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Poll: Who's Had Amalgam Fillings?


Did You Ever Have Amalgam Fillings?  

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I know this is a touchy subject for some people and I'm not looking to get into a debate about this. I just want to know whether you have ever had any amalgam fillings in your lifetime.

If you never had any (not even as a child), then answer no.

If you've have amalgams or had amalgams removed at some point, then vote yes.

Thank you. :)

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Hi,

I have a mouthful of amalgam fillings from as soon as my milk teeth came out. I have classic Eds teeth, deep narrow fissures which are impossible to clean. It should have been a red flag for my dentist as I also had to have 4 teeth removed due to over crowding - another EDS flag. If they had picked it up I could have had my teeth sealed and it would have prevented the fillings.

Never mind they are all sealed now with amalgam!

Rach

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I have had horrible teeth for as long as I can remember. Yes, I had amalgam fillings, but they're slowly being replaced with crowns and/or root canals and crowns. I wonder if having major dental issues is in any way a contributor to our illness....

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Many many almalgam fillings - moved to a new area and new dentist wanted to swap out 4 of them for the new stuff - I asked why? my other dentist has a watch on other teeth - none of which are the ones you wish to replace? He showed me a picture of 'old' amalgam fillings and said after a time the tooth looks grey and dingy and the fillings leak more and more - letting you know it's time - your fillings look like this picture....

??? I thought about it - and my insurance for teeth running out a week later - so I bit the bullet and had the fillings replaced with something that looks tooth colored. What irritated me was that it wasn't until after he did his work - that he shared these teeth will become sensitive to hot and cold much more than the amalgam fillings.......??? Gee thanks for sharing! Sure enough - I get a zap of discomfort with very hot and very cold items -- in the scheme of things - no big deal I suppose ... but still he should have informed me before hand.

I have I think 3 more to do - but he said to wait because they are so so huge - that I'll need crowns etc...... Whatever - I have 8 crowns as it is - maybe typical for eds to have a mouth worth the cost of a new home...sigh - things could be worse though - always things could be worse!

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I have tons of fillings and all were amalgam but I have had all of them replaced but 2. Also have lost a tooth becuase of breakage now have a titanium rod and dental implant. Like several my mouth has cost as much as a small house ;o) But I guess compared to the Doctor bills.... Hmmmmmm

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Thanks everyone for responding. I appreciate it!! I wanted to wait until we have some responses to post my story.

As a child I had an amalgam in nearly every single baby tooth. Most of my childhood memories are from the dentist office. I would cry, scream, kick and whimper as the dentist drilled into my teeth. He did not believe in Novocain... :blink: As my permanent teeth came in, I tried really hard to keep them from getting cavities. I still ended up with 8 amalgams also with 4 root canals. Overall I have 16 cavities and I don't know why. Nowadays the dental hygienist tells me how I am her favorite patient because she doesn't have to do much because my teeth are very clean. I have blamed dry mouth for a lot of my cavities over the years.

The dentists tell me I need 4 crowns, but I've been avoiding that because of the expense. Everyone is right, my mouth will likely cost the price of a small house in this area. lol I had all of my amalgams removed 2+ years ago and replaced with composite. I do not suffer from any sensitivity and the amalgams I had in my mouth, were already deteriorating and had decay underneath them. They were only 2 years old when they were removed.

I still have a lot of accumulated mercury in my body from all those years of amalgams in the mouth. The problem with mercury is that it does not just leave the body very easily. After many years of trying other things to help my POTS, I am now focusing on chelation again. I tried it a few years ago and the side effects were so severe, I had to take a break. Now I am sticking with this no matter what and it's not going to be an easy thing or quick fix, but I'm trying to be hopeful. I suppose the side effects I get are proof enough to me, that something is definitely wrong.

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I have three siblings that also had quite a few amalgam fillings, and they are fine. I had mine changed out, like I said,and made sure I did it with the oxygen over my nose, the rubber dam in, etc. And had one chelation. I felt so bad afterwards, and then a couple of years later I read that chelation doesn't just pick up mercury, it takes out minerals, too. So, I hope your doctor addresses that part.

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I have three siblings that also had quite a few amalgam fillings, and they are fine. I had mine changed out, like I said,and made sure I did it with the oxygen over my nose, the rubber dam in, etc. And had one chelation. I felt so bad afterwards, and then a couple of years later I read that chelation doesn't just pick up mercury, it takes out minerals, too. So, I hope your doctor addresses that part.

Yes It is true not everyone is affected by amalgams or at least not in the same way, so I'd love to know why! More testing needs to be done because there is no doubt mercury is toxic. Some are now looking at Apoe E4 as a possibility. I've never had that checked, so I don't know if that's a possibility for myself or not.

I am keeping an eye on my vitamin levels. Thanks It's a long road ahead of me.

