Good morning and welcome to Green Tea Conversations, the radio show that delves into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine to bring you the local experts who share their progressive ideas and the latest information and insights needed so you can lead your best life. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle publisher of the Twin Cities edition of Natural Awakenings magazine and I am honored to bring these experts to you. Today in our studio, we have Dr. Karl Anderson of Sedation and Implant Dentistry, which is located right here in St. Paul. Welcome to the show, Dr. Anderson. 

 

Well, thank you, Candi.

 

So, you have been practicing dentistry for quite a long time, since 1985.

 

1981, actually. I received my doctor of dental degree in 1981 from the University of Minnesota. But I did go into specialty training and received a degree in 1985, Masters of Science and Periodontics, which is a treatment of gum disease.

And so, that is just one of the areas in which you do treatments is with the periodontics, which we're going to talk about in a bit, too.

 

Yes. Periodontics is one of the recognized specialties of dentistry, but I chose very quickly within a year or two after I graduated from that program to lift my limitation, meaning if you are a specialist in dentistry, you're limited to that particular field of focus and you can't do many of the other procedures. But within, I think it was two years I lifted my limitation and started practicing general dentistry with a focus on sedative and implant dentistry or sedation implant dentistry as my primary focus. And over the years I've been tested and I'm a diplomat, surgeon at the International Congress of Oral Implantology. I am certified in sedation training and so, but I've always been very naturally minded and over a period of time, in fact, in the last couple of years my focus has become a combination of naturopathic medicine and how it relates to dentistry.

 

Yeah, as a matter of fact, you are a board-certified doctor of integrative biologic dental medicine and you're also a naturopathic medical doctor.

Yes, that is correct. Although on the practice we're practicing, I'm practicing as a dentist, but I have those knowledge areas and so, therefore, we've integrated that within the practice.

 

So, let's talk about that a little bit. What are some of the things that you're able to integrate as far as looking at more of a holistic approach with your patients?

 

Well, I think the biggest reality when I'm talking with patients is that we can't you know, in the past, I mean, it's not like people are just chopping off their head and leaving at my office and I fix their teeth and then they come and pick up their head at the end of the day. That head is connected to the rest of the body. And it's always surprising to a lot of people, well, for instance, we even have acupuncturists in hospitals. Okay. An acupuncturist understands the meridians within the body, the energy meridians. Well, did God, just leave those out of the mouth. No, in fact, the head and neck areas are the most innervated area. 80 percent of innervation is on the dental innervations. And so, the teeth are very much connected energetically to other organs, organ systems, and can drastically affect the health of those organ systems if, in fact, the teeth themselves are unhealthy or vice versa.

 

And so, you really take a look at the entire person as, what you practice.

 

Yes, we're practicing basically holistic dentistry, although I will also say that, you know, that's a term that's not well defined by the profession. And there are more and more doctors, and in fact, more and more dentists are receiving their naturopathic M.D. certification in a program out in New Jersey, the same one I went to. American College of Integrative Medicine, Dentistry. And in fact, we just have a new oral surgeon in town that just received his certification and he got graduated last Saturday night.

 

Oh, well, yeah, that is great.

 

Dr. Mark Roszkowski and I do refer at times to an oral surgeon for a very difficult thing, but I tend to want to send them to somebody that understands the connection to the rest of the body.

 

And so now we have someone here in town.

 

We have Dr. Mark Roszkowski. Yes.

Great. So, I don't think a lot of people really understand the importance of good oral health when it comes to your overall health. So, in some ways, you and I were talking just before the show and kind of chitchatting a little bit. And you were telling me about some of the connections to oral health and breast cancer.

 

Yeah, there's a tremendous correlation between that and in Europe, they've actually had studies and inferences in the Paracelsus Clinic, which is one of the largest integrative cancer therapy centers in the world, a more natural approach to their therapies. And they have just as high, if not higher success rates than we're doing here in the United States for treating cancers. You're not allowed in the front door without a dental screening. Any metals that are in your mouth have to come out.

