Transcript of Episode 189: Is Your Mouth Toxic?
With Dr. Daniel Pompa and Dr. Gerry Curatola
Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is episode number 189. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa on the line. Today we welcome a very special guest and dentist to Dr. Pompa and to the stars. We’re so excited to have you on the show, Dr. Gerry Curatola. We have a really awesome topic today. We talk a lot about the mouth on Cellular Healing TV and how important it is to have a healthy mouth, and all of the challenges with amalgam fillings, and a lot of different mouth conditions that we encounter today. We’re going to really take a deep dive into understanding the oral microbiome today, which Dr. Gerry is an expert in, so we’re really excited to delve in.
Before we get started with the interview, let me tell you a little bit more about Dr. Gerry. Dr. Gerry Curatola is a renowned biological restorative dentist with more than 30 years of clinical experience. He is the founder of Rejuvenation Dentistry, a multi-specialty integrative dental practice in New York City based on the principles of bioregulatory healthcare. Dr. Curatola studied neuroscience at Colgate University and attended dental school at the New York University College of Dentistry where he now serves as adjunct clinical associate professor in the
Department of Cariology and Comprehensive Care.
Postdoctoral, Dr. Curatola studied nutrition and wellness at the Pratt Institute, Harvard Medical School’s program in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as well as numerous programs on natural health. Dr. Curatola serves on the fellowship committee for the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and is a member of the International Academy of Biologic Dentistry and Medicine, the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, and the American Dental Association.
Dr. Curatola dedicated the Curatola Wing for Clinical Research at New York University to promote translational research in 2006 and has more than 20 years of oral microbiome research experience. Dr. Curatola is listed in the Guide to America’s Top Dentists, the Leading Physicians of the World, and Top Dentists of New York. He’s the recipient of the Acton Medal at NYU for outstanding contributions to the university. Dr. Curatola’s new book, The Mouth-Body Connection, released by Hachette Publishing in 2017, explores the bi-directional relationship behind oral health and systemic wellness. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Dr. Gerry. We’re so excited to have you on the show.
Dr. Curatola:
Thank you. I think we have to shorten that bio. Are we going to put my Boy Scout medals on there, too?
Dr. Pompa:
I can assure you. Gerry’s a good friend of mine. He’s a humble guy. A long bio, boy. None of it matters, Gerry. What matters is you’ve been on Dr. Oz a few times. That’s what matters most, honestly. I sat in the same chair as Billy Joel. That’s what matters.
Dr. Curatola:
That’s right. Those are the fun things. It’s funny. Dr. Oz has brought a lot of great people on the air, which helped get attention to issues like toxic fillings, which I know is near and dear to you with true cellular detox and everything else, but it didn’t go far enough. It’s programs like yours, Dan, that really delves deeper and gets into the meat of the matter. A lot of the television shows are all fluff.
For example, I did a 45-minute protocol to show how everyone needs mercury fillings safely removed, and they took that out because the producers weren’t interested in that. They wanted to do fluffy foods to eliminate mercury toxicity. It’s programs like yours and products like true cellular detox that really equip and empower the listeners and the patients.
Dr. Pompa:
Yep. We’re not going to leave it out today in this episode. This is very important. We’ve had a lot of people requesting this. We’re going to talk about what you do before, what you do during to make this a safe procedure, and here’s where many dentists are falling short, and you’re helping us bring the message, detox afterwards. We’re going to get through that.
Here’s the thing: Before we get there—because that’s where we had a lot of requests—your new book. If you have one, hold it up. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You talk a lot about this microbiome connection. On this show, we talk about the gut microbiome. -inaudible- talked about the oral microbiome. Just briefly, before we get into the dental stuff, let’s talk about that because that’s something that you’re bringing to the forefront. You did in the book, and I thought that it was well done as far as getting this message out. Talk a little bit about it. What do we mean by the oral microbiome in The Mouth-Body Connection?
Dr. Curatola:
The oral microbiome is one of the five major microbial communities living in and on the body. Probably, next to the gut, it’s a cousin. The oral microbiome is a complex community of bacteria that we used to think were bad. We went through this philosophy that bacteria are bad; kill it. We had products like Listerine, kill germs, and Colgate Total with this Triclosan, which is actually regulated as a pesticide. It’s non-biodegradable. Lots of problems with hit. FDA is removing it, but that was—they were going to launch Colgate Total as the first antibiotic toothpaste, but the overuse of antimicrobials and antibiotics got a huge outcry in 1998 when they were launching this product.
At the emergence of the Human Microbiome Project, we found out that these bacteria keep us alive. We’re even going to the point where we’re recognizing that we may be made of bacteria. Mitochondrias and the bacterium are the same size, and they divide the same, and all this. This is a huge diametric shift, a paradigm shift in our understanding of health and disease. We need bacteria to live. We went from the germ theory, all bacteria bad, to people saying, “There’s good and bad. Let’s put more good in the mouth.” This idea of trying to use probiotics which don’t work—and I’ll explain that a little later.
