An individual who undergoes dental surgery has a higher risk of developing a heart attack or stroke for a few weeks after the procedure, British researchers have revealed in an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The elevated risk is no longer there six months later. The authors explain that periodontal disease treatment may in the long-term lower cardiovascular risk. No studies, however, have ever looked into the short-term risk of dental procedures and acute inflammation.

The researchers believe inflammation is the link, with bacteria seeping into the bloodstream from a infection around the area of a tooth (periodontal infection). The bacteria may build up in the blood vessels, resulting in inflammation – this type of inflammation increases the risk of stroke or heart attack.

Lead researcher, Caroline Minassian, MSc, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says that their findings provide more compelling evidence linking acute inflammation with cardiovascular events (e.g. heart attack or stroke).

The researchers stress that the enduring benefits of the dental treatment are greater than the temporary risk of adverse effects.

They gathered data from the U.S. Medicaid claims database involving 32,060 adults who had had a stroke or heart attack. They then traced their medical histories back to determine how many had undergone invasive dental surgery. 525 individuals had had a heart attack and 650 a stroke, all of them after dental surgery. They factored in variables which may on their own or in combination raise stroke and heart attack risk, such as hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, coronary artery disease, or individuals with prescriptions for antiplatelet or salicylate drugs before treatment.

The investigators discovered that there was a significantly increased heart attack or stroke risk during the month following their dental work (incidence ratio 1.50; 95% CI 1.09-2.06). One third of the vascular events occurred in patients less than fifty years of age. The risk was found to gradually subside to baseline (normal) after about six months.

An individual who undergoes dental surgery has a higher risk of developing a heart attack or stroke for a few weeks after the procedure, British researchers have revealed in an article published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The elevated risk is no longer there six months later. The authors explain that periodontal disease treatment may in the long-term lower cardiovascular risk. No studies, however, have ever looked into the short-term risk of dental procedures and acute inflammation.

The researchers believe inflammation is the link, with bacteria seeping into the bloodstream from a infection around the area of a tooth (periodontal infection). The bacteria may build up in the blood vessels, resulting in inflammation – this type of inflammation increases the risk of stroke or heart attack.

Lead researcher, Caroline Minassian, MSc, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says that their findings provide more compelling evidence linking acute inflammation with cardiovascular events (e.g. heart attack or stroke).

The researchers stress that the enduring benefits of the dental treatment are greater than the temporary risk of adverse effects.

They gathered data from the U.S. Medicaid claims database involving 32,060 adults who had had a stroke or heart attack. They then traced their medical histories back to determine how many had undergone invasive dental surgery. 525 individuals had had a heart attack and 650 a stroke, all of them after dental surgery. They factored in variables which may on their own or in combination raise stroke and heart attack risk, such as hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, coronary artery disease, or individuals with prescriptions for antiplatelet or salicylate drugs before treatment.

The investigators discovered that there was a significantly increased heart attack or stroke risk during the month following their dental work (incidence ratio 1.50; 95% CI 1.09-2.06). One third of the vascular events occurred in patients less than fifty years of age. The risk was found to gradually subside to baseline (normal) after about six months.

Dr Liam Smeeth, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:

Many people who are only at moderate risk most of the time will enter periods of very high risk intermittently in response to inflammatory or infectious triggers due to surgery, and those people might benefit from short periods of prophylactic (preventive) therapy that most of the time they don’t need.

The authors concluded:

Invasive dental treatment may be associated with a transient increase in the risk for vascular events. However, the absolute risks are minimal, and the long-term benefits on vascular health will probably outweigh the short-lived adverse effects.

Accompanying Editorial

Dr. Howard Weitz and Dr. Geno Merli , from Jefferson University, Philadelphia believe the link between inflammation markers and atherosclerosis is still a tenuous one. They add that Minassian et al did not have enough data to associate a vascular event risk with inflammation.

Weitz and Merli state that the study has a serious limitation – the Medicaid data did not have details on patients’ aspirin therapy or cessation before their dental surgery. Aspirin cessation has been shown to be a possible trigger for cardiovascular events. A proportion of patients (15%) stop taking aspirin before dental surgery and then go on to have a cardiovascular event.

A cardiovascular event is a set of outcomes related to blood vessels and/or the heart, such as a heart attack.
A vascular event is a set of outcomes related to blood vessels, such as a stroke, which used to be known as a cerebrovascular accident.

Modern dentistry is a curious branch of conventional medicine, and like much of conventional medicine, it offers a strange mixture of both helping people (improving dental health) while harming them (filling cavities with mercury). Most dentists, like many doctors, believe in outrageous myths like the idea that putting mercury, one of the most toxic substances known to man, into the mouths of patients is perfectly safe. Dentists also routinely promote the ludicrous idea that dripping fluorosilicic acid, a toxic waste product sometimes called “fluoride,” into public water supplies somehow reduces cavities in children. And thus, like most practitioners of conventional medicine, dental lab supplies dentists subscribe to a near-religious belief in several health-related falsehoods.

The mercury fillings issue is one of the most outrageous. Dentists don’t even call them “mercury” fillings anymore, because the public has finally figured out that mercury is toxic. So they call them “silver” fillings, but they’re still made of approximately 40% mercury. Once this mercury is placed in a person’s mouth, it begins to break down, off-gassing mercury vapor that’s inhaled with every breath. It causes chronic, low-level mercury poisoning that I have no doubt is partly responsible for today’s epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and various neurological disorders. The American Dental Association, no surprise, continues to insist that mercury fillings are completely safe, despite all the evidence showing that mercury fillings create mercury vapor.