 

Any root canals in your mouth have to come out. They check jawbones for holes in the jawbone called cavitations or previous teeth were removed, but the bone didn't heal, trapping bacteria in the bone. All those cavitations have to be cleaned out. Any heavy metals at all, have to be out of the mouth or they're not going to treat you for cancer. Now, I've studied with these doctors studying neural therapy in a big room one day and I thought, well, I'm going to get them to say it verbally. And I said, well, excuse me, doc. I mean, that seems sort of a little bit extreme. You wouldn't even start treating the cancer patient. And he got quite irritated, I mean, in front of everybody and made me an example, I guess, by asking that question. But he said, excuse me, doctor, but why would you treat cancer when you're not getting rid of the cause? Now, he said that and I can't say that in the United States.

 

But I will tell you, there's a very, very high correlation between breast cancer and root canal teeth on a certain particular posterior upper molars, for instance, lower bicuspid. There's a very high correlation. And there have been many studies showing oral bacteria in many different types of cancer tumors, oral bacteria have been found in, for instance, heart plaques and thereby leading to heart disease and of course, periodontal disease, but also a disease called chronic apical periodontitis, which is really a root canal tooth at the apex at the root of every root canal tooth. There was a response going on and there is generally a high percentage of certain bacteria. While those bacteria are quite often found in prostate tumors, that are found in breast cancer tumors, that are found in ovarian cancer tumors, I mean, that link is very well established.

 

So, you said there are a couple of different teeth earlier, that are pretty much linked, that has a link to breast cancer. And you said it was the lower bicuspid?

 

Lower second bicuspid and the upper second and first molars.

 

And why would that be?

 

Because there are energetically connected on the meridians, acupuncture meridians. Okay. Now, these things are not 100 percent. The body can just be weakened. I mean, cancer is just a dysbiosis, Okay? We all have cancer cells. Every single day we have mutated cells in our body. But our immune system, if it's strong enough, recognizes that mutation and it'll gobble up that defective cell. We have trillions of these mutations every day, but if our immune system is strong, we don't have a problem. But as soon as our system becomes weakened, we become in-dysbiosis. And that can be what's called the biological train, meaning we could have toxins in our systems. We could have we could be an exposure to, you know, we live in a toxic environment, the air, the food we breathe, the water we're drinking. Many different things affect us. But nutritional deficiencies, and if our immune system is weakened, of course, we don't recognize that defective cell, and then it starts replicating. Once it starts replicating, it has to go on for quite a period of time before it becomes noticeable enough that we would diagnose a case of cancer.

 

Okay, so, what do you recommend for people who are coming into your office? And so I know that you do a lot of work as all dentists, do with periodontics, but say somebody comes in and they are having a lot of swelling of the gums or, you know, just not taking care of the teeth well enough. How is that going to affect their overall health?

 

Well, the link between gum disease and heart disease is very, very much established. You know; Alzheimer's and a list of other chronic, all the chronic human ailments are linked basically to oral health. So, the first thing we would do is a very thorough screening exam and usually a Cambium CAT scan X-ray, you know.

 

And what is that?

 

Well, cambium allows us to look in 3D. It's a 3D capability and we have focused, cambium allows for a minimal amount of radiation. So, it's not the same as a medical scan, for instance, a 3D scan. It's a Cambium CAT scan which minimizes radiation. So, it's a very safe procedure to have done. It's really (10:01), different than what many dentists already used, which is a panoramic X-ray, except in a panoramic, you're viewing a panoramic view, you're viewing in two dimensional. So, right now, I'm holding up my hand, you know, my left hand and I've got my palm open. But behind it, I've got my right hand clenched. Okay. So, you're looking at a two-dimensional and you're saying there's nothing there. Now, if I turn it in a couple of different angles, you'll say, well, wait a minute, you're right hand is there. And it's the same thing we can do with a Cambium CAT scan. We can take any view and look at it in three-dimensional. I mean we can look at the backside, the front side, the upside, Downside. We can, you know, turn it sideways from where we can see things that we can't normally see on the dental X-ray.

 

So, is that something that a lot of dentists have in their office?

Yeah, unfortunately not. You know, a lot of doctors that do implantology now have adapted to the Cambium because it gives us the ability to know the volume of bone that we have available to put an implant into. For instance, we can see where the nerve is running in, let's say, the lower jaw. We can better localize where that nerve is. Or a lot of surgeons have Cambium capability because they want to be able to look at the tooth in three dimensions to see how it sits within the jaw.