Now we know that bacteria behave like people. If the environment is good, they behave in a beneficial and effective way. What we discovered in the mouth is that these bacteria, when they’re in balance, do amazing things like transport calcium and phosphorus from saliva to teeth, and it brings oxygen to your gums, and things like that. The oral microbiome is an essential part of our immune system. It actually promotes remineralization when it’s healthy. It promotes healthy gums. We do not have to nuke everything the way we’ve done in the past.
Dr. Pompa:
This is what people need to understand. I think that there has been—there was connections for years now as far as bacteria in the mouth causing heart attacks, right? That’s why dentists give everyone an antibiotic because they’re so worried about these bacteria affecting our body. We knew that there was this connection, but let’s talk -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
Right. -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
As we’ve learned about the gut microbiome, we’re learning about how this microbiome goes beyond that. I’m telling you—this is my clinical experience, now—we can’t fix the gut microbiome when this microbiome is a mess.
Dr. Curatola:
Exactly. You know what? You were one of the first to really talk about that, even before I put the book out. I should show the book. One second.
Dr. Pompa:
Make sure you show a tube of Revitin because—
Dr. Curatola:
Here’s the book, and it’s on tape.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, show them the book, The Mouth-Body Connection.
Dr. Curatola:
-inaudible- but it’s funny. The truth is in the book—everyone’s like, “Yeah, the mouth and body are connected. Yeah, I know. Bacteria in the mouth, they get around the heart. They infect the heart.” Let’s talk about that because the bacteria that they have actually dissected out of clots in arteries around the heart, Porphyromonas gingivalis bacteria. Porphyromonas gingivalis bacteria live in your mouth. They’re in your mouth, Dan. They’re in my mouth.
How do they end up getting around the heart? How do they get past the blood-brain barrier, and have been linked to inflammatory roots of Alzheimer’s, and all of these different things? When they flip from being helpful and beneficial—bacteria have this ability to morph called pleomorphism. They go from good bugs to really pissed off bugs. By that, I mean they are under attack. We’re trying to kill them. We’ve been using oral care products that destroys, denatures, and degrades the bacteria in the mouth. Fortunately, we haven’t been able to kill it.
If we were able to kill plaque—we say, “Kills plaque on contact.” If we were able to really destroy the microbiome in the mouth, we would have unleashed ecological armageddon in our bodies and the environment. We would have been defenseless against deadly pathogens in the environment around us. These bacteria that live benign and even beneficial in the mouth, in a disturbed environment, end up doing some pretty bad stuff not just in the mouth, but throughout the whole body.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the thing: People unknowingly—they get their pockets checked. Buy a device, just measures these pockets. Should be under three millimeters. When they get deeper, these pathogens are in there. Now, I had an experience. I want to tell my own experience. You all were in there. I hadn’t this done in years, honestly, since mercury poisoning all the way through. I knew I had some deep pockets, but I never did anything about it. They were in some areas where I had some stresses, etcetera.
You went in there with your laser, and in a couple of them, you cleaned it up. The one back here, literally, your laser fell in. Underneath a wisdom tooth, it was partially impacted. Boom! Huge cavitation, major -inaudible- Here’s the whole story. You ended up pulling the wisdom tooth, decavitating it, cleaned it out, perfectly, by the way. I literally had no pain there. I didn’t even take a pain med, and I was thinking I might. I had them because I’m thinking, oh, my God. This could get really painful. I didn’t.
A day later, I started getting pain up here. I’m going, “Gerry,” and you’re like, “I didn’t do anything up there.” I’m like, “I know.” I know what happened. I had a wisdom tooth removed there years ago. I said, “Those bacteria ran from here to here, and now you’re going to find a cavitation there.” I went in a month later, whatever it was, and even before I got in your chair, your gal went up in there, and said—I said, “Here’s where the pain is.” I showed her. She went in there and poked. She said, “You have pus up in there.” You went in with your laser. Had to do another decavitation.
Here’s the neat part of the story: Five days after that, I did the biome test. I don’t know if—it’s a new test where we’re using RNA to look at these bacteria. The gal who went over—Dr. Helen—my test said, “Dr. Pompa, I have to ask you this. Do you have any dental issues?” I said, “It’s funny you ask that because I had decavitation in these pockets of these anaerobic bacteria five days before that, so I was going to ask you that.” She said, “Yeah, you have three different bacteria that come from the oral microbes. These guys are nasty anaerobes.”
