Episode #274: The Proper Way to Address Cavitations, Hidden Infections, and Root Canals with Dr. Gerry Curatola
with Dr. Gerry Curatola
Today's episode welcomes back my great friend, biologic dentist Dr. Gerry Curatola.
We are diving deep into the top reasons why you still don't feel well or why you got that dreaded diagnosis.
This is a very important discussion about how root canals, cavitations, and hidden infections are driving auto-immunity, cancer, disease, and disrupting hormones. You will also learn the proper way to get cavitations and root canals fixed, as well as what you need to do to discover these hidden infections in the first place.
This is an important episode you don't want to miss!
More about Dr. Gerry Curatola:
Dr. Gerry Curatola is a renowned biologic restorative dentist with more than 35 years of clinical practice experience. He studied neuroscience at Colgate University and attended dental school at the New York University (NYU) College of Dentistry where he now serves as Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Cariology and Comprehensive Care. As a pioneer in the biologic approach to Restorative & Cosmetic Dentistry in the mid-1980’s, Dr. Curatola consulted in the research and development of many biocompatible restorative materials used today.
Additional Information:
Show notes:
Dr. Gerry Cutatola
CHTV Episode 210
CHTV Episode 189
Root Cause Movie
CytoDetox
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
This episode of Cell TV, this could be why you still don’t feel well or even why you got the dreaded diagnosis. This is a very important episode because—I don’t know if you saw the movie, Root Cause, but it was taken off of Netflix. That’s how much controversy is around this topic of root canals, cavitations, hidden infections, and how it’s driving autoimmune, cancer, and diseases, and again, even just hormone disruption. You’re going to get the answers on this episode when I interview Dr. Gerry Curatola.
As a matter of fact, you’re going to see something shocking that happened to my wife and why this doctor saved and changed her life. Also, we’re going to talk about the proper way to get cavitations and root canals fixed, what you need to discover, or I should say do to discover these hidden infections. All of that is going to be discussed in this episode. This is going to be one you’re going to want to share, and definitely, you’re not going to want to miss. I’ll see you in the episode.
Here with Dr. Gerry Curatola, one of my favorites. We’re good buds, so you’re going to get a lot of fun in this episode, but this is a serious topic. It’ll be hard for us to pull back, but if we keep it fun, then we’re going to keep people learning. That’s for sure. I titled this This May Be Why You Don’t Feel Well, Still, and this may be why you’re sick or got a diagnosis. This is a topic—we did a show—gosh, I don’t know. It was a while ago.
Dr. Gerry:
It was a while ago.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Episode 210. I’ll tell you what. That episode has brought a lot of people to a big understanding. It’s brought a lot of people here, fortunately. As a matter of fact, I was brought to tears yesterday in your office because sometimes I get beat down, man. It’s like, gosh, is this making a difference? Am I making a difference? I walked in your waiting room, and there was a woman. She said, “Oh, I’m here because I watched a podcast of yours.”
Dr. Gerry:
That’s exactly right.
Dr. Pompa:
Most likely, it was that one. Anyway, she went on to tell her story. Then there was another woman who was here that—matter of fact, we could put up the Facebook link on this, Ashley. One of my patients who you helped that I sent here sent her here. This poor girl was sick her whole life, unexplainable stuff, gut problems, diagnosed with Lyme, diagnosed with low immunity. Of course, low immunity, but yet not one person looked here.
She had a massive, massive infection. She had a crown with metal over top of metal, which was an amalgam that you said you pulled out about three thermometers full of mercury out of. I literally teared up a couple times. He brought me in to this surgery, fortunately, and that’s when we did the Facebook Live, and you can watch that. I teared up a few times because I realized she was literally, right before my very eyes, getting her life back. Seeing the other woman getting her life back on my other patient here, it was an emotional day for me, honestly.
Here we are, an emotional subject. I truly mean it. I told you I have a stack of folders of testimonies from just people. Many of them came here, but people who got infection—hidden infection taken out of their mouth either in a root canal or a cavitation. Literally, I’ve gotten texts or emails before they even left the office, saying, “Oh, my gosh. My life’s different.”
Dr. Gerry:
One patient, in particular—you know, we never know. I always look at—I always knew and aspired to the philosophy of Weston Price, who in the early 1900s, he actually founded the research on the American Dental Association. He spoke about focal infections in the mouth and the systemic complications in 1912 or 1913.
Dr. Pompa:
Didn’t he do the experiments with the rabbit, where he literally took tissue and put it in the rabbit?
Dr. Gerry:
That’s exactly right. I always knew that there is this very intimate connection between the mouth and the body. It’s why I wrote the book, The Mouth-Body Connection.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re looking her up.
Dr. Gerry:
You can get it on tape. [00:04:48] tape. That tells how old we are.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, that’s true.
Dr. Gerry:
You could get in on Mp3. You can download it on Kindle.
Dr. Pompa:
Do you have it on 8-track? Is it on 8-track? Okay because that’s what I have in my car.
Dr. Gerry:
Exactly. It’s interesting. What I love that you’re doing, Dan, is—and this is the most profound thing. I thought about this this morning. The wall between medicine and dentistry is coming down. A 150-year divide that separated this from the rest of the body—150 years ago, there were medical schools and dental schools, and it began. It never used to be that way. As a matter of fact, it never separated in Europe.
In dental school, we were told, though, “Yes, infections in the mouth could be a problem. Gum disease, you can lose your teeth.” No, gum disease, you can lose your life, and you have upwards of 10 times greater chance of a heart attack, 7 times greater chance of adult onset diabetes, 67 higher percent incidence of pancreatic cancer in men. The number one bacteria—
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, there was just a new study out, February, 2018. The CDC stated that seven out of ten chronic degenerative diseases, they believe, is coming from oral microbes, to your point.
Dr. Gerry:
Absolutely. A study out of Harvard finding that the number one bacteria found in colorectal tumors, colon cancer, is Fusobacterium nucleatum, one of the most common bacteria in the mouth. This amazing oral systemic link and understanding this is one factor, but what you are digging into when you say you have these testimonials of people, I can tell you that—and I’ve been practicing for over 35 years. It’ll be 36 years in June.
I want to tell you that I am so excited about the work that I’m doing right now because I see people getting better because they are—we are able to identify stealth infections in the mouth and the very profound effects they have on the body. So many people are suffering with all kinds of illness. I believe that 90% of the body’s toxicity outside of the environment around us is what’s going on in your mouth.
Dr. Pompa:
I couldn’t agree more. Let’s talk about a case. I can use this gentleman’s name because he did a Facebook Live for me, and he gave his story. Matter of fact, he’s so excited because he has his life back, he’s coming to the seminar that you and I are both teaching at next week.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s great.
Dr. Pompa:
Tommy, if you’re watching this, yeah, I’m talking about you. He literally was sending me a text on the way out of this office. He said, “Dan, is it possible that my 20 years of pain could be gone already?” I said, “Yeah, Tommy, it could.” You know what? It is. That was getting one cavitation—and we’ll talk more about what we’re talking about. We’ll actually show you. These are infections in the jaw that typically don’t have pain. Tommy didn’t. Anyways, you couldn’t—
Dr. Gerry:
It’s also very important to point out that these types of defects in the jaw, what we call cavitational osteonecrosis, before the advance of technology that we’re using now like 3D cone beam, we—most dentists would ignore them. They didn’t even know they were there.
Dr. Pompa:
No, I know. We’ll show these because we’re going to show you how to detect these. Advancements in this area have come a long way. Tommy literally—20 years of pain. Liver pain for 20 years went away before he—that was just getting the infection out. By the way, there was still one more infection, which, I don’t know if you know this, but you just worked on Tommy a few weeks ago.