 

Great. Well, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Dr. Anderson. To learn more or to make an appointment with Dr. Anderson, you can visit ToothBuilder.com or call 651-735-4661 again that number is 651-735-4661. You can find a podcast of this show on AM950Radio, on Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, and we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. Today, we're talking with Dr. Karl Anderson of Sedation and Implant Dentistry, which is located in St. Paul, very near to us here at the studios. So, before we left, we were talking about overall health and the importance of good dental care, good oral health. And one of the things that you kind of touched on and I didn't go back to was the cavitations. Is that what you called it? Cavitations?

 

Yes. Cavitation is basically it's a hole or a cavity in the bone in the long bone. These are actually been noted in histology and other long bones of the body usually in a result of trauma. But in the mouth, it quite often is in relationship to, for instance, wisdom teeth are a very common sight to see them, where the surgeon's goal was just was to remove the tooth. And he got the tooth out. He allowed the socket to bleed and said, okay, see you later. Okay, well, that's only half the procedure. Once you get the tooth out, you have to clean that ligament, you have to clean that socket to brid it. Clean it really well. And then, of course, in our office, we use a lot of medical-grade ozone, but we percolated medical-grade ozone in there. There's another option of putting (13:23), which is your own blood.

 

We derive a plate of rich fiber in a clot, which is antimicrobial, but it also has stem cells and bone morphogenic proteins, your own blood. So, it's a biological graft from yourself. We can put that back in the socket and usually get good healing without a cavitation. But it may be that the patient also had a low vitamin D three-level, you know, in Minnesota, I mean, most of my patients I test during winter are low in vitamin D three unless they know specifically about it and supplement. I would say 90 percent of my patients are vitamin D three deficient.

 

And so how does that impact it?

 

Well, you can have good bone healing with all good vitamin D3. And again, unknowingly, a lot of allopathic doctors say, well, I prescribe to my patient, you know, vitamin D. Well, they give them vitamin D2 which the body may not be converting. I've had patients that were extremely high on vitamin D2, but that's not the act of vitamin. You need D3 if your body can't convert D2. Well, you can take all that you want. You're not going to convert. So, you have to have vitamin D3 as a supplement.

 

So, it's really important to know that ahead of time. I mean, if you're looking at going in and having a tooth removed or having some kind of surgery done to really think about ahead of time. How can I prepare my body for the best healing? And so that's just one of the things.

 

One of the things. Good bone healing, of course, everybody automatically thinks well, calcium. I'll take more calcium. Wrong answer. No, you don't want more calcium. Most of us have enough calcium in our diet. What you need is vitamin K2 to bring calcium intracellular like otherwise, you're going to have calcium circulating in your bloodstream and actually possibly causing problems. In fact, a doctor named Thomas Levy, a medical doctor, actually wrote a book, Death by Calcium, where he talks about that.

And so what is it that it causes?

Well, after arterial sclerosis, I mean, it would cause calcium deposits in your carotid arteries and the heart arteries on valves. So, it's actually a big problem. A lot of people don't know that. Many doctors just don't even know that.

So, if you're looking at going in for some type of surgery, first of all, take a look at your vitamin D2, K2. What else can people do to prepare?

 

I think anything that can supplement the immune system, prior to big surgeries in our office, I quite often suggest to patients that they have high dose vitamin C, okay, high dose vitamin C is very antitoxin. It can also help with active infections to cut down infections, but you still have to remove the source of the infection. That's the problem. I mean, there's no magic bullet. The ozone can be used as a proprietary medicine in essence. Ozone, gas, injected right into a bone site or inject it right into a tissue to help minimize pathogens and help up-regulate the body's immune system.

 

And is that something that you do right before the procedure?

 

On the vitamin C that can be done a couple of times prior to the procedure. And there's a lot of good practitioners in town using a high dose of vitamin C. I integrate. I'm an integrative dentist, so I'm integrated with a lot of other health care providers that provide integrative care. And there's Dr. Kotowski, Dr. Lewis Hamilton, vitamin up in Minnesota. Those are all places where people can get I.V. nutrition. Why I.V. I've not just taken orally?

 

I was just going to ask you that.

 

Because most people's digestive system is all messed up, their microbiome and their bacteria are not right. So, then all of a sudden we're giving them oral nutrients and expecting that they're going to absorb them. They may or may not. If they've had a lot of antibiotics in their life, I will basically say that their digestive system is already in dysbiosis, again, a precursor to what? Maybe cancer, maybe other debilitating diseases.

