Hi, I suffer from oral lichen planus. My dermatologist says that dental fillings are the cause and removal of all gold crowns and almalgams will cure me. This a a costly and long procedure. Has anyone done this measure and actually cured their lichen planus? Or better yet, does anyone have a natural cure? I have tried the antibiotics and corticosteriods with no avail.

Amalgams (fillings) have been blamed for lots of things, but I seriously doubt that they are the cause of your LP. No one knows the cause (I am dealing with dermal LP on my shins), no one knows how to cure it, other than corticosteroids seem to work most of the time on the dermal type.

Gold is one of the most benign metals for most people--meaning it doesn't usually cause allergies or other problems. LP is not an allergy. Mercury is part of the amalgam, but once the material sets up the amount of mercury released in mostly unmeasurable, and not a problem. If it were, most of the US would be affected because most of us have those fillings--but there's no apparent effect, despite what some alarmists say. There was a big to-do a few years ago about these fillings, but very solid research into the question indicates they are safe. There's really no solid evidence that there is any toxic effect to mercury amalgams, excepting, of course, people with true allergies to mercury.

Removing mercury fillings will, however, release more mercury during that hour or so of the procedure than you will release during a lifetime of chewing, so I would not do it (unless the filling is bad). It sounds like your dermatologist is running out of ideas.

I wish you the best in dealing with your LP. Mine is finally fading after 4 months--I had 2 steriod injections.

I'm not sure if removing the amalgams would help for that, but I can say that when I had them removed over 13 years ago, my fibromyalgia symptoms went away. I'm a new person today, running and hiking over 20 miles a week at times. I was told by a doctor to not run more than a hundred yards in 1978. I also changed my diet to a healthy one as well...did everything I could do to get better.

The last time I read, they don't know exactly how this mercury could affect each person, since we are all individuals and there are so many variables. But they do know that this mercury leaks from each amalgam, and some say about half of this mercury could leave the filling in about 5 to 10 years. The amount of mercury that leaks depends on the composition of the other metals in the fillings; high copper fillings can cause more mercury to leak. That's a lot of mercury...a lot that is accumulated in the human tissues. And they know that this mercury is extremely toxic, much more than lead.

The amount of mercury that is absorbed during the amalgam removal process is also variable. You should ask for a dental dam, and make sure that they continuously vacuum the mouth to reduce your exposure. I also suggest that you read a lot about this subject. Now, much more is known how dangerous these fillings are, to a lot of people.

If it were me, I'd get rid of those poisons. If I knew that there was mercury in those so-called "silver" fillings, I would have done it immediately. It wasn't until one of my amalgams fell apart, after my tooth broke, that I finally got the connection. All my horrible pains got worse at that time...now years and years later I'm healthy.

As far as your gold crowns, I've read that gold is not as much a problem as mercury. But a gold filling or crown can help the mercury leak faster too from another amalgam filling. It's a chemical process that you can read about.

I'll bet there will be quite a few dentists rubbing their hands together in glee if they read your post.

Mercury vapor is dangerous. Mercury in the solid state, bound in amalgam material, is not. If it is so dangerous, why aren't all of us boomers, with mouths full of amalgams, loony, spastic, sick, etc? Yes, certainly, a few people are ultra sensitive to some metals. Although I doubt that the poster's LP can be blamed for her skin disease, but of course there's no way I can know that with certainty.

A dental dam and vacuum will not protect her completely from mercury exposure during amalgam removal and replacement.

You state that you changed your diet and did as much as you could to get healthy--congratulations. However, by making many changes in your lifestyle at the same time, there is no way you can isolate the amalgam removal as the source of your better health. Too many variables.

There is no convincing dental/medical research that finds that mercury amalgams are unhealthy. I worked in research at a major dental school for many years, and remember when this controversy erupted. I read a number of articles and listened in to conversations discussing this issue. Those researchers have the best interests of the patient in mind, why persist with a material that is harmful when there are many good substitutes? If they were harmful, many dentists could legitimately be making a lot of money recommending replacements, but you don't see that happening. With reputable dentists, at least.

We know about all the boomers with fibromyalgia, arthritis, headaches, back pains, chest pains, and urinary problems. There's millions of them. I always wondered about how many of them have been caused by these dental amalgams. It would be interesting research.

Mercury is not bound in the dental amalgam, like some professionals will say or have said, to be a hard stable substance. Some have even compared these amalgams to salt or water molecules that are bound by covalent and ionic chemical bonds. It's unbelievable all the misinformation. The mercury is combined with other metals in the amalgam with weak metallic bonds, not chemical bonds. They are so weak, that the mercury leaks all the time.

Oh, yes but I can.... When my tooth broke, and my amalgam split apart in my mouth...about a day later I had headaches so bad that my Dristan would not take the pain away. I never had headaches like that. Never. I had back pains so bad, that I was really scared. After all, it was pretty obvious that these amalgams were causing these problems. My symptoms were similar to thousands of other people that had the same problems. Since we in this time and age are dealing with a lot of medical science ignorance, where people don't really know or can prove a lot of things about this, I just made the decision to have these amalgams removed. And slowly I got better. I was so sick...so sick, that it makes me tremble to just think that anyone would ever think for a moment that keeping amalgams in a person's mouth is safe. One has to have traveled my road, walked in my shoes, to fully understand.

