In previous expert interviews, we have explored how to safely remove mercury as well as some of the diseases and health risks associated with mercury toxicity.
Within the context of this very big subject, today let’s explore the essential safety steps your dental team should use while removing mercury amalgam fillings.
As a foundation for this article, we are going to assume you are aware that mercury amalgam fillings put us at risk for mercury toxicity.
We’re also going to assume that you realize that dental offices can apply different safety protocols to remove mercury fillings.
The fact is, most dental offices (in the US, at least) don’t apply the latest mercury amalgam safety protocols (that have been created by dentists who are more aware of the risks associated with mercury vapor exposure during mercury removal).
In other words, not all dentists are created equal.
One dental office’s procedure for this can be much, much different than another. It’s really up to the dental staff’s education and awareness of the relative toxic nature of some of the commonly used tools (like mercury amalgam fillings) in their industry.
It’s also up to each of us to educate ourselves with the necessary protocols we want our dental team to use for this important health milestone.
Ok, so as a baseline, let’s say you (or someone you love) has mercury amalgam fillings and you want to research the protocols a dental team needs to apply to minimize the risk of being poisoned during the procedure. We are honored to serve you during your search for information on this important subject.
Before we detail the protocols that a qualified dental team should apply, let’s take just a moment to quickly address two common questions.
Where’s the proof that mercury vapor comes off mercury amalgam fillings?
We’re able to use this video courtesy of one of our main mentors, Dr David Kennedy. (Please excuse the very old intro. It’s from the free online summit we produced in 2012.)
It’s a bit long, so unless you really want ‘the full dose’, it’s not necessary to watch the whole video. But if you have any question about whether amalgam fillings really off-gas mercury vapor, we encourage you to watch the first 5 minutes right now.
Where’s the proof that we absorb mercury from fillings?
Ok, so mercury amalgam fillings off-gas mercury vapor. Where’s the proof that we absorb this mercury?
In 2011, the Journal of Oral Rehabilitation published a study titled, “Changes in health complaints after removal of amalgam fillings”. In that study, researchers tested levels of mercury in blood serum and urine from study participants. Researchers tested both before and after the patients had their mercury amalgam fillings removed.
According to the scientists who published this study, mercury concentration in both serum and urine was significantly reduced after amalgam removal.
“There was a significant decrease in mercury concentration in serum and urine following the removal of amalgam fillings.”
With these in place, let’s cover the essential steps to protect oneself from mercury exposure during mercury amalgam filling removal.
Find the right dental team to help you.
Bottom line, we don’t know what we don’t know.
In this particular situation, we must ask our dental team the right questions to be certain the team is ideally equipped to help keep us (and themselves) safe during this procedure.
That’s exactly why we created a free eBook called the OraWellness Guide to Safe Dentistry.
Originally titled, ‘Questions to ask your dentist’, this free resource guide covers a series of questions you can ask your current dental team or prospective teams you interview to find the ideal team to help you safely navigate this toxic procedure.
Before procedure
Make sure it’s a calmer period of time.
Ok, maybe that’s not based in reality, but try to avoid having your mercury fillings removed right before a time of year that tends to raise your stress levels. For many folks, an example of a high-stress time is the holiday season.
You get what we’re saying. Even though your team is going to follow protocols to keep the exposure to a minimum, removing the mercury amalgams does increase our risk of exposure, and doing so during a high stress time adds an extra burden to your body.
Make sure your detox pathways are functioning well.
We want to make sure that all of our detox pathways are running smoothly to help our body remove any mercury. Some of our main detox pathways include the kidneys, liver, bowels, skin and lungs. We plan to write an article dedicated to this specific point soon.
In the meantime, here’s a quick list of tips to get you started:
- Stay hydrated.
- Eat foods that will support healthy bowel activity.
- Practice some deep breathing.
- If you have access to a sauna, use it.