 

You know, in naturopathic school, our first lecture in our first series of courses, was basically the gut-health, you know? And there's been practitioners throughout the year that basically, you know, all life and death really begin in the gut. You know, most of our gut, we have all these good bacteria and we have some bad bacteria. We have them in balance. They are in biosis. But if you give oral antibiotics, just one course of oral antibiotic will disrupt the oral flora of the gut flora for up to six months.

So, unless that patient is specifically treating themselves with probiotics or foods with natural probiotic capacity, fermented kimchi, fermented kombucha, fermented yogurt, you know, Kiffer in these things to put in naturally in the food and/or they can take a very good quality probiotic. But I take probiotics on a daily basis.

Right.

 

You know, part of all my research, you know, in naturopathic medicine and how this all integrates is, I myself was a product of allopathic medicine and problems. And so, you know, for instance, my mother died of Alzheimer's disease. I carry the Alzheimer's genes. I was tested after staring at my (18:54) grandson eight years ago, and I can't remember his name, for the life of me. I got a little frightened. So, I went to a doctor and I found out I have the Alzheimer's genes. And the thing was, well, you probably got the early-onset Alzheimer's. In a few years, you're going to be in a nursing home.

 

Well, that wasn't a real good answer for me. There's no medicine that treats Alzheimer's effectively. We know that. And so, I started looking at what I needed to do and I ended up going to a functional medicine doctor. Now, functional medicine doctors, they may be an M.D., they may not be an M.D. They're possibly most often, the area of medicine got flooded primarily with chiropractors because chiropractors don't have the ability to prescribe. So, the functional medicine doctor, the focus has to find the root cause of the problem. And there are gazillions of biochemical pathways in the body, detoxification pathways, and all sorts of things. But the functional medicine doctor will do a lot of testing to try to dial in and like a detective, find out what's causing the problem to begin with. You know, somebody didn't fall off a rock and need high blood pressure medication. They didn't have a high blood pressure medication deficiency. The blood pressure went up for a reason.

 

So, what is the reason behind it? And this is what you wanted to do for yourself, is to really go in and find out what you could do to prevent that onset.

 

Exactly. I mean, that's I went to a functional medicine doctor and it was my diet. There were certain things I was eating. I tend to be gluten-sensitive. I have previous brain damage. And because of that gluten sensitivity, I was causing inflammation on my system, which was causing clogging in my brain, and I couldn't function normal.

Well, let's talk about that when we come back as well. We'll get into that a little bit more. So, if you would like to make an appointment, Dr. Anderson, visit ToothBuilder.com or call 651 735 4661. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations, on AM950, and we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle. And today we're talking with Dr. Karl Anderson of Sedation and Implant Dentistry located in St. Paul. So, Dr. Anderson, just before we left, you were telling us a little bit about your own background and what got you interested in naturopathy and holistic approaches, which was mainly the fact that you started to notice some deficiencies may be in your memory and with your family history of Alzheimer's, you really wanted to get on top of that. And so, there has been a lot of studies done and we're hearing more and more every day about our nutrition and the toxins that we are a part of every day, that we are exposed to every day and how that impacts our health. And that's really what naturopathic medicine and functional medicine is all about, is trying to get into those root causes. And you do that as well in your dental practice.

 

Inflammation is the basis of every chronic human ailment. So, we remove the toxins, remove the causes of inflammation, and then we support the body with the proper nutrition. For instance, Dale Brotherson, a famous book on ending Alzheimer's, but Dale Brotherson took one hundred moderate to severe Alzheimer's patients and reversed all of them back to normal health with a good diet.

 

But I don't know exactly if, in fact, Dr. Brotherson, you know, if those patients were already healthier in their mouth or not. But if they're not healthy in their mouth, just like the patient that has breast cancer, if you don't deal with some of the original sources of the toxin, they're destined to have a recurrence. I see it all day long on patients that come to see me, meaning they had it before, were successfully in remission, and now they have it again. What's going on? Well, they never remove the source of the irritant.

 

They never remove the original cause, Okay? And so, I mean, you know, I mean, it's common sense things. Obviously, you can't be a smoker. You shouldn't be smoking. You shouldn't be drinking a six-pack every night. I mean, you know, if you're going to do that, you're not going to live a long life. And, you know, generally speaking, unless you have some extremely good genetics, detoxification pathways, but even, you know, there's even the gene, for instance, you got the MTA chuppah gene.

