Yet it has been proven that fillings lose their mercury content.  According to Joyal Taylor, DDS, one dental researcher removed fillings that had been in a patient’s mouth for five years.  He also removed twenty year old fillings from another patient’s mouth.  He tested the percentage of mercury content if both fillings, and found that the five year old fillings had lost one half of their mercury, and the twenty year old fillings had lost all of their mercury.  Fillings tend to fracture at the edges and begin to crumble away, and mercury is absorbed by the roots of the teeth as well as the surrounding bone and adjacent gum tissue.

Every day, we do things that can increase the release of mercury vapor from amalgam fillings:  brush our teeth, use a water pick, chew gum, and consume hot foods and drinks.  And removing amalgams without special precautions increases mercury blood levels for a period of time.  Such a concentrated release of mercury can severely exacerbate existing neurological conditions.

You may be wondering if you should have all of your amalgam fillings replaced immediately. The answer is, that it totally depends upon your situation. It is important to realize that for every person who has their amalgams removed and gets great results, such as lessened fatigue or neurological symptoms, there is another person who sees no change or actually becomes worse.

The most important thing to realize is that the fillings cannot be removed by your regular ADA dentist; rather, a special protocol must be followed by a dentist with the proper equipment and training.

Your regular ADA dentist will not be able to help you for two reasons: First, they are not taught the proper procedures for safe amalgam removal, and second, they are not permitted by the American Dental Association to remove amalgams for anything other than cosmetic reasons.

If you went to your dentist and told him or her that you wanted your amalgams replaced because you suspected that they were causing your health problems and the dentist agreed to remove them, he or she could lose his or her license to practice dentistry. The ADA is very firm in maintaining that amalgams are harmless and they ex-communicate any dentists that maintain otherwise. You can get a list of properly trained biological dentists by clicking on the following web site - www.iaomt.org or by calling the Huggins Diagnostic Center at 1-866-948-4638.

We also highlyl recommend that you get a serum biocompatibility test done before you engage in the amalgam removal process. A blood serum compatibility test is done to ensure your dentist puts the most compatible or "least reactive" dental materials in your mouth to replace the mercury amalgam fillings.

The type of dental materials include etchings, composites, bonding agents, crowns, porcelain and ceramics, temporary materials, cements, adhesives, and sealants, to mention a few.

All dental materials, just like prescription drugs, have a certain number of side effects or adverse reactions. The serum test will alert you and your dentist to the relative compatibility each dental material has with your immune system.

You can your own blood sample taken by a professional lab and send it to a center that does serum compatibility testing for dental materials. The one we recommend is Scientific Health Solutions, Inc. They are at 1621 North Circle Drive in Colorado Springs, CO. You can contact them at 719-548-1600 and arrange to have a test performed. A full report listing the least reactive to most reactive dental materials (of which there are hundreds) is then sent to you and your dentist.

Serum compatibility testing is not to be confused with results from electrical devices which evaluate body electrical data in comparison with selected dental materials. In contrast, compatibility testing is a blood serum test that determines measurement of immunolgobulins and proteins which are capable of reacting with components and corrosion products from dental materials.

Test Yourself For Toxic Metals

Tests that help to diagnose metal and chemical toxicity include blood tests, urine tests, and the analysis of hair, nails or other tissues. The most accurate of these are a chelation challenge test or a hair analysis.

Regular blood tests and urine tests are not accurate in diagnosing heavy metal toxicity, as they only tend to show what is happening in the body at that brief moment in time, and do not give the long-term picture.

This makes sense since the body works hard to keep the levels of nutrients in the bloodstream within fairly tight limits. If large fluctuations in mineral levels occurred, serious illness or even death would result.

A chelation challenge test needs to be performed by a doctor who specializes in chelation therapy. The patient is given a chelating drug, commonly DMPS or DMSA, and the patient's urine is collected and analyzed over a 24 hour period. This test is a highly accurate way of knowing just what heavy metals are present in the body.

The drawbacks to this method are that it requires a visit to a health care professional's office, it is expensive, and there is a possibility of side effects to the chelating drugs.

A hair analysis is a good alternative way of determining what toxic metals are present in the body. In addition, it also measures the levels of essential minerals in the body, such as calcium, magnesium and zinc. This test can provide you with much-needed information about your body.

Hair Tissue Mineral Analyses (HTMA)

A tissue mineral analysis or hair analysis provides a unique reading of heavy metal and mineral levels in the cells over a two to three month period. It takes into consideration that toxins are stored in the tissues of the body, not in the blood. For instance, you can have normal copper levels in the blood, but high copper levels in the tissues.