Dr. Curatola:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
The cool thing is I’m doing a re-test to see if they even took root. The fact that I got rid of the sources, did they take root? Now, if I didn’t eat the way I eat, do the things I do, those guys could have caused some serious havoc.
Dr. Curatola:
Absolutely. Because you’re in such good systemic health, you did not have the—and I go into that in the book a lot about the importance of nutrition, and exercise, and fitness, and stress management. Very, very important. A lot of these imbalances in the mouth happen because of an imbalance in diet and nutrition and imbalance in our physical—I discovered a long time ago, for example, that runners—people who run, not marathoners, who push their bodies to the max, but people who have regular, healthy, aerobic exercise had very low incidence of gum disease. That fascinated me.
Then I realized regular aerobic exercise encourages immune system competence and better circulatory function. It’s all about circulatory function. Why do cavitations happen around extracted teeth or around partially impacted teeth like you had? That happens because it’s a great hiding place. It’s warm; it’s moist; it’s dark. If there is an imbalance in the microbiome in the mouth, some of those nasty anaerobes that you spoke of, even Lyme spirochetes, can harbor in a cavitation in the jaw.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I want people to hear this. I deal with very challenged people, most of which have done—they’ve changed their diet. They’ve done a lot of amazing things and still aren’t well. The first place I look at is right here. Do they have hidden amalgams under crowns? Do they still have silver fillings, amalgams? Do they have these cavitations? Do they have these deep-rooted pockets with infection? How many people have I sent to your office just to get that checked?
Matter of fact, one of whom is probably watching, she can teach -inaudible- She’s one of my doctors. I said, “No, listen.” By her history, I said, “You have stuff going on here.” Without using her name—she didn’t give me permission, although she would have. What did you find in there? You found infections, hidden infections. She would never have gotten well, Gerry, ever, if we didn’t get that right because number one, she wouldn’t have fixed this, and she wouldn’t have fixed this.
Dr. Curatola:
Aetna health insurance—I’m just going to throw this out. It’s a little bit of a tangent, but very relevant to what we’re speaking about. Aetna Healthcare did a study on 145,000 patients who had major debilitating diseases, diabetes, heart disease, even cognitive impairment, stroke, and Alzheimer’s. They found that improving the health of the mouth decreased healthcare costs related to the maintenance of patients with these major problems, albeit it’s in a conventional world, they took conventional approaches. Just improving the health in the mouth decreased healthcare costs by21%.
They repeated the study in Japan. They got the same average of 21%. It was something like 23% for diabetes, and 20% for—they had an average of 21% for three of the most expensive, debilitating, chronic diseases. By the way, that’s a saving of almost three quarters of a trillion dollars. While the healthcare debate goes on in Washington about giving everybody health insurance, unless we’re taking proactive measure to improve people’s health and not just have more moneys for hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies, we’re really never going to be able to adequately bring the healthcare crisis under control.
What you’re sharing, this important connection, this essential connection—and I love partnering with you because you recognize the link. I’m on this side, in the dental side, trying to get my colleagues to understand the important role they have with functional medicine doctors in improving total body health.
Dr. Pompa:
Look, there’s estimates that 85% of chronic disease starts in the mouth.
Dr. Curatola:
Yep.
Dr. Pompa:
With that said, we’re going to get to amalgam stuff, but we’re talking infections that disrupt the microbiome and therefore your whole immune system, your whole body, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, you name it. We talked about wisdom teeth, teeth being pulled out, and it’s leaving cavitation. Number one, why does that happen? Number two, what are other reasons for these infections? We talked about the pockets, but talk about some other things as people are sitting at home going, “Okay, well, that could be me.”
Dr. Curatola:
Many people have had their wisdom teeth extracted between the ages of 17 and 21 years old. Generally, the procedure that most oral surgeons or general dentists have used in doing oral surgery is you anaesthetize the patient, you push the gum back a little bit, you go in there, you get the tooth out, and then you fold the gum tissue over. Some of them don’t even adequately close the socket. They allow a blood clot to form, and that blood clot then becomes the primary stage of healing where the soft tissue, the epithelial gum tissue, grows over. Then eventually the bone fills in. That was the theory, that this is the process that goes on.
What we’ve found, now that we’re looking in the jaw, we’re looking three-dimensionally with CT cone beam devices that can do a 3D look at the jaw bone, which is the most diagnostic. There are some guys promoting this cavitation tapper and ultrasound. They’re really not as distinct and clear as seeing this on a radiograph three-dimensionally. We find a very large percentage of patients who have had wisdom teeth extractions have a cavitation.
