In addition to the clear visual appearance of chronic infection at the time of extraction, frequently accompanied by putrid odors, ALL root canal teeth extraction sites have pathogens that can be cultured, and microscopic examinations of biopsy specimens always reveal inflamed and necrotic bone and tissue cells resulting from the chronic infection.
Infected Teeth-The Hidden Pandemic
Chronically abscessed teeth, as seen in imaging studies, are very common. Furthermore, they are nearly always completely free of pain or any other associated symptoms, and the patient has no reason to suspect that there are any problems in the mouth. In contrast the acutely abscessed tooth, for which many root canals are performed, are typically extremely painful. This is why chronic diseases in adults are the rule and not the exception. Too many physicians and their patients simply "expect" that hypertension, diabetes, cancer, or heart disease are the norm for many older adults. Also of note, the deciduous (non-permanent or baby) teeth in children demonstrate a high incidence of abscess formation. [190] When a child becomes chronically ill, a complete oral examination is just as important as in the adult with a chronic disease. So, for all ages, the important take-away point is that:
When the mouth is infection-free, all chronic diseases are very rare. And when there is a chronic disease, oral- or gut-derived pathogen colonization of the affected tissue with local toxin production is almost always the cause.
While some individuals, in a completely unpredictable manner, can have one or more root canals without ever resulting in negative clinical consequences, this is very rare. However, significant laboratory abnormalities are often present even when a chronic disease is not yet manifest. Also, clinical medicine always looks for a prompt and clear-cut relationship between an intervention and a negative clinical impact. With root canals and other chronically infected teeth, the leakage of pathogens and toxins can be slow, and breast cancer or a heart attack due to those infected teeth can take years to occur.
Complications can occur rapidly after a root canal procedure, but this is not a very common consequence. If that were the case, root canal treatments would have been abandoned long ago. But when someone gets breast cancer years after a root canal, the status of the mouth is simply never considered as the possible reason by the clinician or the patient.
A particularly aggressive pathogen of periodontal origin, Fusobacterium nucleatum, has been found in human breast cancer tissue. In an animal model, this pathogen has been shown to promote tumor growth and metastatic spread. [191,192] Higher titers of oral pathogens inside breast cancer cells have also been shown to promote metastatic spread, with experimental reduction of these titers decreasing the chances of metastasis. [193] Animal studies have also shown a commonality of pathogen presence in the mouth, gut, and in breast tumors. [194]
Some researchers have actually termed breast cancer as an infectious disease. [195] Many other studies have consistently found pathogenic microbes, including viruses and fungi, in diseased breast tissue, including cancer, and much lower titers of non-pathogenic microbes in normal breast tissue. [196-204] As the mouth is always teeming with microbes (more than 700 different bacterial species) and its lymphatic circulation mostly drains into the breasts, the breast tissue is not completely microbe-free. [205,206] However, it should be pathogen-free, and the non-pathogenic microbes should always be very low in number and difficult to culture. [207]
Researchers found a 10-fold (1,000%) increase in bacterial load in breast tumors relative to normal breast tissue. [208,209]
In addition to the enormous amount of literature cited above that unequivocally ties mouth infections to chronic diseases, several other studies warrant special attention, as they reveal that pathogens of oral and gut origin have been shown to chronically colonize different diseased tissues, with continuous inflammation resulting from the on-site production of pathogen-related toxins. Breast cancer is but one of many infection-related chronic diseases. Chronic pathogen colonization (CPC) in diseased tissues is addressed more extensively elsewhere. [210] Especially noteworthy studies supporting the widespread presence of CPC and its disease-causing impact include the following:
All chronic diseases need to have a daily source of new oxidative stress greater than the daily intake of antioxidants in diet and supplementation. Otherwise, "chronic" diseases would resolve as the new antioxidant intake repairs the old oxidative damage. This source of the new daily oxidative stress nearly always arises from chronic pathogen colonization in the diseased organ or tissue. New toxin exposure in the affected tissue comes from on-site pathogen-generated toxins and the oxidized (toxic) products of pathogen metabolism. Pathogens also release enormous amounts of pro-oxidant free iron when they finally die and break apart.
Chronically Infected Tonsils
In the 1950s Dr. Josef Issels made some remarkable discoveries that remain largely unknown to the medical and dental community. [259] His clinic in Germany treated mostly advanced cancer patients who were seeking to avoid chemotherapy in their pursuit of health. In surveying his own clinic data he found that 98% of the cancer patients had between what he termed "two and ten dead teeth." His treatment not only involved the proper removal of such infected and necrotic teeth, but also routine tonsillectomy. This was not initiated until he retrospectively observed that a significant number of his patients, who initially did well after the extractions, later experienced myocardial infarctions. After making tonsillectomies a part of his treatment protocol in these advanced cancer patients, the prevalence of heart attacks dropped from 40% to 5%.
Dr. Issels asserted that "chronically inflamed tonsils are primary head foci which sometimes have an even more damaging effect on the organism as a whole than dental foci," noting that the tonsils are "excretion organs by which the lymphocytes, microbes, toxin-laden lymph, and other matter are discharged."
Most significantly, Issels found that in every tonsillectomy performed, biopsy specimens revealed that "severe or very severe destructive tonsillar processes" were present along with chronic infection. This was in spite of the fact that the tonsils did not appear enlarged, inflamed, or infected on examination, which is the major reason they never get noticed or treated. Even though the chronic drainage of infected jawbone lymph results in the tonsils becoming chronically infected, it does not result in them becoming swollen, as is routinely seen with lymph nodes that are in the drainage pathway. This needs to be differentiated completely from acute or recurrent tonsillitis, with clear inflammation and often massive swelling, as often occurs in children.
The lymphatic flow into the tonsils is directly connected to the lymphatic drainage of the jawbone that anchors the infected teeth and gums discussed above. Issels noted that Indian ink injected into a sealed dental cavity results in the appearance of inky spots on the tonsillar surface in only 20 to 30 minutes, further establishing this connection.
The tonsils are designed to support the immune system in dealing with short-term and minimal pathogen challenges presented to the oral cavity. However, when the tonsil is continuously draining a chronic jawbone infection in the form of a root canal or other abscessed tooth, it is overwhelmed to the point that it goes from protecting against infection to becoming a major focal point of chronic infection itself.