The reason hair is used for testing mineral status and metabolic activity is because of it very nature. Our hair is formed from clusters of specialized cells that make up the hair follicle. During the growth phase, the hair is exposed to the interal environment such as blood, lymph and extra-cellular fluids. As the hair continues to grow and reaches the surface of the skin, its outer layers harden, locking in the metabolic products accumulated during the period of formation. This biological processs provides a blueprint and lasting record of metal content and nutritional metabolic activity that has occured during this time.

The precise analytical method of determining the levels of minerals in the hair is a highly sophisticated technique: when performed to exacting standards and interpreted correctly, it may be used as a screening aid for determining mineral deficiencies, excesses, and/or imbalances. HTMA provides you and your healthcare professional with an economical and sensitive indicator of the long-term effects of diet, stress, toxic metal exposure and their effects on your mineral balance that is difficult to obtain through other clinical tests.

It is important for the attending healthcare professional to determine your mineral status as minerals are absolutely critical for life and abundant health. They are involved in and are necessary for cellular metabolism, structural support, nerve conduction, muscular activity, immune functions, anti-oxidant and endocrine activity, enzyme functions, water and acid/alkaline balance and even DNA function.

Many factors can affect mineral nutrition, such as: food preparation, dietary habits, genetic and metabolic disorders, disease, medications, stress, environmental factors, as well as exposure to heavy metals. Rarely does a single nutrient deficiency exist in a person today. Multiple nutritional imbalances however are quite common, contributing to an increased incidence of adverse health conditions. In fact, it is estimated that mild and sub-clinical nutritional imbalances are up to ten times more common than nutritional deficiency alone.

To get an idea of how helpful a hair tissue analysis can be, think about this: Researchers using tissue mineral analysis determined, more than 100 years after Napoloen Bonaparte's death, that he had been poisoned by arsenic. Even though his hair sample was tested more than a century after his death, it still revealed pathological amounts of arsenic that had gradually proved fatal.

A hair analysis usually needs to be obtained through a health care professional. However, we offer a service that allows you to get a comprehensive hair analysis from a federally licensed laboratory called Trace Elements, Inc.

Each hair analysis contains a detailed 10-15 page report from the laboratory itself, which shows bar graph readings indicating high, low and reference range levels for toxic metals, essential minerals and significant mineral ratios. It also includes a metabolic profile, recommendations for diet and supplements based on individual results.

Unlike some labs that test hair tissue analysis, Trace Elements, Inc. does not wash the hair at the lab. Washing the hair removes some of the loosely bound minerals and can reduce some mineral readings by 50 percent or more.

The Comprehensive Hair Tissue Analysis report details graph results for 8 toxic heavy metals/elements, 15 nutritional minerals/elements, 15 additional elements, 7 significant mineral ratios, and 9 toxic metal ratios. Once you purchase the hair analysis from us, we send you a hair sample kit with instructions on how to take the hair sample.

Nutritional Elements: Extensively studied, the nutrient elements have been well defined and are considered essential for many biological functions in the human body. They play key roles in such metabolic processes such as muscular activity, endocrine function, reproduction, skeletal integrity, and overall development.

Toxic Elements: The toxic elements or "heavy metals" are well-known for their interference upon normal biochemical function. They are commonly found in the environment and therefore are present to some degree, in all biological systems. However, these metals clearly pose a concern for toxicity when accumulation occurs to excess.

Additional Elements: These elements are considered as possibly essential by the human body. Additional studies are being conducted to better define their requirements.

Significant Ratios: If the synergistic relationship (or ratio) between certain minerals in the body is disturbed, studies show that normal biological functions and metabolic activity can be adversely affected. Even at extremely low concentrations, the synergistic and/or antagonistic relationships between minerals still exist, which can indirectly affect metabolism.

Toxic Ratios: It is important to note that individuals with elevated toxic levels may not always exhibit clinical symptoms associated with those particular toxic minerals. However, research has shown that toxic minerals/metals can also produce an antagonistic effeect on various essential minerals, eventually leading to distrubances in their metabolic utilization.

For a complete overview of the various sections covered in the Comprehensive Hair Analysis report, please click here.

To view details of the elements measured and to order the Comprehensive Hair Analysis, please click here.

Once you purchase the hair analysis from us, we send you a hair sample kit with instructions on how to take the hair sample. You then send the hair sample to the Trace Elements lab, and the lab sends us the detailed report/results, which we then mail to you. (Please note: international customers outside of the United States will be instructed to send the hair sample to us, not directly to the lab).

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