 

You can't detoxify it. You can (23:38). You're going to pick up every toxin, every pesticide, every lawn you ever walked through that was sprayed with chemicals. And you're going to absorb those into your body and your body can't get rid of them properly. And those people get really sick fairly quickly. So, most of the people that have that genetic, gene snip, my one daughter that has it. They end up knowing about it fairly quickly.

 

So how do they find out about it?

 

Well, that can be done by; again, a lot of allopathic doctors may know about it. They may not. I mean, if they don't then I won't go to that doctor. But you could maybe go to a normal allopath. But certainly; all the functional medicine doctors know that.

 

So they can do the testing and find out if you carry those genes or not. So, one of the things that you, of course, do is to treat the inflammation or to treat infections of the mouth. And what are some of the methods that you use for treating?

Well, I mean, again, the main reason why you would have an infection, you have to get rid of the source. If you have a gum disease, you have to get rid of the calculus and debris on the rough surfaces. You have to have somebody to train, somebody to take better care of their mouth on more frequent visits. That would be one thing. You would look if they have root canals.

 

Do you look in 3-D and see if you can see a recurrent abscess on that tooth? Quite often you can in the 3D cambium, you can't see it necessarily on an X-ray. If you have cavitations you look at that. If they have heavy metals in their mouth, okay, such as amalgam fillings, which has a high percentage, mostly percentage of mercury, up to 52 percent mercury.

 

You may be, look at that. Now, I can't tell a patient they should or shouldn't do anything. My basis is just to inform them and give them the information. But I'm giving them the other side of the equation that they're not getting at the traditional offices. And there are some really good books out there. The one book that I recommend and I give to every patient that comes in for counsel, I just give them the book. I probably have given all the five hundred books in the last year, but it's called Hidden Epidemic. Again,  Hidden Epidemic is written by Thomas Levy. But he talks and you know, that book is basically how silent oral infections are causing most heart attacks and cancers.

 

You know, I think about I have some stepbrothers who have passed away of heart disease and both of them had really bad oral infections, they had root canals and they had trouble with their teeth. Both of them had had teeth removed before they were 50 years old, you know, the majority of the teeth removed. And you think about that, it's like, well, you know, that that connection. When we didn't know about that before, how many people are really facing a lot of serious health problems that could be greatly reduced or even healed, just taking a look at the size of that?

 

Yeah. When I first became a dentist in 1981 for about the first 10 years of my dental practice, I actually had a lot of patients that would be referred by an oncologist prior to undergoing chemotherapy, and they would send them to me to have an oral screening done and remove any possible infectious sources in their mouth before the chemotherapy. That was then. In the last twenty-five years, I've never seen a referral from an oncologist.

 

So what do you think changed?

 

Well, I believe they believe their medications, their chemotherapies, and everything could just overpower everything. I believe that's what. Similar one you're talking about infections of mouth. I mean, a lot of people think more. Just give me an antibiotic. If I give you that antibiotic, understand, we're going to destroy good bacteria in your gut. We're going to disrupt your gut flora. I will prescribe an antibiotic because there are some times where you absolutely need medication. I'm not anti-medication. I mean, it's life or death, sometimes you need medication. But there's a lot of other things you can do topically and locally. For instance, medical-grade ozone putting that in the tissues.

 

Let's talk about that a little bit. A lot of people, you know, are not aware of what medical grade ozone is. So what is ozone?

Well, you know, obviously they're what you're breathing. They have O2 in it. That's why we call oxygen. Okay, but there is a molecule that can be created through electrolysis called ozone, which is basically O3. Now, this has been used for hundreds of years. In fact, in Germany, I think even almost 100 years ago, they started using medical-grade ozone to disinfect the water. That's what they used to treat their water, to get clean water. Either is Mannheim, Germany, if I'm not mistaken. Okay.

 

But it was used in dental procedures going way back into the early nineteen hundreds. But it's sort of, it's only become popular in the United States in the last few years. There are some places the International Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology IAOMT.org. You can go on that site, you can find a doctor that's fluent and understands ozone has medical ozone generators. Now, I'm not talking about one of these air purifiers you're putting in a room and you can make (28:50).