When the dentist replaced all my dental amalgams with porcelain fillings, I never had headaches like that again. To this day after I had the amalgams removed, I don't take pain killers, unless under extreme pain. I won't take Dristan or aspirin...none of that. I don't have to. The only time I did take pain killers a few years back, is when I had a huge kidney stone and ended up in the hospital to have it eventually removed. Look at all the pain killers sold on the market today. How many million of these pills do people take each year?

Today, I'm so healthy...but I don't want to forget the complete misery that I endured. It's so sad, that more people don't take this suffering into account, and really make an effort to understand more about mercury toxicity. But some are and slowly mercury is being phased out of so many products. It will be a joyful day, when mercury is no longer used in people, stored inches from their brain, by people who do not know if it's safe or not. Yes, some people claim that it's safe, but they have no proof...none whatsoever. Remember that absence of proof is not proof of absence. And one person that cries in pain, is one person too much.

I hope the person that has this oral lichen planus reviews all of this. I hope I have helped...and maybe it would make a difference for her and others.

Wow! It's been some time since I have researched mercury toxicity from dental amalgams. There's so many studies people can read about that link oral lichen planus to mercury-silver dental amalgams. I couldn't believe all the professional medical research. It's quite amazing. I'm so happy to see such interest in this, more than I thought. Maybe soon, mercury amalgams will be a thing of the past. :)

Let's see, boomers (ages 55-65?) with arthritis, chest pains, back pains, headache. Sounds like all the stuff my grandparents had, and all the people I have known of that age throughout my life. Amalgams probably weren't Grandma's problem--she had dentures as long as I knew her. I'm sorry, there are multitudes of reasons for those problems, I don't accept placing the blame for all of them on one cause.

I'm not sure what kind of bonds you are talking about. There are ionic bonds, hydrogen bonds (better described as attractions) and covalent bonds. Weak metallic bonds are covalent as far as I know. Salt, such as NaCl, is ionic, water is a covalently bonded molecule attracted to other water molecules by hydrogen bonds/attractions. Ionic bonds dissociate in water, but mercury doesn't dissolve in water so I don't think it is ionic (I need to do more research, chemistry was a long time ago). Maybe you could clarify?

Your tooth cracked and you got a headache. Not too surprising--many times we feel referred pain, such as in the sinus area, when there is a bad tooth. You got the tooth fixed so air and water didn't get to the nerve and the pain went away. Hmm.

I looked at mercury toxicity and lichen planus too. THe first article mentioned a group of 27 patients who had oral LP. Surprisingly, all had amalgams. Sorry, that doesn't show anything. I would be much more impressed if they had picked 1027 people at random and measured the number with oral LP and then correllated the rate of disease with contributing factors.

I am glad you are healthy now. I really am. Having enjoyed good health most of my life, I know I cannot appreciate how difficult it must be to live with long term illness. But you don't show me any evidence that your recovery was because of the amalgam removal. Yes, you may be extraordinarily sensitive to mercury. But please do not rely on questionable science to prove your point.

It pays to be a skeptic when it comes to reading science. Newspaper and popular media articles are not necessarily unbiased, but written to appeal to the public and sometimes bring in the sensational or controversial because it makes a better story. Even articles in refereed/peer-reviewed journals only tell part of the story. I will put my faith in big studies that are well designed, replicated, and independently funded rather than anecdotes, research funded by a drug company, or someone selling something. Even then, the results of big studies can and are reinterpreted over time--the Nurses Health Initiative is a perfect example. Teaching hospitals, including many dental schools, are in the business of protecting patient's health, and it would be incredibly stupid of them to ignore concrete evidence of amalgam material to the general population.

Best regards.

You are correct about the bonds, so I edited my last post...added a few words. I wrote this quite fast from memory. The point I was making is, mercury in the dental amalgam is not locked in place; it constantly leaks. The type of metallic bonding in the amalgam is interesting. Years ago, I was reading about it. You may want to research it yourself.

I would rather not debate my medical condition or the extremely painful experience I had, unless you would like pages and page of this. And I think we are getting a little off topic if we do.

I think if anyone does more research, and this is something I would like to do also, we are seeing all the time that mercury is now considered by a lot of medical professionals as not being safe, such as the dermatologist mentioned in the first post. And not everyone agrees. So, let's just leave it at that.

Please do research, and if people would like to have extremely toxic mercury in their mouth that leaks into their body all the time, then leave them in. I chose to not have them many years ago...and it was the best thing I could do for my health. I was told in 1978 to not run more than a hundred yards by a doctor, who also said I was too old. Well, now you can guess I'm one of the older baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964), that runs approximately 19.5 miles a week. And I add hiking on top of that. There were years that I couldn't run at all when I had the dental amalgams and there were times I couldn't walk away to save my life. But that is all gone now. I'm one of thousands that have reportedly gotten better after the mercury dental amalgams were removed. There were many more symptoms that are now gone...and I'll stop writing about it now...otherwise this could turn into a very long post.