Some forward-thinking dentists, however, are spearheading a movement to ban mercury fillings. The International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology (www.IAOMT.com), for example, offers a shocking video called “Smoking Teeth” that clearly shows mercury vapor off-gassing from mercury fillings, even with minimal stimulation (like chewing or tooth brushing). How much mercury? One thousand times the EPA’s maximum allowable mercury limit for air. Check out their must-see video at www.IAOMT.com.

The mercury from this vapor quickly travels to the kidneys, liver, intestines, heart, brain and other organs. The science is irrefutable, but most dentists aren’t interested in real science, it turns out. They just want to be able to continue using mercury fillings based on the ADA-accepted consensus lie that mercury is somehow inert and never leaves fillings.

The great wisdom teeth removal scam

I’m one of those rare persons who still has all his wisdom teeth. This gives me more teeth than most people, and I have yet to meet a dentist (other than a natural health dentist) who didn’t immediately suggest surgery to remove them. Dentists’ desire to remove wisdom teeth is entirely irrational. The procedure dental products generates lots of revenues for oral surgery (while causing considerable pain and suffering on the part of patients), but it has absolutely no rational justification, nor any real benefit, in most cases. As you’ll see in the study mentioned below, published in the British Medical Journal, dental surgeries to remove asymptomatic wisdom teeth are pure bunk.

The key discerning factor here, by the way, is whether wisdom teeth are asymptomatic, meaning that they show no signs of disease or discomfort. Today in the UK, it is standard policy to avoid removing asymptomatic wisdom teeth. After all, if they don’t hurt and there’s nothing wrong, why undergo surgery to remove them? But in the United States, it remains standard operating procedure to surgically remove even asymptomatic wisdom teeth, simply because they are there. It makes about as much sense as saying we should cut off everybody’s fingers because they have so many. (Don’t give surgeons any new ideas, now. This may be the next procedure promoted after bariatric surgery is finally banned.)

It’s all silly advice, of course. A dentist looks in your mouth, and in three seconds, determines that you need dental surgery? Hogwash. It’s just a revenue generating procedure that’s dishonestly pushed onto patients who gladly go along with anything their dentist says, even when it’s utter nonsense.

Surgery to remove wisdom teeth is worthless, says British Medical Journal

(Partially reprinted from www.NaturalNews.com/001108.html)

In a groundbreaking report from the British Medical Journal, researchers who poured over thousands of studies detailing the efficacy of medical and dental procedures have concluded that many popular surgical procedures are completely worthless. Among those is one of the most common procedures performed by your dentist: the removal of so-called “impacted” wisdom teeth. According to the BMJ, this procedure may actually do more harm than good.

I don’t trust dentists. I’ve long suspected dentists of scaring patients into undergoing unnecessary procedures in order to generate more business. My suspicions were confirmed when I visited a dentist in 2001 for a basic checkup. After taking dental x-rays (another health hazard, as new research is showing), my dentist fed me a scare story about how I still had all my wisdom teeth, and that all those teeth needed to be surgically removed. I was absolutely stunned.

My wisdom teeth were working just fine: no cavities, no pain, no problems. I had made an appointment for a routine checkup, not to undergo expensive surgery for my wisdom teeth. But my dentist insisted, relying on a variety of scare tactics to try to convince me to undergo this expensive — and completely unnecessary — procedure. His behavior was highly unethical. He was using his authority and position as “the dentist” to try to scare me into accepting a surgical procedure that I quite obviously didn’t need. In fact, even he couldn’t give me a good reason for justifying the surgery other than to say, “We usually remove the wisdom teeth quite early.” Which means, of course, that they just order the surgery for every child or teenager who walks into the clinic, regardless of whether they actually need it.

Now, it turns out, the removal of wisdom teeth has been found to be an utterly worthless procedure to begin with. It “may do more harm than good” says the British Medical Journal, after reviewing literally thousands of case studies. So the typical dentist is really just hyping a useless procedure, and if your dentist is anything like the dentist I encountered, they’re also using all sorts of highly unethical scare tactics to try to force people into undergoing the procedure. That’s downright evil, and yet it’s a common practice among dentists in the United States.

Folks, you need to start questioning your dentist. Don’t believe everything they tell you. Often they’re just full of bunk, or they’re trying to sell you on whatever procedure they get paid for performing. They’re not all evil — many actually believe these procedures will help you, which is why they seem so sincere — but they are grossly misinformed. Their beliefs are based on medical dogma, not scientific fact. Their beliefs in these procedures are nothing more than a sort of medical pathology, where certain things are just considered “true” and never questioned even though the original basis for accepting them as truth has been proven entirely false.

In the vast majority of cases, you will be healthier and wiser by ignoring the advice of your conventional doctor or dentist and seeking out a naturopathic doctor and a natural health dentist. In fact, it’s very important to avoid allowing a doctor or dentist to even hit you with a scare story or other manipulation tactic, because most people will just go right along with their advice even when it makes no sense. People don’t question medical authorities as much as they should. And dentists know it. They know that most patients will just go ahead and agree to practically anything they recommend.

That makes a situation where fraud and exploitation of patients is frighteningly easy to accomplish. Any dentist that wants to generate more revenues for their office can simply start recommending an expensive surgical procedure as “standard practice” and claim, “we always take those teeth out.” It might be complete hogwash, but most people — absurdly — will buy into it. Don’t let that person be you. Keep your dentist honest. Better yet, seek out a “natural” dentist who won’t use mercury fillings or highly toxic fluoride, and who will turn to surgery as a last resort rather than a “standard procedure.” Don’t be tricked into unnecessary (and medically dangerous) surgical procedures that can only cause you harm.