An easy step is to take some activated charcoal and a natural toxin-binder/absorbent like chlorella before going into the dental office. Having these natural binders in your stomach can help ‘grab’ any mercury that makes it into your system.
Also, we always increase B vitamin intake when we know we’re heading into a situation that can be stressful.
If you’re prone to anxiety when going to the dentist, be sure to check out our article, ‘How to use essential oils to reduce dental appointment pain and anxiety’.
And last, be sure to NOT take vitamin C the morning of the procedure. Vitamin C can disrupt the anesthesia. That said, if you know your body can handle vitamin C, take plenty of it after the procedure to support healing and detox. A really, really excellent dental team may even be able to give you a vitamin C intravenous drip after the procedure.
Once you’re in the dental office, there are three parties we want to make sure are protected here: you, others in the room, and the planet. Let’s explore each of these.
How to protect yourself during the appointment
Here are the essential parts to a safe mercury amalgam removal. You can use this as a checklist of what the dental team should supply for you as part of their safe protocols.
- The room must be really well vented with an air filtration system.
- Have your face, neck, head, and chest covered by a protective material.
- You should be offered a source of fresh oxygen (or air) to breathe.
- A dental dam should be used around the tooth that is being restored.
- A saliva suction device should be under the dam to suck up any vapor that leaks under the dam.
- A high volume vacuum should be used right near your mouth during the whole procedure.
- The dental team needs to use lots of cool water during the procedure. This helps keep the mercury amalgam cooler (which decreases the vapor) and helps to gather and rid your mouth of mercury particulate from the removal process.
- At the end of the procedure just after the dam is removed, it’s wise to vigorously swish with some activated charcoal in water for a minute or two to gather/absorb any vapor that may be lingering in your mouth.
These are just the basics. There are definitely more refinements to the safety protocols, but these will definitely get you headed in the right direction.
How others in the room should be protected
If the team around the dental chair isn’t wearing serious respirator masks (like a gas mask), this means trouble to us.
After all, if the dental team really understands the risks of mercury vapor from this procedure, everyone who is going to be near your mouth during the procedure would have a respirator mask on (no, the little white dental masks don’t count.)
So, if the dental office isn’t protecting the staff, it’s likely that they don’t take the risk seriously, which makes us question whether they would be willing to cut corners on the protocols that are necessary for your safety.
How to protect the planet
We’re sure you’ve heard the idea of avoiding seafood, particularly the bigger fish like tuna, because they contain higher mercury levels. How do you think the mercury gets into our oceans to work its way up the food chain into these bigger fish?
Many years ago when interviewing our professional friend Dr Paul Rubin, we learned the importance of the dental office using a device called an ‘amalgam separator’ to capture the mercury pieces they remove during the procedure and keep them from getting into the wastewater system.
Improper handling of mercury fillings at the dental office is HUGE contributor to why mercury is making its way into our food chain. Currently, dental offices are responsible for 3.7 tons of it each year–that’s 50% of the mercury waste that makes it into our wastewater (according to the EPA).
Dental offices really need to be using an amalgam separator to capture the mercury and send it to a toxic waste disposal facility.
After the procedure
Make sure you review the detox pathway tips above. Keep everything flowing well.
In future articles, we plan to dive into more strategies for helping to remove mercury and other heavy metals from the body. Please be sure to tell us in the comments if you’d like us to write on this subject.
How to find a dentist trained in safe protocols
Ok, so now that you have the essentials, wouldn’t it be great to have a resource for finding dentists that are fully trained and certified in using these protocols?
Here you go…
The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT) is a wonderful organization that continues to champion the path to increasing awareness of the dangers of mercury amalgams. They certify dentists with their protocols. Here is a link to their ‘find a dentist’ function.
More questions…
Like so many journeys, as we explore down a rabbit hole, often times we learn something that leads us to new questions from our new place of understanding. Here are some questions we’ll explore in future articles.
- Is it better to have multiple amalgam fillings replaced at once or space them out?