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My two cents.....

I've had much mercury amalgam in the way of tooth fillings, in my mouth, for years, starting in childhood. Slowly, I've now been getting them either crowned or replaced. I've had one implant.

I have no proof of what I'm about to say, and my prior dentist would have totally disagreed....., but here goes....

I am sensitive to chemicals and medicines. I do not think, being the way I am (sensitive), that having mercury in my mouth, even in an inert form, is beneficial to my health.

Even after my crowns and implant, I will still have about 5 teeth, 4 of which are in the upper arch, that will contain mercury amalgam fillings. Since the upper arch is a bit more tricky in that the teeth located there are closer to the sinus cavities, I don't know how willing my doctor would be to work on those fillings and replace them unnecessarily.

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I just wanted to add that i have never had any problems with my teeth and if my husband had not had fillings I would not have known what they were to even take this poll.

I think all sorts of enviromental thinks can cause pots or make it worse.... I know that Black mold made me sicker as did Yaz birth control pills.

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Oh yeah I totally agree with you. There are many many other environmental things that can cause POTS! Mold is very bad and everyone should have their houses tested for that stuff. Our house was clean thankfully so I ruled that out. There are of course other sources for mercury besides amalgams (vaccines, fluorescent light bulbs, mercury thermometers, from your mother through the placenta) and I didn't include any others in this poll just for simplicity sake. :) There are other heavy metals which can cause problems aside from mercury too. Lead, tin, aluminum and arsenic are pretty common these days as well. My bathtub, which I used for about 5 years, was made of lead... :(

I just wanted to add that i have never had any problems with my teeth and if my husband had not had fillings I would not have known what they were to even take this poll.

I think all sorts of enviromental thinks can cause pots or make it worse.... I know that Black mold made me sicker as did Yaz birth control pills.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I wanted to bring this back up. I was reading today that mercury can tie up some enzyme that is needed to make acetylcholine. Doesn't Mestinon up acetylcholine?? And, aren't alot of you on Mestinon?? I know when I went to my pulmonary doctor, his first thought was acetylcholine, because I remember saying, "me, too!". I don't usually have doctors that openly discuss any theoretical possibilities, so that sticks in my mind. He did test me for the antibodies against ACh, but they were negative. I think that just means I don't have myasthenia gravis.

This is the year I get it figured out. Tomorrow I am having my mercury levels tested at Labcorp. I have a history of alot of replaced amalgam fillings, one big one left, and have lived in a house for 28 years full of flourescent bulbs. And if that weren't enough, a few months before my POTS hit, we had a termite treatment!

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Mercury disrupts a whole bunch of things in the body. If you start to look into it, it's quite frightening. But as I said there are other heavy metals out there too and it is not just specific to mercury.

I wouldn't expect your blood mercury levels to come back high unless you are getting exposure on a daily basis. Typically mercury only lasts in the blood a very short time and it is absorbed into the tissues and organs. That's what makes it so hard to test for. I did a challenge test, which I'm not going to recommend on here because some people have gotten sick from them. However, that challenge test let me know something is definitely not right. Chelation is sooo difficult on my body and I think the reactions I get from it are proof enough that this is in fact my problem. I may not be able to cure myself, but I need to get some of this metal out of my body. If I lessen the burden, maybe my body can detox the rest on its own. I have no idea! lol :P

It is a scary thing to think about. I have metals in my body that could be giving me POTS. It is a huge under taking and right now I'm scared about it all. I cannot chelate without getting severe hives all over my body. :(

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  • 2 months later...

Bumping up again. Since another mercury topic was started...

Sue I was doing some research the other night and you are right about acetylcholine and mercury. I found this interesting article about how 10-15% of POTS patients will test positive for Ganglionic AChR antibodies. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637993/

Now I looked up Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors mercury and it pulled up a study that shows mercury modulates these receptors.

http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/302/2/560.full

As you said Mestinon directly affects acetylcholine in the body.

I think more of us need to look into this. I feel like I get huge resistance on here that this could possibly be a problem, but the research speaks for itself. I found that even Dr. Grubb lists heavy metal poisoning as a secondary cause for POTS in patients, yet that seems to be ignored.

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/117/21/2814.full

"A frequent cause of secondary POTS is chronic diabetes mellitus. However, it also may be seen in association with amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, alcoholism, lupus, Sjögren syndrome, chemotherapy, and heavy metal poisoning. "

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Dana, the first article was really interesting in just understanding how Ach antibodies can be so much involved in OI. I found this statement:

It is very important, however, to identify patients with chronic AAG since there are several reports of effective treatment in patients with autonomic deficits for 10 years or more

Uh, yea, I think it is very important to look at all possible causes. Just tell MY doctors that just look at me and say "You have POTS, but there isn't anything we can do for it". Have they not read their research journals????