Just for everyone listening, cavity is a hole in a tooth. Cavitation is something we refer to as a hole in the jaw. That area does not fill in. There is a void. Again, that becomes a perfect incubator for very serious pathogens and anaerobes. Let’s say someone who was diagnosed as lung disease-positive, they—I just hit something on the computer -inaudible- disconnecting. If you have something like Lyme spirochetes in your body—and they may be in kind of a recession or in remission, but we know they’re still in there. They look for places—basically, these spirochetes look for very sneaky places to hide, and the mouth is a great place. It’s warm; it’s moist; it’s dark, all those things, and it’s an open system -inaudible- environment on the outside.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s protects itself from the immune system there. It hides it. It doesn’t need oxygen. These things are anaerobes, meaning they can live without oxygen. You get this just nasty infections in where these root canals came out. Just to repeat, -inaudible- people ask, “How do we know?”
Dr. Curatola:
That’s another example, yep.
Dr. Pompa:
First of all, if you had a wisdom tooth out, suspect that you might have a cavitation. Get a cone-beam 3D x-ray. It is the utmost accurate way to tell. In the old days, we used to just drill in those areas and see if it falls through like you’re drilling through drywall. It’s like, “Okay, it’s hollow.” It’s potentially a risk.
Dr. Curatola:
It’s barbaric. Just get a cone beam or a CAT scan of the mandible, maxillary mandible. Much less barbaric. I wanted to be a dentist from six years old, Dan, but I read a book on the history of dentistry, and the barbarism from Middle Ages on is pretty crazy. We have become much more advanced in our diagnostic. Dentistry has done some great things. Dentistry was the most—I mean it was the first to recognize the importance of prevention, and regular maintenance, and going for regular cleanings. Dentistry was the first to introduce anesthesia -inaudible- I have to throw that in there.
Dr. Pompa:
Another place that the, in fact, infections hide is root canals. They pulled the root out, and there’s all these microtubules that feed the tooth, and they hide the anaerobes. That’s another unsuspecting place to look, as well.
Dr. Curatola:
Perfect example. People don’t realize that teeth are—outside that enamel covering, which is on the coronal portion of the tooth, the part of the tooth that’s above the gum, the root of the tooth has a very, very thin layer of what’s called cementum, not big. Cementum is very thin. Many times, cementum is lost when you get gum recession, and then you have basically a porous tooth with thousands and thousands of little tubules called dentinal tubules in the dentin. It’s porous, mostly organic, more organic than enamel, which is inorganic.
What happens when you do a root canal? One of the worst things and what we used to believe—again, I’m going to tell you what the practice was when I was in dental school and what we thought was real. By the way, when I was in dental school, I was told that mercury is magically locked into the tooth and doesn’t come off the tooth. It mixes with the other alloys, and we stick it in the tooth, and it just stays there. Now we know that that is not true, and it has been disproven. As a matter of fact, not only does it come off and offgas, but it offgasses a lot more with hot liquids like a cup of coffee in the morning or with chewing and brushing, something -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
It goes right into the darn brain.
Dr. Curatola:
Yeah, right, right there. We’ll talk about that, too, because you’ve done a tremendous amount of work there. This is one of the areas I love collaborating with you on a great deal, the protocol, and what you do before, what you do during, what you do after. There’s a lot of really good information here.
Going back to root canals, let’s talk about it. A nerve of the tooth dies. You get an abscess around that root. The theory was the source of the abscess was the dead nerve, so once we take the dead nerve out and clean it out with this mechanical process called root canal therapy, and we flush this bleach-like sodium hydrochloride solution that we try to get into the tubules—by the way, it only goes 100 microns, and there’s probably 1,000 microns of length in those tubules, maybe even more in some cases.
Anyway, the idea was clean out the canal, wash out the tooth, stick an inert filling material that’s bacteriostatic, and you’re good. It’s going to heal. You’re going to be okay. For years, early in my practice, I would see patients, and I’d see kind of something that looked funky around the roots. The problem is I was looking at a two-dimensional x-ray. Just as we can see cavitations with a 3D cone beam CAT scan for wisdom teeth, we need to use that same cone beam to look around teeth that had root canal therapy because that could tell you almost 10:1 that you’re going to see if it was done on an abscess, a remaining cavitation. If you went in there, you will find pathogens.
It’s going to sound funny, but our way of saying whether that root canal is successful is patient’s not in pain, tooth is stable, no evidence of pus or separation coming out of there, so no pain, no separation. The crown is on there. It’s holding everything, and we saved the tooth. The reality of what we now know and what’s been proven in multiple scientific studies is that these pathogens can be serious and can have very serious consequences around the body.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. -inaudible- root canals. You’ll see it linked to breast cancer. I’ve had clients who were doctors; thyroid cancer. I had a throat cancer. Until they got rid of that source, they weren’t healing. Once they got rid of the source, the healing came. I can tell you these things are dangerous. If 75%, 80% of disease starts in the mouth, look at these cavitations, look at these root canals. I got mine out, and it wasn’t bothering me. It was a successful root canal. After I did the research, I wasn’t taking any chances.
