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.
Last edited by rhody; 07-10-2007 at 10:57 PM.
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