6 Signs Your Fillings Are Affecting Your Health
Most people will get at least one dental filling during their lifetimes. Fillings are used to repair everything from broken teeth to damage from cavities. Fillings can be made from many different materials, such as porcelain and composite. One type of filling, silver or amalgam, always contains mercury. If this element leaches into your body, you can suffer from the disastrous effects of mercury poisoning.
Mercury vapor that comes from mercury fillings is said to be more than 1000 times higher than the environmental protection agency will allow for the air that we breathe. This vapor passes readily through cell membranes, across the blood-brain barrier, and into your central nervous system, where it causes psychological, neurological, and immunological problems.
Mercury Toxicity Can Also Lead To:
- Chronic Migraines
- Parkinson’s Disease
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Alzeihmer’s Disease
- Cardiac and Respiratory Issues
Although Anyone Can be Affected, the People Most at Risk For Mercury Toxicity Are:
- Pregnant and Nursing Women
- Children and fetuses (whose brains are still developing)
- People who are sensitive to mercury exposure
Some Symptoms of Mercury Exposure Include:
- Chronic fatigue
- Muscle weakness
- Impairment of speech, hearing, and/or walking
- Feeling “foggy-headed”
- Memory loss
- Emotional instability
- Bleeding gums
- Metallic taste in mouth
- Food sensitivities
- Gastrointestinal issues
- Abnormal cardiac rhythm
- Skin disorders
To make matters worse, mercury vapor comes off fillings every time we stimulate them (causing the vapor to continuously leak out of the fillings for a minimum of 1.5 hours) by:
- Professionally cleaning
- Chewing gum and food
To express how such actions can stimulate mercury vapor to be released from fillings: Scientists have shown that in comparison to infrequent gum chewers, heavy gum chewers have two times the amount of mercury in their blood and three times the amount of mercury in their urine and breath exhalation.
If you would like to see for yourself a visual of mercury vapors being released from amalgam fillings, please watch this amazing and shocking video called, “Smoking Teeth — Toxic Fillings”:
Another frightening and unsettling fact is that metallic mercury used by dentists to manufacture dental amalgams is shipped as hazardous material to dental offices. When mercury fillings are removed from one’s mouth, OSHA regulates that the leftovers are also treated as hazardous waste material and special precautions are required in its disposal – yet, dentists regularly implant the same “hazardous material” directly into your mouth!
Further Evidence of the Dangers of Mercury Fillings:
During pregnancy, women are told to eat little to no seafood because it is possible to expose an unborn child to excessive levels of mercury if mercury-contaminated fish are eaten. Scientists recently made a warning about the dangers of eating such seafood. They stated that eating contaminated seafood will expose you to about 2.3 micrograms of mercury per day. Meanwhile, a single mercury dental filling releases as much as 15 micrograms of mercury per day. The average person (with 8 amalgam fillings) could absorb upwards of 120 micrograms of mercury per day! However, it is rare that pregnant (and non-pregnant) women (and men) are told about the dangers caused to the body by mercury vapors in our mouths!
Some countries have taken action against the use of mercury in dental fillings. For example, in 1994, Sweden banned the use of mercury fillings in young adults. Soon after, Denmark, Germany, and Austria followed suit. It was only in 2008 that the FDA acknowledged mercury fillings were dangerous to our health. Many doctors throughout the United States still use such fillings in their practices.
What to Do if You Have Mercury Fillings:
Toxic metals do not belong in our mouths. If you are concerned, it is suggested that you:
- Speak to your dentist about the current condition of your amalgams and about all available alternatives.
- It is highly recommended that you seek out a highly qualified biological/holistic dentist who is familiar with the proper procedures of removing any existing mercury amalgam fillings. If the dentist does not know what he or she is doing, there is the potential that you may be exposed to significant and dangerous amounts of mercury vapors during the removal process, which may lead to great harm.
- Some dentists will tell you that you need to replace your “silver” fillings or may tell you that you need a new filling. If this is the case, do not have any new fillings done with amalgam; have your dentist use composite or porcelain instead.
As you can see, the dangers caused by mercury amalgam dental fillings are very real and preventable. Please be proactive – ask your dentist for more information about this topic and take control over your health sooner rather than later.
Over time, as the silver amalgam breaks down, the metals in the substances can separate. Often, this type of filling includes things like tin or silver along with the mercury. After the filling gets old, things like eating, drinking, and even breathing can pull the mercury into your bloodstream. This is dangerous in high doses.
Now, the U.S. government only considers mercury in fillings to be moderately hazardous to your health. However, consumer advocate groups for dental health are displeased with this, and they are pressing for stricter measures against mercury in dental work. This is because high exposure to mercury can cause problems such as:
- Muscle weakness
- Tingling or numbness in extremities
- Changes in mental state
- Skin rashes
- Loss of coordination
- Peripheral vision loss
- Difficulty with hearing or speaking
Frustratingly, mercury poisoning is difficult to diagnose as well as hard to treat. Thus, it is important that dentists use only a tiny amount of mercury in fillings and make sure that it is properly bonded.