Hey, Gerry, do you have a thing of Revitin? As we -inaudible- bacteria, I want the people to understand that you literally had to recreate your own toothpaste. Why? As we go in Whole Foods and other health food stores, even the healthy toothpastes, we both can look at, and go, “Oh, my gosh. These things are killing the microbiome, even the natural stuff,” let alone I still see fluoride in some of them, which is a poison, which is a whole other show. Even the things like tea tree oil, these things can be caustic for the good bacteria. Explain that, and hold up Revitin. Then we’ll move to silver fillings -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
I don’t have any Revitin in my office.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what? Actually, Meredith, you might have one.
Dr. Curatola:
Do you have Revitin?
Meredith:
Yes.
Dr. Curatola:
Thanks.
Meredith:
I do.
Dr. Curatola:
We’re here with—live.
Dr. Pompa:
I could run out here—
Dr. Curatola:
Hey, bring me the Revitin! -inaudible- little intermission here. My very talented office manager, [Revina], -inaudible- balloon, and it’s holding Revitin.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I saw that on Facebook. There you go. There you have it. That’s all we needed to say. Go ahead.
Dr. Curatola:
This is Revitin. You could go to—actually, you have it at Revelation Health.
Dr. Pompa:
I use it every day.
Dr. Curatola:
-inaudible- Here’s the cool thing about Revitin. The cool thing about Revitin, first, is I started making this—my original belief was that oh, we need to feed the gums. There was a Japanese researcher that had biopsied diseased gums and found that diseased gums were deficient in two antioxidants necessary for proper cell function, Vitamin C and coenzyme Q10. Coenzyme Q10 is actually a cofactor in the Krebs Cycle, with the making of ATP. The most amount of ATP, the gas in the tank, so to speak, for our cells is needed for heart, skin, but [00:28:55] gums, healthy gums.
This is Revitin. If you put this amount of conventional toothpaste, even many natural toothpastes, in your mouth, you would have to call poison control. Yes, that amount on a toothbrush, swallowed, you would have to call poison control right away if you were using Crest, or Colgate, or any toothpaste with chemical fluoride. There are some other unhealthy ingredients, as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Right. Like I said, even the natural stuff that people are using—I was that guy. That’s all I use now is Revitin, but I was using that natural stuff. Then when you were showing how—its effect on some of these natural things in the microbiome, I bailed right away.
Dr. Curatola:
This product is called prebiotic. It’s prebiotic toothpaste. Why is it prebiotic? How did I get involved in this? I became involved when I recognized that everything we were using, both natural and synthetic—people don’t realize whether you use a product with the chemical Triclosan/copolymer, or tea tree oil, and peppermint oil, and neem oil, and tulsi oil, and all these other essential oils, they are antimicrobial. Tea tree oil is such a powerful antimicrobial. It nukes everything in the mouth.
I’ve actually had to go to my colleagues who are biologic dentists and reeducate them first. I went to the IAOMT meeting and gave a keynote speech on the oral microbiome, and how it’s changing our approach in oral care products, and how we take care of ourselves, and telling them that they—ozone is great to use in an active infection. The laser I used in your mouth in your cavitation did three things. It vaporized diseased tissue; it brought ozone because the light with the erbium chromium YAG—the light actually creates ozonated water. I don’t have to use a separate ozone treatment. I can use the ozonated water that’s created by the erbium chromium YAG laser. Terrific thing. It disinfects the remaining area.
The third thing it does is it stimulates the surrounding bone. They found a wavelength of light that promotes cell division, so we’re able to cause mitotic division in the bone cells so we can grow bone back faster. This regenerative property of the Biolase Waterlase 2.0, the one I use, that regenerative property really excites me. Like stem cells, I take blood from the arm now, and we spin it down. We use this plasma-rich fiber, and it has stem cells, and growth factors, and we can mix some of your own bone with that and make a biologic -inaudible- that heals like this. People -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
Exactly. To get a tooth out, I always recommend disinfecting because it’s not that there’s so much infection in there, but if you don’t graft and close that socket and just rely on a blood clot to form and do that, you have a much higher chance of developing a cavitation.
Getting back to Revitin and the—I want to talk about natural. Everybody believes natural is healthy. There are products out there, activated charcoal. Activated charcoal binds to everything. Yeah, it binds to everything and actually strips the microbiome. Coconut oil pulling, isn’t that great? It’s a detergent action. Coconut oil, love it.
It is a superfood, but coconut oil pulling in a disturbed, grungy mouth is okay, but if you do it every day, and you think, oh, well, coconut oil’s so good. Let’s just put it in toothpaste, there really—it doesn’t really have the prebiotic action. What you do with coconut oil pulling with activated charcoal with bentonite clay—they’re looking at the mouth as basically unhealthy. Let’s get those pathogens. What they don’t realize are pathogens in the mouth are resident—excuse me.