Dr. Gerry:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
He had the exact—so what was basically still there after the first one, another miracle. It lifted again. Some of the other conditions he had were lifted after that infection was basically taken out. That doesn’t happen all the time.
Dr. Gerry:
No, it doesn’t, and that’s a good thing to point out. We’re not here to say that if I do this, you’re going to get up and walk. That’s not what this is about.
Dr. Pompa:
That happened to Tommy, and it’s happen to others.
Dr. Gerry:
What it’s about is eliminating these potential sources of stealth infection. It’s an opportunistic area. A cavitation is a colloquial term we use for a hole in the jaw. A hole in a tooth, we call a cavity. A cavitation is a hole in the jaw. The technical term is cavitational osteonecrosis. There are areas, especially around extracted wisdom teeth, where the tooth is removed, and the area doesn’t adequately heal.
The bone doesn’t [00:09:53]. What you’re left with is a perfect hiding place for all kinds of pathogens. They have biopsied and taken Lyme spirochetes, Candida, mold, all kinds of pathogens that can harbor in these areas. Why? They’re like little dark caves.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly how I’d describe it.
Dr. Gerry:
They’re warm. They’re dark. They’re moist. Prior to actively engaging in getting these areas to regenerate and close, and we’ll talk about that. This has been treated for years and years, especially in Europe, and biologic dentists in Europe recognized these also form around teeth that are failing and dental infections, which we had a technical term called [periapical] area.
In actuality, it could be a cyst, but it is generally creating this resorption of bone in this area, this dead area, that is often—I often like to say that you really—these are super-charged pathogens. It makes them able to kind of come to critical mass there and do what we never used to believe, but really affect the body in ways—very interesting ways that your teeth connect to your body.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re going to talk about that. Let’s talk about why these create disease. Just to bring it to them because they’re saying, “Could this be me?” and I’m right on the statistic here. If you had a wisdom tooth out 25 years ago, you have an 88% chance of having a cavitation. Each tooth forward, it gets a little less.
Dr. Gerry:
It’s in the 80s. It’s like 86 to [00:11:45]. They’re finding now, through the use of cone beam and screening patients, anyone who had their wisdom teeth out should really have a CBCT, a 3D, which—called a cone beam. It’s cone beam computerized tomography. It gives us a 3D representation.
When you take a regular dental x-ray, you could have a lesion in the middle here, but because the bone is superimposed, the two sides on the lower jaw, the cortical bone on each side—it’s superimposed. It’s very difficult to see what’s here. Now, with the use of 3D computerized tomography, cone beam technology, we’re able to get this 3D image of your jaw where we can see lesions that were never visible before.
Dr. Pompa:
Two mistakes: Number one, people go to their dentist. They take a plain film, as he’s describing, and they say, “Oh, you look fine.” Can’t see it on plain film. Here’s the other mistake: They get a cone beam 3D x-ray that he’s describing done. They end up sending the disk to the dentist. The dentist puts it in and reads it. He doesn’t have the correct software. He reads it as a plain film. Gerry, that’s happened many times.
Dr. Gerry:
So many times.
Dr. Pompa:
The guy says, “No, no, no. You’re going to send it to Gerry,” and Gerry actually does—you do Skype with people from all—
Dr. Gerry:
I do Skype consults all the time. I’m able to get this digital—people can get them taken anywhere in the world, and I’m able to get this digital image and read it correctly and let them know whether or not, indeed, they have these potential areas that could be problematic for their systemic health.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about why this would make someone sick. I made the comment in the beginning, I was blessed to be in the surgery and see that surgery going down with that young lady. She had all of these health issues. How is this connected to why someone may not be feeling well, have a hormone problem, or whatever they’re dealing with?
Dr. Gerry:
There’s three different ways that a bacterial infection in the mouth can communicate with the rest of their body. One is the direct—in other words, you have a cesspool of bacteria, and these pathogens enter the blood stream, and can go to different places, and cause issues.
Dr. Pompa:
Direct [00:14:08].
Dr. Gerry:
Right. Another way is by really creating a chronic inflammation. That’s a big thing, is that chronic, low-grade inflammation. G.V. Black, by the way, the father of modern dentistry, in the early 1900s spoke about cavitations. He said they were these unique areas where there wasn’t a fever, there wasn’t swelling, and there wasn’t pain.
Dr. Pompa:
I had none of that.
Dr. Gerry:
No fever, no swelling, no pain, yet it’s an area of infection. It’s very interesting that that is a source of chronic, low-grade inflammation. What people need to realize, one of the largest sources of chronic, low-grade inflammation is gum disease. These areas where—in the jaw become areas of chronic inflammation. That’s the second way. This chronic, low-grade inflammation has a huge cascade of events systemically.
Dr. Pompa:
Your immune system, your microbiome.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, everything from the liver releasing C-reactive proteins, which has inflammatory effects on the entire circulatory system—there’s all kinds of ways that chronic, low-grade inflammation puts your body on alert. It’s like a silent alarm bell going off that’s not being answered. It has devastating effects, the body, organs, everywhere.
The third way is another very, very interesting way that I’ve become so fascinated with. That is that there is a tooth-organ relationship that has been spoken about in the literature for years and Chinese medicine, especially, that there are meridian pathways, energetic pathways, from teeth to organs.
I’m going to share a story this summer that was so compelling that brought tears to me by a patient who had a very specific infection related on an energetic meridian to a particular part of her body. This is documented and fascinating that your teeth—and what I explain to patients now, Dan, is that your teeth are like circuit breakers.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I heard you describe it yesterday. I was like, “That’s a perfect explanation.”
Dr. Gerry:
What people have to understand is that you don’t just—you don’t catch cancer. You don’t just wake up one day, oh, I caught cancer like you caught a cold or you got a virus.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s just your genetics. You got cancer. You were doomed.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, or you got genetics, yeah, like my mother had breast cancer. I got breast cancer, and dah, dah, dah. There is something very, very—our bodies are fighting cancer every day. We are fighting cancer every day. Why? We have this shield of an immune system. We have a shield. It’s like the Starship Enterprise. I tell patients about the Starship Enterprise. When the shield is up and the Klingons fire, those missiles or those torpedoes, the Klingon torpedoes don’t get through the shield. The shield is there. When that shield is down, the torpedo gets in.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re in trouble.
Dr. Gerry:
For example, the energetic meridian on the upper first molars is connected energetically to the breast, the right breast and the left breast. Does it mean that an infection in your upper first molar is going to give you breast cancer? No. What it means is you have an infection, this failing root canal in your upper first molar. That’s like flipping the breaker off energetically. The shield is down over that part of your body.
As a matter of fact, there was a correlative study done by a good friend of mine, a brilliant doctor and dentist, Stuart Nunnally, who was actually on that movie, The Root Cause. He did a study on, I think, 300 women and found 90% of them had a root canal on—300 women with breast cancer, 90% of them had a root canal on one or the other. There was a huge [00:18:20] about it.
The fact of the matter is that root canals in molars are very difficult. They don’t sterilize the tooth. They [00:18:28] talk about that. Why do root canals fail? Why are root canals a source of chronic inflammation? What is the new advances in root canal therapy that might show promise in this area?
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll talk about all that.
Dr. Gerry:
The conventional techniques in my experience of 35 years, they often do not work. This woman came to me—and I’ll just share this story quickly. She was from Houston and referred to me by, actually, a functional practitioner who was actually a friend of yours. She was down there—Deb Lance. [Debra] referred this patient to me. [Debra] said, “Gerry, I just had a patient come in who’s a friend of mine, and she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It’s her left lung.” The first thing I said is, “Does she have any root canals?”
