

And make sure when you get there, ask them, are you following the smart protocols for this removal procedure? And what should those look like? Well, when you come to my office, we're going to do a lot of crazy looking things. We're going to cover your skin so you have something covering your face. You can still see through it and breathe through it, don't worry. But we do put an oxygen mask on your nose. We put something called a rubber dam in your mouth so that chunks can't go down. We use a giant vacuum at your chin and smaller vacuums inside the mouth to get as much of that vapor out as possible and not let it release into the room.

We also cover the rest of your body. All of this has to happen in order to make sure that you get as little exposure as possible. But there's one caveat here. No matter what, no matter what happens during that procedure, even if it's done safely, you're going to get a little bit of exposure. So I recommend you do a detox along with that. My favorite way to do this is with a functional medicine practitioner. You talk with them, They help you figure out exactly what's working and not working in your body.

Your kidneys really are the ones that have to be working well because you have to be able to excrete that mercury that way. The other thing we like is to add a binder so we do a chlorella and charcoal mixture. Have you rinse with it ahead of time and have you rinse with it after because it's going to grab any mercury that's left in the mouth and then you're going to spit it out. These things are all very important and it always makes me ask, If it's so difficult to get out of the body, should we be putting it in the body to begin with?

So ask your dentist. Ask them, are they still using mercury? Why they think this is still an okay thing with the health concerns that are related to mercury toxicity and mercury poisoning.

Replacement Options and Dental Decisions 10:50

It took me about eight years to get rid of the mercury in my body. Make sure you're doing it safely. I have patient after patient after patient who have told me stories about getting it out at any dentist where they're breathing it in, they're swallowing the chunks and they actually were more sick after the removal because that mercury just moved into other neighborhoods in their body instead of exiting like it should. So make sure you are doing this safely. If this is you and you're working to get the mercury out of your mouth and out of your body, make sure to go to the link in the comments for our mercury detox guide.

It's going to give you all the essentials that I just talked about. So what do you do once you get them out? What do you replace them with? Well, our materials of choice are something called composite resin, which is a resin glass mixture. It's basically the white fillings that you see in people's mouths and maybe you already have. That's the material of choice if the filling is small. If the filling is large, we're going to use porcelain and we prefer to do something called an onlay. Now, why would you get a filling or an onlay?

Why would you get one or the other? It's really based on the amount of tooth structure that's left after that amalgam filling is removed or silver filling is removed because that silver filling metals expand and contract. This is why a thermometer works. Mercury expands when it gets hot which is why the mercury goes up in a thermometer and it contracts when it gets cold which means it goes down again when it cools off. While doing this in a tooth it leads to a lot of cracking in the tooth. The cracking then leads little open gaps that bacteria creep into.

So a lot of times when we're removing these old fillings, we find tooth decay underneath the filling because it's been leaking. They're also very corroded. This is part of why they are able to stay in mouths for a long time because they corrode and that corrosion also leaks into the tooth. So it might be, even though the filling is quite small, the damage to the tooth is quite large. So we might need to do an onlay which covers over and protects the tooth better. Occasionally we may even need to do a crown.

Why would we choose a crown over an onlay? It again depends on the amount of tooth structure lost. If you have a big chunk of tooth missing, the mercury or amalgam filling covers the large majority of the tooth and there's just nothing left to hold on to. Once we remove all that filling material, we may need to build it up again and then put a crown on to support it. So really there's no hard and fast rule as to which one of these things you should have to replace the filling. It's what does your tooth need?

And the dentist that's skilled is going to be able to do that for you. So how do you talk to your dentist about this? This is a little bit of a sticky thing. For me, 10 years into dentistry, I had never even heard that this could be a problem. And I am actually not the minority. I am the majority. When I talk to dentists about this, I usually get a real confused look because they've never heard it. In fact, we were all told in dental school that if we tell our patients these fillings could affect their health, We could lose our license.

So we kind of just filed it away and said, well, that's not something I'm going to be talking about then. So what do you do when talking to your dentist?

Advocacy, Resources, and Final Takeaway 14:03

Ask them questions. Do you still place mercury fillings? How do you remove them? Do you use the smart protocols when you do that removal? What are your feelings about it? Have you checked out the IAOMT site? You know, I am all about assuming positive intent and assuming that everybody's trying to do their best. But if you have a dentist that's pushing back on removing these and particularly not doing it the safe way, it's time to find a new dentist. And where do you find that new dentist? You find them on my directory at livingwellwithdrmichelle.com or the iaomt.org directory.

You know, this change actually isn't going to come in from inside of the dental world because dentistry is pretty entrenched in what they're doing and mercury fillings have been around since the 1800s. So this change is going to come from you. It's going to come from you asking your dentist for something different. It's going to come from you sharing established peer-reviewed research articles that you're going to find on that IAOMT site. It's going to come from you being an advocate for your own health and being okay to say, I'm going to go somewhere else that feels a little bit better and more aligned with my philosophy of care.

It's okay. That's okay. And this change is going to come from the movement of all of you watching asking for something different. So if you want to see this change, share this video, share it with your friends, share it with your dental office. Tag us in it so people can come and learn more on our site. This is what I want people to know about so nobody has to get sick like I did. Let's bring this all back together now. Mercury is neurotoxic. We know this now. We know the dangers of mercury because of research that has been done since the 1800s when they first were used in fillings.

We have alternatives that are very effective and superior honestly to mercury. There's no reason today why a dentist should be placing a mercury containing filling. There are great alternatives and there's no reason today why those fillings should be removed without safety precautions. So make sure you are educating yourself you're asking your dentist for exactly what you want. When you need to find a dentist who is using and following these principles, please go to the link in the comments that directs you to the directory to find these dentists and go download our detox guide that's going to walk you through the steps in the process.

Again, this topic is very personal to me because this is how I got sick and me getting well has helped me now to be able to help all of you not get sick in the first place. So I am Dr. Michelle. This is Living Well with Dr. Michelle. Go spread the news, spread the information, and let's all stay well together.