Dr. Pompa:
Bless you.
Dr. Curatola:
Confirming what I’m saying. That’s what my mother would say. Anyway, that’s a confirmation. Pathogens in the mouth are resident bacteria that are in an imbalanced state. Now, I’m not talking about Lyme spirochete -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
It’s like -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
I’m talking about infectious disease. I’m talking about Porphyromonas gingivalis, Strep mutans bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum who are really—they are what we call the badass anaerobes. Fusobacterium nucleatum grow all over the body. They actually carry other bacteria in the mouth past the blood-brain barrier. They live in the mouth. They live very peacefully, and even benign, and beneficially, but when they are disturbed, when that environment is disturbed—think of it like this, and this is a good analogy.
There are these beautiful brownstone blocks in Brooklyn where my parents grew up. I remember my dad taking me to Bushwick, Brooklyn where there were these beautiful brownstones. You could see the architecture in them were beautiful. At one time, they were—it was a very elegant, beautiful area. Then the environment changed. There were economic conditions. There were Welfare programs, and there was a migration going on because of changing economic conditions where you had a ghetto form in this same area. When the ghetto formed, you had gangs and thugs.
When I went through there in the late 1960s, and my father took me through there, and I was a young kid, I was like, “Oh, my God. Get me out of here. This is scary.” There were gunshots. The thugs, where do they hang out the most? In between in the alleyways, those are like the interproximal areas in your mouth.
Dr. Pompa:
-inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
When I went on Dr. Oz and Dr. Oz said, “Should we clean between the teeth? Do you need dental floss? There are some studies, you don’t need dental floss.” I said, “Dental floss removes garbage.” I said, “Not using dental floss or an interdental cleaning is the equivalent of leaving garbage in the alleys on New York City’s side streets where on a hot, summer day, it starts to smell, and then the rats come out. You’d have a very imbalanced environment rather than a clean, beneficial environment.” It’s all about restoring balance to that community.
I show slides in my presentations now of these renovated communities in Brooklyn that’s become very sheik to live in, in Williamsburg, and Bushwick, and Greenpoint, and these other communities where there’s rehabilitation. We can do that rehabilitation in the mouth by promoting microbial homeostasis.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, bring in the good guys.
Dr. Curatola:
Rebalance the environment, and the bad bacteria actually go back to being good. I had a patient come in—
Dr. Pompa:
A lot of people think you can put a probiotic in the mouth, and it’s not true. We don’t want to go on. We want to move to -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
If you could put a probiotic in the mouth, then you could put a conbiotic in the mouth. There’s a reason why E. coli, and Salmonella—you eat a bad hamburger, they will wreck your gut because that’s basically more of a closed system. You got to get past the hydrochloric acid in the stomach, of course, but you have a closed system.
We find now that more really weird infectious diseases in the gut because people are taking Protonix and things that stop the stomach acid, which is this protective way. We’re seeing disturbances in the flora of the gut because of these drugs that treat the symptoms, heartburn, and acid stomach—treating the symptoms, but not the cause.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah -inaudible- really important topic. Let’s talk about amalgams. I think most of our audience understands that these silver fillings, they leach mercury the life of the filling. Yes, it gets into your brain. It turns to inorganic mercury and will stay there even if you got your fillings out. That inorganic mercury has a long half-life -inaudible- for years and years to come unless you do the right protocol. After they come out, many people are sick. “I got my amalgams out 10, 20 years ago, but I’m still sick.” Yeah, the mercury’s still locked here. Let’s talk about the beginning protocol, okay?
A month before I send someone to Gerry, I’m putting them on liver support—L Liver is a product we’ve used for years to strengthen the liver—kidney support because those areas are going to be challenged, gut support because -inaudible- We use some different bacterias, Restore, MBC. These things are all really important. Then we need cellular support. We want to get the cells working. Fats for the membrane, like Vista, MORS because methylation—so anyways, we upregulate the cell function. We get the downstream pathways protected. That’s what we do for a month before.
Now, Gerry, talk about what you do protect the patient during the filling. This is where a lot of people get more sick is during -inaudible- By the way, let me add one more thing. They come from me. I give them four Bind, three or four Bind right before the appointment for anything that’s going to the gut and three or four right after. Now it’s your turn.