- How to help your body remove the mercury after the procedure
- The relative risks and benefits of having amalgam fillings removed vs. keeping them in place
- How our genetic profile may determine our risk of mercury toxicity
- Relative risks of mercury amalgam fillings vs. composite fillings (many of which contain BPA)
Please let us know if you’d like us to research and write on these. Also, if you have other questions, please post them in the comments and we’ll add them to our ‘To Research and Write On’ list :).
Helpful, Related Resources
How to safely remove mercury from your brain and body [expert interview]
The relationship between gum disease, mercury and alzheimer’s disease [expert interview]
OraWellness Guide to Safe Dentistry [Free eBook]
How to use essential oils to reduce dental appointment pain and anxiety [article]
Other resources:
Changes in health complaints after removal of amalgam fillings [clinical study]
Find a mercury safe dentist in your area [IAOMT searchable database]
I love the passionate work you and your team do! I’ve learned a lot from OraWellness! I’ve just had mercury removal done on 4 teeth this past year, 2 just a month ago. The first 2 done by a holistic dentist and the last by the only accredited, certified dentist in BC-Dr Andreau. I learned about him from OraWellness, so thank you. I am scheduled to have 2 more done in a few days and I wonder if I should wait. Unfortunately, I didn’t research enough from the info you generously provide for us on your site before my past procedures, and now I wonder If I should proceed with the last 2 extractions, or should I wait? I know that my body needs a “detox”. Will the chlorella and charcoal benefit me a month later? If feels like now is a good time to do a heavy metal blood test and then a metal removal protocol. Can you comment on some or all of this please?
I would love it if you pursued writing about the questions you mentioned at the end of your article above, esp these ones:
<Is it better to have multiple amalgam fillings replaced at once or space them out?
<How to help your body remove the mercury after the procedure.
Aloha Lynda,
Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
We here at OraWellness aren’t medical or dental professionals, so we can’t treat, diagnose, advise, etc. Instead, what we can do is share information with you to help you become self-empowered on your journey. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s see what information we can share to help.
It’s my understanding that it’s generally a good idea to proceed cautiously with safe mercury amalgam removal.
When one of our team members had their mercury amalgams safely removed, they intentionally spaced out the removal appointments to give their body more time to recover.
In our ‘Guide to Safe Dentistry’ eBook, we talk about some important safety measures to have in place for safe mercury amalgam removal. And on page 13 of that eBook, we talk about testing for the electrical conductivity of mercury amalgam fillings to determine the optimal sequence to remove them from the patient’s mouth.
Regarding detoxing the body from mercury:
Again, we’re not medical professionals, so we can’t provide any treatment recommendations. However, based on some research we’ve read, it’s our understanding that it’s very important to approach detoxing the body from mercury very cautiously to avoid redistributing mercury throughout the body.
Some compounds, such as chlorella and activated charcoal, may not be strong enough ‘chelators’ to effectively eliminate mercury that is stored throughout the body. ‘Chelators’ are compounds that can bind to mercury particles and can be used to facilitate the elimination of mercury from the body through detox pathways (i.e. the colon and liver).
When chelating mercury from the body, it’s very important to use a chelator that’s strong enough remain bound to the mercury until the mercury leaves the body. If the bond between the weak chelator and mercury is broken before the mercury leaves the body, there is a risk of redistributing the mercury throughout the body. Mercury redistribution can cause serious health problems, which is why it’s very important to be extra cautious with mercury detox protocols and to thoroughly educate oneself on whichever protocol(s) one implements.
Also, it’s our understanding that a blood test for heavy metals usually cannot accurately show one’s actual body burden of mercury. A hair test can be more helpful for determining one’s body burden of mercury.
We did an expert interview with Dr. Boyd Haley on how to safely remove mercury from the brain and body that you may want to check out.
You may also be interested in checking out our expert interview with Dr. Brock on the connection between gum disease, mercury and Alzheimer’s.