Dr. Pompa:
It’s the first thing I ask, too.
Dr. Gerry:
“Does she have any root canals?” She had one root canal. Where was the root canal? On the lower left first molar. What is the lower left first molar the circuit breaker for? Left lung, lower mandibular first molar. She comes up, and I said, “Look, Deb, this is—I’m happy to look at it. Let’s see if there’s infection around it. Let’s get a cone beam.” We did a cone beam, and sure enough, there was a massive infection around this tooth. We removed the tooth. I use a laser that actually—
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going to see that in a piece here, too.
Dr. Gerry:
Biolase Waterlase, the iPlus actually has the ability to remove diseased tissue, disinfect the area, and then actually stimulate the bone to heal. Remember, with the tooth out now, she has a space there. We don’t want that to remain unresolved and have [00:20:25] form another cavitation.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:20:25] form another cavitation.
Dr. Gerry:
We treated it. We used PRF from her arm, which we’ll speak about a little bit.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going to see that.
Dr. Gerry:
Platelet rich fibrin, treated it. Five weeks later, she had her pre-surgical evaluation with her oncologist down in Houston. I got a call from [Debra], who reported to me that the tumor had shrunk to 1/3 of its side, and that she didn’t need surgery, and they biopsied it, and it was completely benign.
Now, did I save that woman’s life? I would like to say that I played a part. By the grace of God, I played a part in helping that woman recover because God gives us this amazing ability to self-regulate and heal. We have this amazing ability by the Divine to self-regulate and heal. When we remove what’s offending, I think all we did was flip the circuit breaker back on for her immune system to begin working again.
All of the big advances in cancer therapy is all surrounding our immune response, boosting our immune response. They’re using chemotherapeutic drugs in this regard. They’re actually even planting viruses to trigger immune response. Everything is about getting our immune system working. I call that the shield that goes back up.
Dr. Pompa:
Yep, you know, you could go full circle on Weston Price. I mentioned the rabbits. He took these root canal teeth that had these anaerobic, nasty, nasty pathogens, bacteria, viruses. He put those in rabbits. Describe that. Describe what happened.
Dr. Gerry:
Those rabbits developed tumors and cancers, the very disease that was in the person.
Dr. Pompa:
The very disease that was in the person.
Dr. Gerry:
There you have this. The thing is that—the problem I have, I’m a adjunct clinical associate professor of cariology and comprehensive care at New York University. I have a constant thirst for knowledge and understanding and the ability for us to help people get better. You sent me a text that was beautiful. You said, “I love helping people get better.” You know what? There’s no greater feeling than to help somebody on their path to live a longer, healthier life. That is what this is about. Unfortunately, behind these—
Dr. Pompa:
You said, “Dan, don’t ever change that.” I’m like, “[00:23:07] somehow?”
Dr. Gerry:
I texted back, “Don’t ever stop.”
Dr. Pompa:
“Don’t ever stop feeling that way.”
Dr. Gerry:
“Don’t ever stop feeling that way.” It is a great feeling.
Dr. Pompa:
It is.
Dr. Gerry:
The disappointing part is when orthodox medicine, which is often unduly influenced by other economic forces and organizations that produce products that they make a lot of money on, pharmaceuticals and things, often these approaches to help people heal themselves is cast as voodoo, and, oh, no. Don’t do that. There’s a fear-based mentality that’s propagated—fear-based propaganda. People, we live in an information world now. Do your research. It’s podcasts like this that hopefully will stimulate something in your own journey to find the knowledge and take the steps to help your body heal itself.
Dr. Pompa:
Share this episode for that very reason. Let me tell you something. I want you to talk about Root Cause, the movie. I thought it was a great documentary. I thought there was an entertainment factor that just kept people’s interest. It was a story. It was the producer’s story. The guy who produced it, actually, his story about how his root canal, unknowing to him, is why he was sick. It took him how many years? I love the way it started because I would describe it as my story. Matter of fact, I watched it with Tommy, who I mentioned, because he was like, “You have to see it, Dan. This is our story.” He did everything. He did this. He goes through everything. He did acupuncture. He [00:24:51]
Dr. Gerry:
[00:24:49].
Dr. Pompa:
He goes through this whole big—because he was the doer. He was me, man.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, that [00:24:57] started?
Dr. Pompa:
I was going to do everything, yeah.
Dr. Gerry:
He broke up a fight between a guy and his girlfriend.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, gets punched.
Dr. Gerry:
Then the guy punches him in the face. He breaks a tooth. He goes to the dentist. Dentist says, “I got to do a root canal.” Now, unfortunately, in 36 years, I’ve seen a lot of bad root canals. I would say that—or something happened. They worked on the tooth. They did it afterward so it—it leads me to believe that he probably wasn’t a sterile dude that got busted. It probably got infected, and then they did a root canal. The root canal basically sealed the infection there and actually—and there was that classic oral systemic thing. This guy couldn’t get out of bed. This guy—
Dr. Pompa:
Pain, [00:25:45], everything.
Dr. Gerry:
Even like sexual dysfunction with his girlfriend.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know, you hear about—
Dr. Gerry:
It’s like [00:25:50].
Dr. Pompa:
You know what? See, that story, I hear that story all the time. You know I work with clients all around the world, man. I hear that story, and that story was me, man. I did everything, and then I got to the cause of why I got sick. That’s the [00:26:04].
Dr. Gerry:
I want to tell you that I have so many colleagues of mine who said, “Oh, that’s BS,” and this and that. “I have a buddy” —
Dr. Pompa:
They took it down, man.
Dr. Gerry:
I think the American Association of Endodontists, you know—some of it was a little sensationalized. The message was true, though. The message was true. They took it down. They actually filed a lawsuit because they didn’t want everyone to think that everyone who has a—oh, I’m sorry—everyone who has a root canal should run to their dentist and get their teeth ripped out.
Dr. Pompa:
Of course. I knew that’s why they took it out.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s why they did that, but the reality is—
Dr. Pompa:
I will say this: If you have a root canal, get a cone beam. Get a cone beam.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, that’s the right answer. The right answer is this: A dental x-ray—and I had a woman yesterday who was here at the end of the day. Literally, she came with her dental x-rays from her previous dentist. Her previous dentist said—she had a root canal on an upper bicuspid, and the root canal was failing. The dentist said, “Oh, I don’t want to take that out. You don’t have enough bone for a dental implant. Get the root canal redone.”
She said, intuitively, “I don’t think I want that, doctor. I think this tooth has been bothering me ever since this root canal was done. I want that tooth out.” The dentist said, “No, no, no. If you were my wife, I would tell you to get a root canal. It’s crazy. They’ll re-treat it. It’ll be fine.” She went and spent thousands of dollars to re-treat the root canal. It is far from fine. I had her get a cone beam. Even looking at her regular x-rays, you could see a little inflammation around it. The cone beam showed a massive infection. That tooth needs to come out immediately.
Dr. Pompa:
That one yesterday, you pulled a root canal out. It looked massively infected to me. When I saw the cone beam, I could see it [00:28:02].
Dr. Gerry:
What you’ll see is you’ll see black areas around the tooth on there. If you want us—we can talk about that now about root canal and why they work and why they don’t work. Most don’t work. I have to say—I went into practice 35 years ago. I took over a practice from a dentist who had passed away of a heart attack. He was mercury-toxic. I could tell you that because the whole office—
Dr. Pompa:
Of course you could.
Dr. Gerry:
I opened the drawers and there was mercury rolling around the—I literally had to get hazmat suits [00:28:38].