Dr. Curatola:
I want to back up one second. For anyone out there who’s like, “Well, I went to my dentist. These fillings are fine,” again, just like root canal, as a dentist, we were thinking that the mercury is magically locked in. We know it’s not. Anyone out there who thinks, “Well, I have a couple of fillings. No big deal,” they have to understand that our idea of success is the patient wasn’t dying. It’s interesting that I have done—we talked about this just last week, Dan, that I was doing provocative urinalysis with DMSA just to see what their metals look like. The mercury doesn’t show up.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Curatola:
It is lead. You’re getting lead. The mercury is just a little bit high of normal, this and that. It’s not there because it’s gone. It’s in the brain already. The thing is that’s the thing that people have to understand, that just because it’s not showing up doesn’t mean it’s not there. That’s the first thing -inaudible- there because the ADA goes into all of this very defensive posture that there’s no studies that show that mercury is harmful, and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and this, and that, yet we have the amount of autism—we don’t want to get into what a toxic world we live in. Anyway, getting it out, what do we do?
I went on Dr. Oz, and I talked about the importance of getting this out. They came into my office and taped 40 minutes of this protocol that I’m going to share right now, and then cut it out from the show. These patients went to their regular dentists who didn’t—A, they didn’t believe the mercury was harmful, and B, they didn’t even believe that they needed to use a special protocol to protect the patient. In actuality, removing a dental amalgam is the greatest amount of exposure other than when it’s first put in and over the life of this filling when it’s offgassing slowing over time.
There’s video people can see called The Smoking Tooth, and there’s another documentary called Evidence of Harm. I was actually executive producer on that. It’s called Evidence of Harm. I don’t know if you have that, but I can get it available to you through your website and everything, too.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s get that, Meredith, for the website because it’s fantastic. He’s right. Google The Smoking Tooth video, and then get that. I’m telling you, if your dentist doesn’t believe it, anyone -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
It shocks your dentist. They say that when saliva is going and we use water—when saliva is going in the mouth, you don’t see as much offgassing. I’m like, “Yeah because you’re swallowing it. You’re swallowing it now.” The reality is—and the ADA does say if you have six or seven amalgams, you should consider having them removed.
This is not to mention the fact that amalgam has made teeth weaker. It’s the equivalent of leaving a hunk of metal in a tooth that when you bite on something hard puts stress on the lateral walls of the teeth to crack. Anyone who’s had dental amalgams—by the way, if your dentists calls it a silver filling, tell him he’s lying. It’s a silver-colored filling, but it’s 52% mercury, 26% silver. That’s -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, it disrupts the microbiome, the bacteria here and here as it’s vaporizing into the brain, so -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
Exactly. Let’s go over the protocol. The first thing we do, we give the patient four Bind, and I actually—and I also give them selenium. I give them 200 micrograms of selenium. I like selenium because it’s a good binder in the urinary tract whereas the Bind is great for the digestive tract. After that time, when we prep the patient, we use a nitrile rubber dam, of course. We use a high-speed evacuation, low-speed in regular dental evacuation. Then my assistant and I—I’ll get into what we do to protect—I’m interested in protecting myself and my patients.
Fifteen years ago, I had toxic levels of mercury in my system, and I had never placed a dental amalgam after my—one month out of school. One month out of school, I never—that was 1983. I have not placed a dental mercury filling since 1983, but I’m faced with removing them all the time. Protection for my staff and I, which I’ll explain, but protection for the patient—100% oxygen on the patient’s nose. The hair is covered. We have, actually, almost like a veil that can go over the patient’s face. We have the patient completely draped. The air in the room is ionized with a mercury vapor ionizer that blows out billions of negatively charged ions because mercury vapor is positively charged, Hg+.
There’s actually a metal grate at the foot of the chair that has a screen over it, and occasionally that grate has to be wet. You will see a gray dust on there from the—remember, mercury vapor is invisible, tasteless, and odorless. It’s very, very sneaky. It’s literally invisible. Then when you see it manifest on this plate, it’s kind of surprising because that’s what you’re breathing in. When they leave, I give them four Bind to take after, and then I give them a couple of packs of the chlorella that our friend—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah, uh-huh.
Meredith:
ENERGYbits.
Dr. Pompa:
RECOVERYbits.
Dr. Curatola:
RECOVERYbits, and it’s pure chlorella. I actually found it to be very good quality. She does it from a farmed—because a lot of chlorella that came from Japan was contaminated after -inaudible- That’s the protocol.
Dr. Pompa:
I tested it. I -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
I never do more than two at a time. I will do a third if they’re two tiny ones, I’ll do a third, but I do them in a quadrant. I never cross over to the other side of the mouth. I’ll do one side, then the other side. There’s four quadrants, right, four quarters of the mouth. We always do a quadrant, but no more than two large or three—two medium and one small, but not more than that.
Anybody, if you go to a dentist—I’ve had people -inaudible- they fly in from all over the country and internationally. They fly in, and they’re like, “Doc, do them all in one day,” and I’m like, “No. You’ll have to make several trips, or we can do it—if you stay for a week, we could do it beginning of the week, end of the week, but give them a few days to rebound. Go to some good New York restaurants.”