If you’re not already signed up on our email list, you may want to sign up, because we’re currently working on some new resources on safe mercury amalgam removal and safe mercury detox protocols. We’ll let our community know via email once those resources are available.
Aloha! 🙂
Thank you so much for your informative website. I’ve been following you for several years and have found all your information to be very beneficial. I am 71 years old and have had mercury fillings for 60+ years. I believe I read somewhere that the mercury dissipates over time. I would like to know the half life (?) of fillings and whether it would be worthwhile at this point in time to have them removed. Thanks!
Mercury is more toxic than lead, cadmium or arsenic which can accumulate in the body with long term, low level exposure. Due to its poisonous nature, mercury can adversely affect the nervous, immune, urinary, cardiac, respiratory and digestive systems. So while removing mercury amalgam fillings safety protocols should be taken by dentist. It’s really up to the education and awareness the dental staff has on the relative toxic nature of their industry.
I am very interested in learning more about safely removing amalgam fillings. I live in Maui and am looking for a holistic dentist on the island. I have the MTHFR double mutation at C677 so I do not detox mercury well at all without herbal/vegetable support.
I have a handful of fillings in my mouth and at this point am fearful of having them removed due to the possibility of increased mercury toxicity during the removal.
Any advice would be greatly appreciate.
Thanks for writing this! My husband has a few of these fillings and I wonder if they are affecting his health adversely. Is there any ballpark cost on how much this would be an if it is covered by insurance at all?
I was advised by my naturopath to get my amalgams taken out and went to Mexico to do so in 1991. My teeth were always with cavities (born in Erie PA in 1945). My husband went with me and he watched the operation. I cannot say that I remember what happened so have no idea if was done correctly or not. I cannot say that I have had good health but I get along. I want to follow and learn whatever you can help with. I do know that now at age 72 and over the past 10 years at least I can say we have used the term “senior moments” a bit more often than I care to. It has gotten worse in the more recent couple of years and bothers me a lot.
Yes, please write more. My husband is in need of amalgam removal; unfortunatley he as two bites (due to getting hit with a baseball in the mouth as a kid/ he wore braces in childhood; however, they didn’t fix the bite issue ultimately). We were advised to get this corrected before removing the amalgams.
The whole issue of braces vs. some other options (i.e. dental orthopedics/ like what Dr. Dwight Jennings does–has sidelined the issue. As there are no providers for dental orthopedics where we live. It sounds like braces are more of a band aid effect; not fully resolving the cause–thus not a long term solution.
I would love for you to research/write dental orthopedics on this topic some day.
After having my almalgams removed I have since learned that there is probably residual amalgam under the gold crowns I had done 20 years ago. Apparently they didn’t bother to clean all the amalgam from the tooth before adding the crown. I wonder how much of this embedded amalgam would leech into my system. Any ideas?
Thanks for adding to the conversation here Margot.
I’ll add your question to our list to research and report back on here.
I enjoyed your article very much and would also like to know more. I have a few large amalgam fillings and wondered also what do they replace them with. What if most of the tooth is amalgam, is removing the whole tooth the best option? I’m definitely interested in future articles about this.
Aloha Patricia,
Thanks for stopping by to add to the conversation.
I hear your concern here. Some dentists definitely did prep really big fillings for teeth in the past. This can be one of those situations where there is no obvious easy/right answer. On one hand, having a big, sloppy amalgam filling in the head isn’t best, especially if one has a genetic tendency to not detox mercury well. On the other hand, it may be necessary to replace the filling with a crown or partial crown at least. Hmm, given these, I’d lean toward getting it crowned/partial crowned. If the tooth had to be removed, this would require deeper contemplation. But so much of it depends on the details. Best to find a dentist who can help coach you along this path.
I hope this helps!
Thank you for being a reputable and articulate source. I enjoy and trust your writings. Please do continue with a comprehensive information on amalgam removal, etc.
Wow Amy,
Thank you for your post here. For whatever the reason, it came through and really touched us. Thank you!