And I think in the future, this will be looked upon as a dark history in medical science, when some people thought it was safe, to have one of the most toxic elements for the human body (next to plutonium) in our bodies.

The point I want to get across is that you must look at the source of your "research" information. I looked at the American Dental Association site, no mention of adverse toxicity, although it does mention release of mercury, the limits considered safe, and the amount typically released--about 1/10 or less of the amount considered toxic. That seems potentially alarming until you consider that arsenic, uranium, selenium, and many, many other metals, (all potentially toxic and are also frequently in water supplies in small amounts), have also been assigned safety limits.

Then I found something called Shirley's Home Health Page (invented name to protect the questionable), which advocates removing amalgams, not on the basis of scientific research, but on the basis of what amounts to testimonials. I also found sites with impressive sounding names that, when you stop to think about it, are merely vehicles for promulgating their own point of view. Who are you going to believe? I look for peer-reviewed journals--internal quality control. Not infallible, but nothing is.

A talk I heard by a rather famous Nobel Laureate cautioned students (and all of us) to be very skeptical of information on the internet, because there is no quality control. Anyone can post anything. The job of the reader is to sift through all the junk and find the well-thought-out, sound information, weigh the possiblities, and make informed decisions. It's hard. But it is absolutely essential. This person's opinion put something like 90% of internet information as questionable. (so please put my posts in the same light and think hard about them before acting according to them!!)

Part of my job is to teach the process of science. I try to teach how to look at research from an unbiased point of view, analyze the methods, the hypothesis, the statistics, the outcome, the size of the sample, etc. I also look at whether the research is funded by someone (like a company) who may try to bias the outcome. Testimonials are sometimes good for pointing a researcher towards a problem or solution (like echinacea for colds), but do not stand up as valid research.

The FDA has many times removed drugs from the market because of health concerns--thalidomide, DES, Vioxx, many drugs. I say again, that if there was widespread concern about mercury in fillings, there is no reason now NOT to pull it off the market, especially with so many good substitutes out there. The cost is down and the strength is up, so there's no reason to leave a questionable product on the market. (You might note that the materials used in tooth-colored restorations also release molecules that are potentially toxic, particularly the resin materials). I don't see that happening.

Allergic reactions are a different thing. If potential allergy was a reason to withdraw a product, penicillin would be long gone. True mercury allergy does exist.

Now, with respect to the poster who's innocent post started this whole exchange: My reading produced the information that many lesions of oral LP are localized to the area of a mercury amalgam. If your LP is localized to such an area, I might consider having the amalgam removed. If the area clears up or even gets better, wow, then I would rejoice and have the rest removed. If not, then you still have a big decision to make.

Best of luck to you!

[Do not use cuss/slang words. Please consider instead words like "stuff", "junk", "garbage", or "rubbish" etc. Thanks - Well-come Moderator.]

thank you for your help. I am reconsidering this expensive and time consuming procedure.

Good advise. I was unaware of the release of mercury during removal. My dentist did not mention this. You'd think he would! I am rethinking the whole procedure.

Hi Mary,

When I had my mercury fillings removed, I knew enough to ask the dentist questions to minimize exposure to this. Are you going to get white fillings? If you are, you might want to get the most durable kind, even if they are a little more expensive. I got porcelain fillings, and I've had them for over 13 years. I only had one replaced early this year when I broke part of a tooth again (with pit in a date). If you have any questions, please let me know.

I hope you didn't mind me telling you the other side of story...that mercury does leak from the amalgam fillings and so forth. I knew that even I didn't get better from my chronic sickness, at least I would have all white teeth. It looks so much nicer, and I did recover...so the pain and misery I had is all a thing of the past. :)

Hi there. I have suffered with Lichen Planus on and off for many years now. It comes and goes...The last time I had it, I had it in my mouth as well on many parts of my body. I would never remove dental fillings as a way of getting rid of it. In my case, I think the Lichen Planus is brought on by stress: it just comes, and will go just as quickly. Now, when I realise i might be getting it again, I don't allow myself to scratch the itches at all...this seems to help keep it from spreading so much. Do see your doctor; maybe he/she can prescribe a topical ointment that will give you some relief. Take care; hope it goes away soon! Debbie

my mom has oral lichen planus. It's been 3 years since it started and has never gone into remission. She has tried putting steriod creams in her mouth, no help only made it worse. Tried some homeopathic pills, didn't help. Vitamin B helped some, but made her feel her throat was closing. Aloe Vera juice gives a little relief. She is now going to try probiotics. Have you tried anything, that has helped. She has never tried oral steroids. Did they give you some relief. This is really been a nightmare. She is limited to what she can eat and has lost a lot of weight over the last year. She's too skinny. Any info would be appreciated.