Dr. Pompa:
Sickest profession on the planet, by the way.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, if you think about it. A lot of dentists don’t stop to think about it. The dentist had the highest rate of suicide when I graduated, the highest rates of depression, the highest rates of neurological diseases, many, like Parkinsonism. I know dentists who had MS, but I know dentists who committed suicide, too. Yes, was it the mercury? I would say that the mercury predisposed them to going into a neurological depression and that neurological depression is fueled by this—a lot of psychological transference and counter-transference of behavior between doctor and patient. They’re sensitized.
I’m embarrassed to say that dental amalgam came out in Civil War days. Actually, they were putting lead in teeth, so I guess the mercury was the next evolution of the lead. There were pro-mercury dentists and anti-mercury dentists. The pro-mercury dentists formed what we know of as the American Dental Association, which actually held the patent on dental amalgam.
Dr. Pompa:
ADA.
Dr. Gerry:
Dental amalgam is 52% mercury, 26% silver. To call it a silver filling is really a misrepresentation. Any dentist doing that can actually—I think has a problem with a violation and fraudulent misrepresentation. If they say, “Hey, Dan, I’m going to put a silver filling in,” you’re like, “Oh, it’s in the back. It’s not going to show.” But if the dentist said, “Hey, Dan, I’m going to put a mercury filling in” —
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t want that.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, so 52% mercury, it should be called a mercury filling, not a silver filling.
Dr. Pompa:
It leaches, mercury, the life of the filling.
Dr. Gerry:
It off-gasses. When I was in dental school—that’s another very interesting point. In dental school, I was told that the mercury was magically locked in. I remember that. I’m like, “How is it”—
Dr. Pompa:
People are still being told that.
Dr. Gerry:
How is it locked in? Oh, when you mix it together, the mercury stays in. Now we have mercury vapor analyzers.
Dr. Pompa:
We can read it. It’s leaching [00:30:47].
Dr. Gerry:
In the wet environment with saliva because—
Dr. Pompa:
Hot, cold, acid.
Dr. Gerry:
If you clench your teeth, or grind your teeth, or you drink hot liquids, it off-gasses, and it continues to off-gas. For that percentage of the population that is deficient in the ability to eliminate and excrete, these people get very sick.
Dr. Pompa:
Listen, it vaporizes mercury constantly. It gets worse with hot, cold. Obviously even the acid in your mouth creates it. That mercury vapor crosses the blood-brain barrier and turns to inorganic mercury, and there it’s trapped for life unless you do the right process.
Dr. Gerry:
Exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the other frustrating thing for me. People have these things in their mouth, and they’re doing all this detox. Meanwhile, it’s pouring into the filling. That’s another subject.
Dr. Gerry:
I had breakfast this morning with a brilliant physician, a brilliant osteopath who understands brain, and gut, and this, and that. Over here, he was talking to me about xylitol and it’s good because it lowers—doesn’t understand that it’s disturbing [00:31:56] so there’s—here’s a brilliant doctor—
Dr. Pompa:
I wish I were in [00:31:59]. You should have invited me.
Dr. Gerry:
Here’s a brilliant doctor who’s completely at a loss because of this wall that’s existing between medicine and dentistry. That wall needs to come down. One of the things that I—I spent the breakfast educating him about the oral microbiome, about cavitation. He knew that there were diseases in the mouth that have profound effects on the body.
Dr. Pompa:
Just to finish off the root canal conversation, these root canals—I think it was Boyd Haley who did—he had all of the dentists sending root canals, even non-painful root canals. They were sending root canals in the study. They found anaerobes, anaerobic bacteria, nasty bacteria, the ones that make you sick in every root canal. They all had it. It’s because there’s always—
Dr. Gerry:
It’s a perfect anaerobic environment.
Dr. Pompa:
It is. There’s all these tubules that they get in, not to overcomplicate it.
Dr. Gerry:
If you kind of educate those who are watching this podcast about root canal—the concept itself of saving the tooth was something that dentists always want to do. We always want to save teeth.
Dr. Pompa:
Rightfully so.
Dr. Gerry:
I know some endodontists that are artists at getting the canal instrumented and sealed at the apex. Here’s the problem: The problem is there are thousands of lateral—a tooth is basically like a sponge. There are thousands of dentinal tubules. As a matter of fact, you can [00:33:33] —
Dr. Pompa:
Miles.
Dr. Gerry:
Even though these are microscopic tubules, bacteria can be stacked two and three across one of these tubules. There are thousands of them in the tooth. You can’t really sterilize a tooth and put this inorganic filling material in, we call [gutta-percha] and allow this to remain without some sort of—any bacteria in those lateral tubules, they don’t often die off. In fact, they set up a little party. Now, anaerobes don’t want to be anywhere near oxygen or blood supply. You’re really sealed off from oxygen and blood supply. What happens is you get a powerhouse of anaerobic activity.
Second thing is that very often, what happens in these situations is most dentists can’t sterilize even the central canal. Most dentists hit obstructions in this canal, and they fill it short or they overfill, so you have all these areas of chronic inflammation. As a matter of fact, I was on the phone with the head of oral pathology at New York University just a few weeks ago.
She was saying to me—I often biopsy what I find inside cavitations and try and get a picture. There was a foreign material that was in a cavitation that I was treating around a former root canal area. There was just a giant void in the jaw. It was actually a packing material that was still in the jaw.
Then the topic of root canal came up, and she said, “Dr. Curatola, I had never seen a biopsy of tissue around a root canal that didn’t show signs of chronic inflammation.” She said, “We joke around our pathology office. We call root canal the voodoo that you do.” I laughed. I said, “What is that, the voodoo that you do?” The reality is I have changed my position on root canal therapy as an optimal treatment.
As a matter of fact, the dental literature and the dental research is now showing that dental implants—and we could talk about that because I see the move into ceramic dental implants an important one, especially metal implants, peri-implantitis, all kinds of problems. A new study from Germany showing that the new 5G cell [00:36:08] actually eats the implants. [00:36:11] —
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, from your cell phone.
Dr. Gerry:
Cell phone 5G network is a—do your research on 5G, everyone. It has a lot of major health problems. There’s been no biologic studies on the effects of 5G, but they are coming out now, and it is not good of what we’re finding out about 5G. Anyway, getting back, the problems of chronic inflammation, whether it’s from around a root canal, whether it’s from the cavitation, whether it’s from gum disease, these are all areas of chronic, low-grade inflammation that has very potent effects systemically.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s talk about solution here. We’re talking about cavitations where teeth were extracted, heals over, creates a hidden infection. Twenty-five years later, it creates a problem. Saw it yesterday in the chair. I just have to show this picture because there was a few problems, obviously. That hole that you’re looking at right there, that’s where the root canal came out, Gerry. That’s what they’re seeing, okay? Let me show them—
Dr. Gerry:
I want to come back to that.
Dr. Pompa:
Go ahead. Show them.
Dr. Gerry:
This is what the bone looks like. I don’t know if you could see that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, they can.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s what the bone looks like. When I removed this tooth yesterday, the bone wasn’t a healthy color. The bone around that root canal that had infection around both of the apices, and there was a fracture in one of the roots, the bone was brown. Often, I’ll remove a root canal when not only does the root look a horrific color because of necrosis, it’s the only area of the body—and believe me, I’m in the business of saving teeth, but if I see something that could be a source of infection, not just for the mouth, but for the entire body, that needs to be eliminated.
Root canal is the only procedure done in medicine and dentistry where you leave something dead in the human body because there is a natural process of necrosis that does go on. A lot of endodontists—I’ve had a lot of heated debates with friends of mine who are endodontists who claim that, “Well, there is a peripheral circulation to the roots from the tiny ligaments that are attached to the bone.” That’s not nearly enough to keep that root from necrosing.
