Do Root Canal Cause Your Chronic Health Issue?

removal of a root canal tooth
By Nelson Ridge Family Dental

To consider dental ailments to be not a serious health issue is an err. Medical science has over the ages found numerous interconnections between health hazards and it goes without saying that the number of health complications are always on the rise.

Here Are Few FAQs Which Help You To Understand Better:

  1. Why Would A Root Canal Cause Any Trouble?
  2. What Problems Your Root Canal May Give Rise To?
  3. A Root Canal And Cardiovascular Diseases:
  4. Story of A Throat Cancer Treated With The Removal of A Root Canal Tooth:
  5. Root Canal And Type-2 Diabetes:
  6. Do All Root Canals Pose A Threat To Your Health?
  7. Is A Root Canal Procedure Considered Surgery?
  8. How Can Root Canal Infections Be Treated?

Why would a root canal cause any trouble?

Firstly, root canal is a procedure by which your dentist gets access to the pulp beneath the teeth which is infected and is causing the pain and irritation. The treatment involves removing or rather cleaning the infected pulp by puling it out and re-filling the hollow space with dental fillings. As a result, you must be under the impression that a ‘dead teeth’ can absolutely pose no harm to your overall health! But here is where you are mistaken.

A Netflix documentary bases its storyline on the very fact that there are many health anomalies whose roots can be traced back to an infected tooth in your mouth. But why so?

Basically, even though the pulp of your tooth is completely cleaned out post a RCT (root canal treatment), the micro tubules there continue to harbor some harmful pathogens, which are very difficult to be cleared off totally. Now the waste material emitted by these organisms are toxic. This gives rise to your health hazards, the chronic ones especially. It might be a persistent body ache or a feeling of fatigue almost all day long – whatever it is, dental experts today do not overlook the possibilities of relating a physical illness with your RCT!

What problems your root canal may give rise to?

The bottom line of a root canal is that the treatment has been done but the dead organ – your tooth – remains in your body and may bear serious consequences. There is no good reason to think that a dead tooth will not cause any problem! This is because, teeth are living structures with a normal blood supply from your body.since the nerve endings have been cut, the pain cannot be sensed but infections may well foster underneath the tooth. With nothing to inhibit its nourishment, the infection can easily get circulated in the body’s bloodstream.

Toxins travel through the body’s lymphatic system. And toxins originating in the mouth will travel via this system to organs like your throat and heart affecting those parts!

In order of greater prevalence, ailments that are at a higher risk of being associated with a root canal are:

  1. Heart and Circulatory Disease.
  2. Inflammation in the body like in arthritis and rheumatoidarthritis.
  3. Brain and the Nervous System Diseases.

Root Canal and Cardiovascular Diseases:

There are many medical professionals, internal medicine practitioners and cardiologists who have handled patients suffering from a heart attack, but with the perfect lipids, cholesterol and blood pressure levels! To the utmost bafflement of medical practitioners, these patients are simply believed to have no risk factors other than a sheer bad luck!

Mostly overlooked, one of the main reasons behind such sudden heart attacks could be a root canal that was done in the past. Simple infections, say carries in your teeth has the capability of doubling and tripling your heart ailments. Therefore infection from a root canal site could be even more worse a the tooth is now necrotic and therefore likely to be more toxic.

The story of a throat cancer treated with the removal of a root canal tooth:

In medical history, there have been patients who were diagnosed with later stages of cancer, but the possible cause could not be detected. After careful investigations, in one of the cases, it was found that the cancer site was lying in between two root canal teeth. Once the teeth was fully extracted, and the place treated with ozone, the issue finally healed. Thus, a root canal tooth could be affected to that dire extent, if toxicity creeps in!

A Root Canal and type-2 Diabetes:

Type-2 diabetes is associated with a considerable amount of meatbolic complications. This in turn is linked with the body’s immune system too. A periodontal disease or tooth infection can trigger physiological factors that are evident in type-2 diabetics.

Do all root canals pose a threat to your health?

The answer to this question solely depends upon the immune system of your body. Science holds it that root canals are always infected. The only differentiation lies in the fact that different bodies react to toxins in different ways and some people are inherently constitutionally better off than others. The overall toxic load from the environment also comes into account in this regard.

Repeated research have concluded that almost 100% root canals bear the risk of harboring pathogens internally. Well, even apart from bacterial infection a root canal might irritate your health for a number of other reasons. These include some flaws associated with the RCT procedure undertaken, like:

Toxicity of the Fillings: If the filling material that has been used is made of a toxic substance such as amalgam, it might cause a health issue. Amalgam is a mixture of metals that include mercury. Continuous and chronic exposure to this can trigger allergic reactions in future.

Imperfect Seal: Sealing is a skillful thing to be done. Inadequate or more than sufficient amounts of filling material enhance the chances of bacteria penetrating the seal and giving rise to another infection!

Breaking of instruments: Although rare but interventions sometimes dangerously fall prey to this. While doing the procedure, no unnecessary pressure should be given. This could break instrument parts leaving them at the site or even lead to unwanted lesions in your gums!

Sometimes a developing infection at your root canal site goes undetected in X-ray imaging. It results in serious consequences quite obviously. In such cases a CT scan is effective in showing the right results. Nevertheless, it is costlier!

How can root canal infections be treated?

The best way to keep infections at bay after your tooth has undergone a root canal is to go through a thorough cleaning procedure, that is to say, making the site almost infection free. Extracting a tooth is simply the first step. The real task is cleaning and draining the hollow site.

There are still some micro openings through the gums and jawbone. Therefore, for most dentists today, at this juncture, an ozone gas becomes indispensable. The gas is both permeable and capable of killing infections. The periodontal ligament needs to be removed too, such that the jawbone properly regrows and completely seals the hollow where the tooth was.

Nevertheless, it is completely wrong to assume that proper sanitation would kill 100% germs. This has been proved with the help of radiographic images of even well treated root canals! While the images show bacterial residuals the patient on the other hand remains asymptomatic.

In one of the research that was carried out, a disinfectant named sodium hypochlorite was used to test how much bacteria was retained back after a sterilization process and the results revealed that it was almost 50%!

Visit us at Nelson Ridge Family Dental – Dentist New Lenox and get more insight about suitable dental procedures for transforming your oral and take a step forward towards achieving the smile of your dreams.

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