Dr. Pompa:
Gerry knows the best. Within a week, I like to get the detox started. I actually like to give it some time because if, after all that, some mercury ends up in the gut, if you’re taking real binders, you can methylate it. We just give it some time, a few days, just to pass, make sure everything kind of clears.
Dr. Curatola:
Definitely.
Dr. Pompa:
Then we start the detox. Actually, we’ve started also taking the CytoDetox and having people swish it in their mouth. They’re showing that it binds the vapor out of the tissues, out of the -inaudible-
Dr. Curatola:
I just started doing that.
Dr. Pompa:
I know. We were just talking about it. Having them swish with some of that—
Dr. Curatola:
It makes perfect sense because again, it’s another binder -inaudible-
Dr. Pompa:
The vapor actually gets in the buccal tissue, and then we do all this perfect protection. Meanwhile, then you’re absorbing it, whereas that’ll pull it out of the mouth tissue.
Dr. Curatola:
The other thing I do is, because we’re binding a lot of stuff in the mouth, and there’s a microbiome there, we want to feed your healthy oral bacteria. I give them Revitin, and I have them use it a gum mask. This is not just a toothpaste you brush with and you rinse with. I have people put it on their finger, rub in on their gums, and just let it soak into the gums.
Everything in this product is meant to—A, it’s edible, but it’s meant to be a prebiotic to foster a rebound of the oral microbiome. When you have this done, sometimes we have to put the dam under the gum. It could irritate the gums a little bit. Revitin is great for that, and again, to restore a healthy oral microbiome.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, we’ve run out of time, man. This is such a huge topic. I know you have a patient, and I do, too. I’ll say this: listen, on the detox, we have other shows. Meredith and I have explored that deeply many times. Number one, you have to use real binders; most people don’t. Number two, to get it out of here, you need to be taught the process. It’s years, not months. People come out and get their amalgams out, and go, “Oh, I did a mercury detox for two months.” Thirty years, it bioaccumulated. Really? You have to learn the process to get it out of the brain correctly. There’s the big, big sign. Meredith, I’m going to turn it over to you. Gerry and I, we just love this topic.
Dr. Curatola:
I love you, brother. Give me a hug.
Meredith:
Ohhh. You guys are so sweet. I know we have one minute, but I get these questions, so if you could super-quickly clarify. We do four Bind before and after the procedure, typically. When are you swishing the Cyto?
Dr. Pompa:
Right after.
Meredith:
Right after, okay. How long after do you wait until you typically start the body detox?
Dr. Pompa:
Gerry, by the way, you could actually swish some even before to have it in there and right after.
Dr. Curatola:
What I’ve been doing, just so you know, I’ve been doing five to ten drops under the tongue before and let them swish it around their mouth. After, when I take the rubber dam off, I have them use it again.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s good.
Dr. Curatola:
Typically, after removing the rubber dam, I have the patient rinse completely, and then it’s great to use a binder.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. -inaudible- Meredith?
Meredith:
When do we start the body detox? I know you said kind of a couple days. Do you have a gauge you like to wait?
Dr. Pompa:
I wait at least four or five days. You know what I’m saying? Then go on. Again, you don’t want to wait too long, either. What happens is once the source is gone, the body will start mobilizing. You don’t want to do it too soon, right away. Give it a couple days. Huggins always said that, too. Hal Huggins always said, “Wait a few days. Let things move through.”
Dr. Curatola:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Then don’t wait too long because people will start mobilizing metal. Most people, by the way, either will say, “Okay. I got them out, and I actually felt some better,” and then they do nothing. We call it a honeymoon period. All of a sudden, about nine months to a year later, these other symptoms start, and they don’t remember—they’re like, “Oh, my gosh. I got my amalgams out, but now I’m being affected a year later.” Don’t make that mistake.
Meredith:
Awesome. That really clarifies things. I know you guys have to go, so maybe, Dr. Gerry, we can do a part two in the future because this is such a huge topic.
Dr. Pompa:
I think -inaudible- We need a part two -inaudible- and we can—we’ll gather up a lot more questions, I’m sure. Gerry, love you, man. Thank you.
Dr. Curatola:
Love you. Love you -inaudible-
Meredith:
Thanks so much, everybody. If you guys need to drop off, you can. I’m just going to let our viewers and listeners know, if you want to try Revitin for yourself, go to RevelationHealth.com and use the code HEALTHYSMILE at checkout for 15% off. We love this toothpaste. It’s amazing. It tastes delicious, and it really works. I feel like it’s whitened my teeth, too. It’s awesome stuff. Thank you so much, Dr. Gerry, for creating that and for being on the show. Thank you, Dr. Pompa, as always. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