I am particularly interested in hearing more about what to replace mercury fillings with. I see that you are going to do an article on composite fillings containing BPA – amongst other things, since they are a type of epoxy resin as I understand it.
A dentist was unable to produce the Material Data Safety Sheet when I asked him about what was in his composites! Needless to say I didn’t return to him.
The only viable alternative I’ve found is the porcelain type fillings which seem relatively neutral but are still held in place by a ‘glue’ as another dentist informed me. However they don’t work in all circumstances as it depends on shape and size of the filling.
Looking forward to reading more about your research into what we’re putting in our mouths permenantly!
Nice article, yet I did find a “holistic” dentist from IAOMT who followied all theses procedures, yet he left some mercury and put on composite material on top! That I found going to a very artful conventional dentist.
He removed all the remaining amalgam fillings without following any of the precautionary procedures, but made an excellent work otherwise. So amalgams were out except for the trapped ones. I did not feel any bad effect. Perhaps my genetics are more mercury resistant. This was 8 years ago.
Thank you so much. This is very helpful. And yes, I’d love to see you write more about the removal of mercury and other heavy metals!
My husband has many mercury fillings from his teen years. The problem is alot of them were covered with porcelain crowns. He doesn’t know how x-rays would be able to see through the metal-based, porcelain crown to see if mercury is under it or the safer ‘plastic’ fillings they now use. Since crowns are so expensive he can’t see removing all the crowns to find out. He also has several root canals. Poor guy, he is now almost 70 and learned to take excellent care of his teeth many years ago. Would a mercury blood test detect mercury toxicity (probably coming from his mouth – but who knows – if blood test is positive maybe its from seafood, or other environmental toxins as he was a car mechanic for years)?
Great article, you guys! A related question might be: “What do I do if I can’t find a mercury-safe dentistry near me?” I think that the two best options are:
1. Be prepared to travel to get the work done. Many mercury safe dentists are prepared to deal with patients traveling a distance to get treated. Find a qualified dentist who is easiest to travel to.
2. Try to get your current dentist to learn mercury safe protocols. Courses through the IAOMT May be ideal, but may not appeal to some dentists. Another avenue is a DVD course for dentists available through newdirectionsdentistry.com.
Aloha Dr Paul!
As always, thank you SO much for stopping by to add your expertise to this discussion. I have to admit, while writing the article, I secretly hoped you would comment on it! 🙂 Incidentally, I thought about adding a link to your educational site to the article but remembered it was for dentists mostly, not the public. Thanks for adding it here!
Great article! Super important! I had three amalgam fillings removed by a biological dentist and felt like a new person the next day. I would like to get your opinion about the best way to remove toxic mercury from the body. Some like Dr. Chris Shade and some like Dr. Andy Cutler, and typically they use different protocols. I respect your work so would love to see an article on this subject. Also since most people have no idea about MTHFR polymorphisms and detoxification, that would also be a great article. Thank you for all you all do!
Thank you for all the research and work you have done and are doing!
I have a question: How do you know if silver fillings are mercury amalgam? Are ALL silver fillings mercury amalgam?
Aloha Melissa,
Great question! Thanks for asking!
Yes, all ‘silver’ fillings are 50% mercury. Yeah, there is some silver in the mix (called an amalgam, which simply means a mix or slurry of components). But honestly, calling mercury amalgam fillings ‘silver fillings’ has mostly a marketing tactic to make it more ‘digestible’ for the public.
Please, please – yes! – write articles on all those subjects you list st the end of this article! I’ve just explanted silicone breast implants 7 weeks ago & I found abiological dentist who is wanting to take out my 3 large amalgams now rather than wait. She believes in doing them all at once. I am scared and want to make sure everything is in place, including right timing. Our expertise is so appreciated. I’ve Ben following you since 2014, when I did Christa Orecchio’s Gut Thrive in 5. I trust what you have to say & would greatly value you addressing each subject you listed. Thank you for doing this & for your passion for whole health.