Dr. Pompa:
This was her cavitation. That was a root canal. This is—
Dr. Gerry:
That’s behind [00:38:53].
Dr. Pompa:
That broke through with lasers. What you’re looking at is the top of the bone, and then right through it is where he broke through into that dark hole that’s the cavitation right there.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s not even the size of it.
Dr. Pompa:
No, no, it’s [00:39:08].
Dr. Gerry:
What I do is I access it. The lesion is actually this large. I access from here. I just need access with the laser to disinfect and clean it out and then use PRF and some grafting material to basically get this lesion to heal.
Dr. Pompa:
Which we’re going to show you. It was interesting because you said this girl had gut problems her whole life. Diagnosed with Lyme, as I said, low immunity, etcetera. No wonder she wasn’t healing. No one got to the cause. That was also on the meridian of her small intestine, her colon—
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, gut and heart. Your wisdom teeth, everyone, energetically on a meridian chart are connected to your gut, small intestine, and heart. I’ve had people with irregular—they were having conductivity issues. Actually, I had a patient who was scheduled for a cardiac ablation.
That’s where they go in and burn these fibers that are causing fibrillation to the heart, so you actually—they burn, ablate, and cauterize this tissue to stop the irregular heartbeat. Patient was scheduled for that. Had a huge, similar to that one, a huge cavitation. Treated the cavitation, and he began to have the abnormal—the arrhythmia reversed itself. The body can heal. Our bodies can heal.
Dr. Pompa:
No doubt, no doubt. All right, let’s talk solution because a lot of changes have been made. I’m going to show you a video here in a moment of my wife. I tell people now, “Look, laser, to me, is taking this to a whole other level.”
The old days, even done properly, they were using just some injected ozone, which is fine, but 50, 60 percent of these things would, a year later, two years later, would still go bad. There’s been some changes. Laser’s one of them. Something called PRF, using bone graft—we’re going to show some of these things. All of that has made this much, much better.
Dr. Gerry:
Absolutely. Cavitation surgery, a lot of it originated in Europe. Here, we were never taught this in dental school. Some oral surgeons used to go in. They’d be looking at—and really, this whole, seemingly epidemic of cavitations is only because we’ve become aware of it. We were sort of in the dark with 2-dimensional.
Dr. Pompa:
Now with cone beam, we’re actually seeing it.
Dr. Gerry:
We have panoramic x-rays. Cone beam, 10 years ago, wasn’t really very commonplace. A lot of times, oral surgeons would be looking to put an implant in. We used to actually classify the bone. That classification came around actually later, also, when implants starting becoming popular. We had Type 1 bone is like plywood. Type 2 bone was like pine. Type 3 was like balsa wood, and Type 4 was like wispy nothing, like this void. They would say, “Oh, that’s Type 4 bone.” Isn’t it interesting that the Type 4 bone is in the shape of a wisdom tooth that was extracted?
Dr. Pompa:
Cavitation where the Type 4 bone was.
Dr. Gerry:
It was like that just happened to form like the wisdom tooth did. Then we started realizing, hey, wait a minute. Then G.V. Black spoke about this, and there’s a lot of literature about this. This is not something that’s new. It’s not something that we just discovered. It’s just something that we’re better able to diagnose now. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is the way they used to do this is they would take a dental drill and take a [00:42:52] —because often there’s like an eggshell of cortical bone that grows really tough.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we kind of saw that in the picture I showed you.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, in that picture, and even in the pictures you’ll show of Merily here. She had a little, thin, thin thing of bone and then just hollow like a hollow cave.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we’ll show you that.
Dr. Gerry:
What they used to do is they’d take a dental drill to the jaw, drill out this whole thing with a dental drill, which is terribly traumatic. Any time you stick a dental drill on jaw bone, on living tissue like that, there’s a huge inflammatory response.
Dr. Pompa:
Now you’re doing that with laser, which is—
Dr. Gerry:
The laser is ingenious because the laser—and there’s only certain lasers that do work that are—that you can use on hard tissue and soft tissue. This laser, the Waterlase iPlus by Biolase, was being used. I was using it to regenerate bone around periodontally-involved teeth. It’s a wave length of light that stimulates what we call mitotic division of the osteoblasts.
In English that means it stimulates the cells that make new bone to divide. When you get mitotic division, you get cell division. We grow the bone back. I use my hands a lot because I’m Italian. Anyway, getting the bone to grow back—but here’s the great thing about using the laser: Much less trauma.
Dr. Pompa:
You know, when I got mine done, I don’t even know that I had feeling in it.
Dr. Gerry:
I have patients come to me, and the next day, they are not swollen. I think it’s a combination of that and using the platelet rich fibrin from their blood.
Dr. Pompa:
You’re going to see that, but we take the blood—it’s like basically putting stem cells in there, to make it simple.
Dr. Gerry:
I draw a couple of vials of blood from your arm, and then we spin it down on a special centrifuge that separates the plasma and red blood cells. Then there is something in the middle, like a yellow jelly that’s in your blood, that’s called platelet rich fibrin, or PRF, platelet rich fibrin. It’s got platelets, but it is loaded with—we found that it’s a rich source of mesenchymal stem cells.
Stem cells are wonderful, as you know. You’ve done a lot of research in the stem cell area. It’s got some growth factors, everything good, and, hey, it’s a biologic tissue from your body that’s going into another part of your body to help it heal. That’s wonderful.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s brilliant. I say if they’re not doing that, don’t get it done. Make sure you go to a dentist that’s doing that procedure. A video is worth 10,000 words, so let’s cut away to—this is my wife, Merily. You’re going to get to see the bone graft. You’re going to get to see the PRF. You’re going to get to see the laser, and you’re going to see all that. Then we’ll come back, and then you can make some comments. We’ll actually show you the before and after of my wife, Merily.
Dr. Gerry:
Let’s do that.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s cut away.
[Video Begins]
Dr. Pompa:
Gerry, we went in because we were—we saw a little area here on the cone beam, and we could point it out right back there. We will go back and remind you of what the first one looked like. As you can see, there’s a lot of—
Dr. Gerry:
The reason why we like more support here is because this is the sinus. When you’re this close to the sinus, there is something called an oroantral communication, so communication from the mouth to the sinus. Infection in the mouth; infection in the sinus. Very often, we see these—sometimes you’ll have a sinus infection, and it’ll feel like a toothache. Sometimes you’ll have a toothache, but it’s really a sinus infection.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, what we took from this—we’re going to show you these side by side. This is the new one, and you can see the sinus. You’ll see on the other one had a centimeter of inflammation. Now you don’t. This is all bone except for this area we were concerned about.
Dr. Gerry:
[00:47:07] where that blue line is. I don’t know if you can see that on there. Where the blue line is is the area that we really want to kind of clean out and fill in with the platelet rich fibrin, which we took [00:47:21].
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll show you that in a second.
Dr. Gerry:
Also with bone grafting material that we use to place in there. We’re going to be doing that right now. I can show you the material right here. This is actually what platelet rich fibrin looks like.
Dr. Pompa:
We spun down her blood.
Dr. Gerry:
We spun down her blood. We get this material, which comes most likely yellow jelly. There’s a little bit of blood with it, but a yellow jelly. It’s loaded with mesenchymal stem cells, and it’s loaded with growth factors. What we find is that this is an excellent biologic wrapping material that is readily accepted by the body. It comes from the body. This is an excellent way of stimulating regeneration. We’re using it in bone. We’re using it in gum tissue. We’re using it even in teeth, we can use platelet rich fibrin.