I would like to add that last year, ErikainOrlando was "cured" when she finally found a doctor that did, I think, plasmophoresis(?). Isn't that just filtering out antibodies, like they speak about in this article? Could it help some more of us?

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Erika in orlando wasn't cured. There is no cure for stiff persons syndrome, which was the diagnosis and illness that caused her pots symptoms. She had many other symptoms besides pots. Though I don't know her status and treatment course now because she hasn't posted in awhile, her initial treatment was plasmapheresis and a muscle relaxant, and she may have to have IVIG treatments too. Stiff persons is autoimmune and pheresis and ivig help control or replace the bad antibodies. These treatments only last about a month and have to repeated most likely for life.

I have had both for small fiber autoimmune autonomic neuropathy and an immune defeciency called cvid. My symptoms totally improved on pheresis, but I got anemia from it, and am now treating with IVIG. Ivig takes anywhere from six month to two years to reverse nerve damage and helps right away with helping your body fight and prevent infections. There are many ivig products not everyone tolerates every product. I have had to switch mine to a non glucose based one as I had metabolic syndrome/pcos and the treatment made me prediabetic. I am now improving that since the switch, but I still have to loose the weight I gained during the initial treatment.

I guess my advice would be to remember that pots can be and usually is a symptoms of some other underlying condition. Those conditions are many. Finding out and treating the right condition causing the pots symptoms should improve your health or at least stabalize it. Some conditions are serious if left untreated. Only focusing on treating the pots symptoms could mean more serious issues go untreated.

Erika would have eventually died from untreated stiff persons syndrome.

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I didn't know that teeth issues were part of EDS. I had huge amounts of dental work as a child. It has left me terrified of going to the dentist, even for my own kids. I also wondered why I was blood tested for heavy metals, since as was pointed out, they don't linger in the blood. Seems a waste of resources. Is there a way to test the tissue?

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As you can see, I used the word "cured" with quotations in my previous post. When I used it like that, I meant "cured" from the debilitating grip the symptoms of our illness have on us. No, she might not be cured of Stiff Person Syndrome, but she even stated that her autonomic system quit over-reacting and calmed down. She said she was out dancing, going to finally go back to work, and very excited about advocating for people to push their doctors to dig deeper for the cause of POTS. She said the year before she could not get out of bed, could not walk, and could not tolerate the heat. After her plasmaphoresis treatments, she went on vacation to the beach, went swimming, and the heat didn't bother her.

If I could get to that level of functioning, I would feel "cured".

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My nurse friend and I just had an interesting convo about this. She had all but one of her fillings replaced because they were starting to come out of her teeth. Her new doctor says this only happens if your body is rejecting them-I don't know how true that is....but she is going to have the mercury testing...she said it was either a hair sample or nail sample. She colors her hair and says that interferes with the test and keeps her nails short for work...

I wonder now though if hers have already been removed why the need for the test???

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Elemental hair analysis is a good way of testing for mercury. Incidentally mine is low and my ganglionic antibodie test was neg and Mestinon works wonders for me. But I love this research and thinking!

Hair tests are not accurate in my experience. My hair showed zero mercury yet when I had a challenge test done, it pulled out nearly 30mcg of mercury in 4-6 hours worth of urine. "Normal" is less than 2 I believe. I was well above range on it and it was without question that I have a serious metal problem. I also had lead and tin. Tin was like 5 times the top of the range. Interestingly I also had A TON of gadolinium from an MRI I had 6 months previously. How scary is that?

I think a challenge test that is done responsibly is the best way to see what is going on. It will pull the metals out of your tissues. Do your own research on this stuff though.

Some of the sickest people are non-excretors, so it makes sense why you would see nothing on hair. In fact some say if you see none, then it is highly suspect you aren't excreting at all. Dr. Buttar talks a lot about this. Also more research is being done into APO E4 which is a genetic predisposition for poor metal excretion out of the brain. It is associated with autism, alzheimer's and increased risk for cardiac problems. There is lots of stuff on this in google.

The problem with heavy metals it that testing is shoddy. If you get a non-challenged blood test it means nothing. If you get a hair test, they usually mean nothing too. You really have to take a chelator and see what happens. Do you feel sick? Do you have metals excreted in your urine? Do you see improvements? For me I meet all 3 of those. I AM seeing improvements, so I keep going.

Once fillings are removed it only stops the source of mercury. If you are a poor excretor simply getting them out is not going to do much as far as pulling metals out of the body. Heavy metals are stored in the body and you really need substances to pull them out of the cells. Very few ppl feel any difference once the fillings are out to be honest. For me though as soon I got mine out, my alopecia areata bald spot grew back and I have not had another flare since. It's been more than 3 years now.

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