 

You can do that and it will help purify the air a little bit. But Ozone is not something that you really want to breathe a lot of because our lungs don't have protection against ozone. Neither do our eyes. So, you want somebody that understands ozone and what it is. Okay. But pathogens do not have any, they don't have a way to defend themselves. They don't have antioxidants. And ozone is really oxidative therapy. It causes a transient oxidative burst in the area put it into and you can actually get ozone into your blood. In fact, I've successfully treated my own malaria, successfully treated my own lime with both ozone and high dose vitamin C. I've never taken medication for either of those two diseases and I've had both them severe.

 

Are there places that actually use it for the treatment of those?

 

Yes, some of those places I mentioned Dr. Jeff Cataoski, Donna McKerrow, Dr. Elise Hamilton, Vitamin Drub, Minnesota. And there's many more. I mean, there is a Dr. Hopkins in Minneapolis, downtown Minneapolis. And I don't want to leave anybody out. Because there's a lot of good practitioners around. But you have to be proactive. You got to go on the Internet. You've got to search this a little bit. You got to you know; if you're just you don't want your if you're... And unfortunately, a lot of these therapies that are not covered under your insurance.

 

Right.

 

The government's not going to cover all this for people one way or another, you know, or your insurance company. They're in the business to make money. Insurance companies' viewpoint is they're there to make money. They're not there to make you healthy. And so they have...

 

There isn't a lot of money and good, healthy people.

 

Yeah. And so they... Basically, yeah. I mean, we have a secure industry in this country and that's what all the system is set up for secure. So, when you're talking about some of these therapies, unfortunately, some are not covered. Okay, I mean, there are traditional things. If extract a tooth, I am charging for a tooth extraction and that's covered under a lot of general insurance policies. But they're not necessarily going to cover if I put it in plate or fibrin. They may or they may not, you know. But certainly isn't (31:01) makes more sense as a stimulant to help heal the body.

 

So one of the other things that you do and there are so many things that we can talk about today. So, I want to try to touch on as many things as we can. But one of the things that you do is implants. And you have different types of implants that you use. One of them that you use is a bioceramic implant. So why do you prefer or why do you like to use bioceramic?

 

Well, what's happening, you know, in this goes back after, again, placing dental implants since nineteen, I think eighty-two was my first implantation. Since then I probably would safely say I would in the realm of 70,000 titanium implants. But back in the day, there was only a couple of manufacturers of titanium implants. I was trained in the brand mark technique out of Sweden. And of course, they had years and years of research.

 

That was where the original titanium implant research came from and they had a pure titanium implant. But that material wasn't the most ideal of them, although they eventually evolved to a titanium alloy, which all the titanium implants today are titanium alloy. But titanium, we used to say it was bioinert. We didn't have, there was nobody allergic to titanium. I mean, it's the same thing that's used if you have a hip or you have a knee, it might be titanium. Well, ask any orthopedic surgeon now, if we don't have problems with some of those hips and knees that are being redone left and right.

 

Well, why? Because the body has (32:34) become desensitized to titanium. Okay. Now, as looking at a pack of juicy fruit gum. One of the ingredients, titanium dioxide, started looking and started seeing titanium dioxide and deodorants and all these different areas of things we're being exposed to on a virtually daily basis. Maybe we've sensitized the body to titanium and that's why we're seeing problems with titanium. I'm not saying all patients that have titanium, the majority of people can still have a titanium implant, not have a problem. But there are some people, they have the best oral hygiene. They have no problem. They have no other reasons, but they develop a sensitivity to titanium and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and, you know, their titanium implant the bone around it just starts eroding in a way till we have to take it out. So, that's why a search for a more biocompatible implant came about.

 

And so that's why you started looking into the bioceramic. Yeah. So, we're going to get into that a little bit more as we go along today. I do want to say we have you have touched on a little bit about the amalgam fillings. And if people are interested, they can go back and take a look at or go back and listen to a preview show that we did with Dr. Amy Truong. She did talk about that quite a bit. So, to learn more and to make an appointment with Dr. Anderson, visit ToothBuilder.com or call 651-735-4661 again that number is 651-735-4661. You can find a podcast of this show on AM950Radio, on Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, and we will be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host, Candi Broeffle. And today we're talking with Dr. Karl Anderson of Sedation and Implant Dentistry, which is located in St. Paul. And just before the break, you were telling us about titanium implants and how people have kind of developed a sensitivity or may have developed a sensitivity to titanium. So, you were looking for an alternative and the one that you have two different ones that you use. But let's start off by talking about the bioceramic.