Here’s another batch of platelet rich fibrin mixed with a little bit of allographic bone. Allographic bone is human bone. We use it. The bone grafting material is strictly a scaffold for your body to make bone cells to grow for us. That scaffolding helps fill in and support this area. As your body makes bone, the grafting material resorbs and disappears. What people have to understand is we’re not sticking bone in there, and that’s the bone. We’re actually assisting the body to heal itself. That’s what this is about.
Dr. Pompa:
The old way of doing it was, hey, we would open up these cavitations, and we would inject some ozone in there. Hit it with some ozone. A year later, which is where we are on her—a year later, 50% of them go bad.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s right. I like to say that the old way of treating jaw osteonecrosis or jaw cavitations was sort of like a right church, wrong pew. It was the right church because, yes, it can be a problem. It leads to lesions, left alone. We have found Lyme spirochetes in there, mold, Candida. All kinds of different pathogens have been identified in these areas in the bone. When these areas, though, are opened up, and cleaned out, and used ozone [00:49:54], all that is good. Using ozone, cleaning it out is good. The problem is there wasn’t an effective regeneration of the [00:50:04] that was there.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, which this gives.
Dr. Gerry:
What we want to do is we want to regenerate. How do we regenerate? We use this laser.
Dr. Pompa:
Which you just did on her.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:50:13] the laser. Yep, [00:50:15].
Dr. Gerry:
We just use this laser. This laser light debrides the area, and then it does something called bone decortication. Bone decortication is a way of stimulating the cells to make new bone to grow back. It stimulates mitotic division of the osteoblast to grow new bone.
Dr. Pompa:
I always say that this new method, number one, is the laser. Number two is using the PRF with some of the grafting material. Now, we’re at about a 90%—or 98% success rate a year later without reinfection.
Dr. Gerry:
I’d say well over 90%. Remember, the key with any lesion in the jaw is to get it to heal, get it to grow back. You could kill everything that’s in there, but what you really want to do is promote regeneration. Regenerative dentistry, regenerative medicine, that’s the most exciting thing. The advances in laser and stem cells, as you know, even generate killer cells like you were talking about in some other programs. All of this, I think, is the future of medicine, regeneration.
Dr. Pompa:
No doubt. Look, we did a Facebook Live, and we had a gal kind enough in this chair right here literally an hour ago that was so sick. No one ever found—diagnosed with Lyme disease, gut problems for most of her life. In all these years, nobody went upstream. What we found was horrific. What we found—what you found—I just happened to be in the surgery here.
Dr. Gerry:
One of the largest cavitations.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it was horrible, and—
Dr. Gerry:
One of the largest cavitations I’ve seen [00:51:56].
Dr. Pompa:
Spirochetes in there, black stuff, these things that just were unidentifiable came out.
Dr. Gerry:
[00:52:02].
Dr. Pompa:
It was a sad case because she also had a metal crown over amalgam that you said you pulled out about three thermometers full of mercury out of.
Dr. Gerry:
Two thirds of the tooth was an amalgam, which is 52% mercury, underneath another metal crown of a dissimilar metal. It creates galvanism. Galvanism causes—it actually [00:52:30] mercury out of the amalgam.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll talk more about that on this show, as a matter of fact. This was a year ago, about a year ago, and we just wanted to do a re-cone beam just to make sure she was healing. Obviously, we want to be—better safe than sorry. You saw that little lucency and said, “Let’s just go in and take a look at it.” You stimulated the healing again. We’ll put PRF in there again. At least there was no infection, but this will speed up the healing.
Dr. Gerry:
Three things: Her sinus looked so much better.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, we’re showing before and after up here on the show.
Dr. Gerry:
Sinus looks so much better. She had a lot of healthy bone there. In the area where she didn’t have—the only reason why I wanted to put some additional—clean it out, disinfect again, and put more PRF and graft is because we want to support the sinus membrane. We don’t want there to be a lack of bony support under the membrane.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, which last time, there was—it was a mess.
Dr. Gerry:
[00:53:33].
Dr. Pompa:
All right, Ger, [00:53:34].
Dr. Gerry:
All right.
Dr. Pompa:
We’re going to learn more. Stay tuned.
[Video Ends]
Dr. Pompa:
All right, Gerry, any comments on that, what we just saw?
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, what I wanted to say—and I want to talk about bone grafting for a minute because people have a misunderstanding about bone grafting. All bone grafts—we have four different types. We have human bone from your own body, which is a painful thing to take bone from the body. Sometimes we’ve actually done hip grafts and all kinds of things. You have bone from your own body. You have human bone, which people are like, “Oh, it’s some cadaver.”
Dr. Pompa:
No, no, [00:54:11].
Dr. Gerry:
I’m like, “Well, you take the kidneys. You take the lung. You take the heart.”
Dr. Pompa:
If you take blood, right—you get a blood transfusion or blood from somebody else.
Dr. Gerry:
There is human bone, which actually tends to work best, either your own or human bone. Then we have synthetic bone, and then we have animal bone, often pig or cow, so there’s porcine and bovine.
Dr. Pompa:
Which one do you like?
Dr. Gerry:
I like the human bone. Now, so here’s the thing about the graft. There are cells in our bodies that make bone called osteoblasts. There are cells that remodel or take bone away called osteoclasts. Any imbalance in that osteoblast and osteoclastic activity, you end up with things like osteoporosis. You end up with osteopenia. There’s all kinds of problems. The bone that’s grafted is actually a scaffold. It does not stay. It’s a scaffold for the osteoblast to kind of grow and make bone.
Dr. Pompa:
Now, you’re putting the stem cells in there around this scaffolding.
Dr. Gerry:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
Now we’re able to fill in the hole, the void, so to speak.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah. In one of those dishes with Merily, we had pure PRF, and then we had PRF mixed with some human bone.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, we saw that.
Dr. Gerry:
That is the bone that acts as a scaffold for Merily’s body to make new bone and grow over.
Dr. Pompa:
You packed it in that deep hole.
Dr. Gerry:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
You saw these deep holes. I showed you on the video. Packing it in there now, and then you stitched it over, and now that forms.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, but what we do is we’ll use—
Dr. Pompa:
He packs it in those deep holes there that you’re seeing there as well as that big hole.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, so there are times where we don’t need to use the bone grafting when it’s a smaller—like in some single root extractions, we can just put PRF, and that’s enough to stimulate the bone and for the osteoblasts to use that. Then there are times where we will use the grafting material. What I want people to understand is we’re helping the body heal itself, so that graft material becomes a scaffold. The osteoclasts eat away—and that old one. That resorbs, and what you’re left with is new bone that your body made. That’s about three months—
Dr. Pompa:
I get this a lot: “I went to my biological dentist, and he injected that with ozone, and it killed all the infection. Now, I’m okay. Hey, the pain’s gone. Hey, that does feel better. Actually, even I feel better.” What’s the problem with that?
Dr. Gerry:
The problem with that is ozone is wonderful as a very—what I love about ozone, it has so many wonderful properties for the human body.
Dr. Pompa:
Your laser produces ozone, by the way.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, the laser produces—it generates ozonated water, and we use ozone gas, and we use separate ozone water, too. The key to think about here is ozone is not magic. Ozone converts to peroxide. It has a wonderful effect. Another good thing about ozone is it brings blood supply back. It helps to open the blood supply. So does the laser do that.
When we see blood, we’re very happy. Blood is a life force. It’s an important part of the healing process. We want to bring blood back to this dead, necrotic area that didn’t really have a blood supply. Ozone has its place. The problem about using ozone alone is using ozone alone, you just basically nuke everything. You bring a little circulation, but you don’t regenerate that [00:58:02].
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the example I love to give. It’s like okay, you can chase the bears out of the cave, but as long as there’s a cave, more bears are going to end up in the cave.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s the bottom line. You have to get rid of the caves, and then the bears don’t come back.
Dr. Gerry:
The name of the game here, Dan, is regeneration. We want regeneration.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely, and that’s [00:58:21].
Dr. Gerry:
Does ozone have a place? Absolutely, but I’ve seen people—and this is an interesting point. I’ve had many patients come to me who’ve had several cavitational surgeries in areas where the bone looks like Swiss cheese, and the bone has not healed. They’ve gone back, and the biologic dentist is saying, “Oh, let me do another ozone injection. Let me do another ozone here and ozone there.”
Ozone also nukes the biofilm. You need a balance. Now, I do believe in ozone. I do use ozone, but I use it responsibly. A lot of biologic dentists are taught use ozone everywhere. They’re ozonating all the gums every time the patient comes in because they have a little gingivitis. Gingivitis is a biofilm imbalance. You don’t want to use Napalm and scorched earth policy. What you really want to do is promote rebalancing. That’s why I developed this.
Dr. Pompa:
There you go. I use it every day, by the way. It’s on our website. It’s on my website.
Dr. Gerry:
This toothpaste is prebiotic. We have Vitamin K2 and D3. We have CoQ10 and Vitamin C, and Vitamin E was the first component.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s what I love about it. You can actually eat it. It’s that healthy.
Dr. Gerry:
It’s a dietary supplement.
Dr. Pompa:
It actually really [00:59:46].
Dr. Gerry:
The reason why we found—gums stop bleeding in a matter of days. The reason why we found that you get a—close to a 70% reduction of ginginal inflammation in two weeks with double blind clinical research we did in Europe and the United States is because we are fostering microbial homeostasis. We’re not nuking all the bacteria.
The same bacteria—this was the biggest breakthrough understanding that I had in my research in developing this. By the way, I can’t put—the toothpaste is regulated as cosmetic, so you can’t make these claims, but we can show lots of pictures, unless we want to go through the—an IND and—
Dr. Pompa:
Forget about it.
Dr. Gerry:
You have to file a new drug application. It’s called an NDA. I’m eating the toothpaste. By the way, if you eat this much of commercial toothpaste, you have to call poison control.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s true, fluoride alone.
Dr. Gerry:
When you understand the science of the microbiome, you realize that products—commercial products like Listerine, Colgate, all these other products kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. The natural companies came around and said, “Oh, why don’t we use tea tree oil instead of triclosan?” Tea tree oil is just as toxic to the microbiome as triclosan is.
Dr. Pompa:
Meaning most of the natural toothpastes out there, they have these nasty killers in that wipe out the microbiome, which also affects the gut. Let’s tell Merily’s story here very briefly. If you saw the last show, it was whatever, a year ago. My wife had this sinus drainage coming down. She started getting abnormal cells in her nose that weren’t healing. Started worrying me.
I said, “Hon, which side do—you had your wisdom teeth out on?” The right. Okay, if you know my wife, if I tell her right, she goes left. If she goes left, she goes right. I tell you, that’s true. I’m the dumb one here. By the way, I’m the dumb one here. I believed her. For the first time, I believed her. Okay, it was the right. No, it was the left, exactly where her drainage was.
Dr. Gerry:
Whenever my wife corrects me, and she says, “Honey, make a right,” I’m like, “Okay, it’s left.”
Dr. Pompa:
When she tells me it’s on the right, I should have said left. Oh, gosh, what was I thinking? Anyway, bottom line was we ended up getting a cone beam. Let me just show you what we found.
Dr. Gerry:
Actually, we could show it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I’ll have you explain it. Let me see if we could see this. I want to bring it down to this one
Dr. Gerry:
Let’s see this area.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. I think we can see that. Yeah, go ahead. That’s her sinus that you’re looking at.
Dr. Gerry:
Here’s the area where her wisdom tooth was. All of this black here—
Dr. Pompa:
That is voids.
Dr. Gerry:
It’s empty. This whole area about the size of the end of my finger is all cavitation. There’s a whole area of cavitational osteonecrosis right there where that was. What’s interesting in addition to that is whatever the heck is going on in there, she sure has a lot of schmutz in her sinus.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a centimeter of schmutz.
Dr. Gerry:
Go to the other side.
Dr. Pompa:
There’s the other side.
Dr. Gerry:
Can you see the other sinus here?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. You can see there’s no inflammation around there.
Dr. Gerry:
There’s nothing. Then you go here, and her sinus is a bit of a mess. Actually, this is a good shot. Another angle of her sinus—actually, we could show it up here, Dan. Let me just show you right here. She has areas where the congestion in her sinus is almost [01:03:34].
Dr. Pompa:
You’re looking at a cone beam.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s a cross section. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Dr. Pompa:
This is all cone beam, yeah.
Dr. Gerry:
The good thing about a cone beam is that we can look at this from many different angles. For example—
Dr. Pompa:
Where do you want me to go, down here?
Dr. Gerry:
You can go down here. Now I’ll show you a cross section of up on the top. Where this blue line is, if we go up here, you’ll actually see black, black, black, which is all void in this area between the dotted line, the solid line, and the dotted line. That area is all just empty. Right above it, look at all the congestion in her sinus here.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, massive. That’s what was happening to her.
Dr. Gerry:
She had to have a constant post-nasal drip, what we call PND.
Dr. Pompa:
Now let’s show the one we did yesterday. We did another cone beam a year later, approximately.
Dr. Gerry:
I actually talk about this. This is a really important one. Now, this area has healed. If I bring this over here—
Dr. Pompa:
What we were doing—there was a little void, so he went in yesterday just to check it.
Dr. Gerry:
Now [01:04:38] see this is not black; this is filled, but if you remember, Merily flew shortly after, and we took a cone beam. Most of it’s filled in. She has a little area here that still has not filled in.
Dr. Pompa:
Hold on. Let me make sure I got it. Eric, do you got to show it again?
Dr. Gerry:
Can you see this little area here?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right there, uh-huh.
Dr. Gerry:
Look at her sinus.
Dr. Pompa:
Perfect.
Dr. Gerry:
Clean, sinus clean, and even up here, if we look here—let’s see if I can bring her sinuses back. Sinus is pretty clean, especially there.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Dr. Gerry:
[01:05:19] in the sinus, she had a little something there, but nothing down where that third molar was. I want to make a point about this because there is an area here, this bothered me.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s when you went in yesterday, which you saw. You saw the video.
Dr. Gerry:
We could talk about that right now. This is very interesting because the success of the healing response—what I’ve come to learn is I have a lot of patients who travel in to me to have these procedures done. The most important thing is I have to ground you for a little while. You can’t jump on an airplane because they found a major contraindication to healing, especially in these delicate areas where bone is healing. You’re up near the sinuses. You really can’t be in a pressurized cabin.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, by the way—
Dr. Gerry:
I don’t want you flying or doing scuba diving.
Dr. Pompa:
I was stubborn. I had to go do a seminar, blah, blah, blah, the whole thing, and it went—on the flight, I got this massive headache that was coming from my neck. This was two days after I got cavitation surgery.
Dr. Gerry:
Yeah, way too soon.
Dr. Pompa:
It ended up literally going into my neck. You guys know that story because that’s how I got the stem cells.
Dr. Gerry:
That’s a good story. Anyone who’s going to or traveling to a biologic doctor who is doing cavitation surgery, you cannot fly. You cannot fly. Of course, I grounded Merily right then. Let’s talk about that. Yesterday I went in to that little area, and I was intrigued because I was like, “Well, this is—that should have been all—that should have been solid. It should have been healed perfectly.”
Anyway, I went in there, and there was a small amount of bone. What I did is I put PRF and I packed some more grafting material to give her a nice, solid base of bone in what’s called that tuberosity area, in that third molar tuberosity area because her sinus is right above that. I wanted to give her some protection and some support for her sinus. The important thing, again, is no flying, no scuba diving, and really, it’s important to understand that the healing process after the procedure is done is very, very important.
Dr. Pompa:
If it’s a big cavitation, how long would you keep them here if they flew in [01:07:42]?
Dr. Gerry:
If it’s not near the sinus, generally patients can come in midweek and leave by the Monday after.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, okay, so I’ve had people from all over the world come and see you. Matter of fact, every time I’m here, I love it because I get to actually meet them. My clients—
Dr. Gerry:
Everybody who flew in over Christmas got to see the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes. I had tickets for everybody for the shows. I was like, “Go to a show. Have a nice time. Go to some restaurants. Make it a—what’d they call it when you go to Mexico for something, a destination medical surgery, medical treatment? It’s a great thing if you can relax, enjoy, and take a peaceful trip home.
I like to see patients generally three days after, when they’re healing. I generally follow up by Skype, and I’m able to actually have a Skype consult, one of which I’m going to have a post-operative consult today with a patient who was referred by you and who was treated in the US.
Dr. Pompa:
I get to meet all my clients because I have clients all over the world, and it’s like I get to meet them here. I love it. Let’s talk about—you’re expanding. We have a exciting thing that’s happening, so tell them.
Dr. Gerry:
This is the most exciting thing: The wall between medicine and dentistry is coming down. Really, the health centers, the wellness centers of the future are going to bring—and what Dan and I do, I think, are two of the most important aspects of helping people get well. That is the oral-systemic link. It’s dental and detox, detox dental and a lot of it detox.
Dr. Pompa:
It works.
Dr. Gerry:
Look at this: There are patients who are toxic. Their functional medicine doctors are like, “You’re loaded with metals.” Eliminating heavy metals from the body is not just a science, but an art. You have gotten that down because you lived it. You lived that, and that’s what I love, that you’ve helped so many people, Dan. You put them on a protocol that is personalized for their particular circumstances.
That involves not hitting it with a hammer, where if you try to get the mercury out of the rest of you—you may get mercury out of your mouth, but if you’ve been found by your functional medicine doctor, your biologic doctor—I never know what term to use anymore. I use biologic a lot because it’s easier. Everything is biologic.
Dr. Pompa:
Functional medicine doctor, yeah.
Dr. Gerry:
If your biologic physician has said you’re showing up in examination with heavy metals and the diagnosis, I highly recommend that you follow Dr. Pompa’s protocol because he is intuitive. He is experienced, and he does not—what I love that you do is you don’t address this in a heavy-handed way. Getting mercury out of—mercury is a very insidious metal. I find a lot of nickel, by the way. A lot of people have old what we call porcelain fused to metal crowns, which is basically a metal thimble with porcelain on top.
Just this morning, when I was walking in my office, every crown I removed from the patient’s mouth with metal, I analyzed the metal. I’m actually going to publish on it because I’m finding a high number of crowns that were done in the 1980s when the price of gold went very high. The dental laboratories were using non-precious metals. They’re up to 77% nickel. That’s like pure nickel. Many times, dentists—a lazy technique that dentists had is they’d make the crown, and they’d leave the amalgam in the tooth.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s one that—that poor gal yesterday.
Dr. Gerry:
Oh, that’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t even know if you could see that, but that shiny part in there, yeah, that’s amalgam. There was a crown that covered this big amalgam. He said enough mercury for three thermometers, and it was covered by metal. That’s called galvanism. It creates more mercury vapor. Poisons you, basically. It’s electrical current, so now you’re a battery.
Dr. Gerry:
Galvanism actually—what it’s been found to do, especially with dislike metals or metal like an amalgam metal, it cranks the mercury out of the mouth. It off-gasses—
Dr. Pompa:
That poor girl.
Dr. Gerry:
It off-gasses more because of the electrical current created by the galvanism. That’s one thing. Really, the center in East Hampton is opening in June. We’re very excited about it. We’re incorporating so many wonderful therapies that have shown great promise in helping people and helping people support their [01:12:51].
Dr. Pompa:
The end of June, here. Listen, and it’s going to be—we’re bringing in all this good stuff together.
Dr. Gerry:
Fran Drescher is hosting it, my good friend, Fran. If you’re listening—she is amazing. She is a cancer survivor, and she has become a wellness activist and using her celebrity position to promote wellness and taking charge. She said, “If people would—if people want something to stop, they should use the power—their purchasing power, their consumer purchasing power to get bad products to go away.” Stop buying them.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more there. Detox done right is critical. I think that’s another mistake people make. They get things like amalgam fillings out, and then they go, “Oh, okay, that’s it.” The mercury’s in the brain. One of the things that—my passion is teaching people the process. One of my pet peeves is, “Oh, I did mercury detox three months.”
Meanwhile, 25 years, 30 years, this mercury was going into the brain, and it’s three months. You have to learn the process, and that’s what I tell my doctors. Teach people the process, right, docs? My docs listening? We teach people the process, and then they do it long enough to actually matter. Listen, we covered a heck of a lot of material here.
Dr. Gerry:
We sure did.
Dr. Pompa:
I love you, man. I could hang out here all day and look at this stuff. Matter of fact, I’m ready to do a surgery now. I’m ready to go in, doc.
Dr. Gerry:
Right on. All right, let’s go.
Dr. Pompa:
I would love to. It was fun, though, yesterday. Really, I got teared up in there several times because I knew I was watching this girl’s—all this money, time, and heartbreak, and I was watching it change.
Dr. Gerry:
My dream is to take good dentists and just put a—so biologic dentistry is not a specialty. I’m a very, very competent, very, very good restorative dentist. I do beautiful cosmetic dentistry. All that is well and good. Just put a biologic cap.
If I could get dentists—and one of my biggest regrets was in 2006, I named—I gave a naming gift to New York University for a clinical research wing. It’s The Curatola Wing for Clinical Research. That was to promote translational research. I was doing research—oral microbiome research. I was passionate about getting greater understanding of our microbial composition and what we’re made of.
Dr. Pompa:
It starts here, by the way. It starts here.
Dr. Gerry:
I wish I had, instead, given the money to open a center for integrative dentistry so that dentists could start to put this biologic cap on and take the most talented graduating fourth-year dental students and put them—now, train them to think biologically, looking at root causes of disease and not treating the symptoms. Don’t look at the patient as a walking tooth.
Look at the patient as this living, amazing life force that’s in a tent of the body, as Paul calls it. The reality is that we have this Divine ability, God-given ability to self-regulate and heal. Understanding that and just understanding that mindset, they’d be able to look in patients’ mouths and be able to diagnose toxicity. They’d be able to look at the root causes of disease in the mouth and work in tandem with doctors like you.
Dr. Pompa:
Root Cause movie, we mentioned the move, Root Cause. If you want to see it—it was taken off Netflix, but it’s RootCauseMovie.com. Ashley, you could put that up when we actually spoke about the movie, as well, on the bottom, so you should see it. Share this episode with many. This is a life changer, man. Thank you, Ger.
Dr. Gerry:
Thank you, Dan.
Dr. Pompa:
Love you, man.
Dr. Gerry:
Love you.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s go check my bite.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at BuyCytoNow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at CellularHealing.tv. Please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, and sharing this show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