 

Primarily most of the implantology, I do now is bioceramic implantology just because of the knowledge I have on biocorrosion and the fact that metal gives off ions. We have actually, I've seen microphotographs of basically of a macrophage or white blood cell that has gobbled up titanium ion. Now, if you understand immunology in that macrophage, reports that right back to the left on their body starts registering, Okay, there's just a foreign invader, just a foreign body. And all of a sudden you have autoimmunity to your own implant or your knee or your hip. And they're seeing this in orthopedic surgery.

 

That's why the orthopedists are in the same boat and they're actually developing the same materials. A lot of the materials were used in dental dentistry really come from the orthopedic arena. Okay, but zirconium, which is the bioceramic implant, zirconium, it would be a transitional metal. We're not talking about zirconium. We're talking about a ceramic made from zirconium which becomes zirconia. And zirconium ceramic material is the same material that was used in orthopedic surgery, although the early versions they, you know, were not strong enough. So, like everything, technology has improved it to the point where you can take a hammer now and smash these things like they won't break.

 

They are very, very strong. The Europeans are really ahead of us on this quite a bit and the European and most of the ceramic companies, really, the dental ceramic implants come out of Europe, Okay, Germany or Switzerland. And there are some nuances to each system. So, there is, you know, depending on the doctors, you know, comfort level with different systems, they'll end up choosing which particular system they use. I've used a few of them and have settled on one particular one for a reason. It's a Swiss company and it's a good product. But in either case, they're different, though. I mean, the body doesn't respond as according to the same. Okay, meaning I put it in, as recording implant, the body doesn't get inflammation, so the body's not going to heal it via inflammation. So, we're not going to get Osteosclerotic bone integrating that implant. It's a different process.

 

But that's also where I've come to really understand the importance of good bone health and making sure we have proper nutrition, good vitamin D3 levels, I think for years I mean, we put in titanium implants. We didn't pay attention about vitamin D three and they still worked. Okay. So, because the body is healing it differently, it worked. Yeah. I don't want to cause inflammation. I don't want to cause an osteosclerotic bone. I want normal bone up against that implant in a process called Integration and that's what the zirconium implants give us. 

So, how often do you do the implants? Are you doing implants on a daily basis in your office?

 

Yeah. On a daily basis.

 

And so, people are getting them in place of if they have to have a tooth removed or...

 

Yeah. You know, we give patients options again. I mean here's your options if you had a missing tooth you can with the missing tooth. Okay, that's one option. But when you don't have the stimulus to the bone, you're going to lose more bone because a bone is a functional organ. So, if there's no stimulus to the bone, there's no reason for it to be there and you're going to lose bone density.

And when you lose bone...

 

 Yeah, I mean, it's no different than a person gets a cast put on their leg. Have you ever seen somebody with a cast cut off their leg? I mean that leg is about half the size of the other one. Right? You have atrophy of the bone. You have atrophy of the muscle because it wasn't being used. So, the same in the mouth. You know, if you have a missing tooth over a period of time, you're going to lose quite a bit of bone So, sometimes what we have to actually is create more bone. Now, again, I do that with more natural components, your own blood, and synthetic tricalcium phosphate. I'm not a big believer in using other people's bones, which is what most often used for bone grafting nowadays.

 

But in either case, if you put in, you have an option of putting implant for that one missing tooth or two missing teeth. Or you have an option of a partial denture and a partial denture is something that comes in and out of the mouth. And again, we have biomaterials now they are biocompatible. We have partial dentures. They don't have to be metal. Okay, and so, we have some very biocompatible materials that we utilize. So, those are the different (39:55) 3 unit bridge or a 4 unit bridge. You could do a prepared tooth on either side of the space and then fabricate a bridge that cements down over the teeth and has a couple of fake teeth in between. That would be a traditional bridge and every dentist knows how to do a traditional bridge. We learned during dental school.

 

So, it's just, you kind of talk to your patients about which option is best for them.

 

Yeah, and it depends a little bit on their biocompatibility. And we can even test now. We can do some tests for Biocompatibility and all the known dental materials sold in the United States. So, I can go write down a list and a composite filler material that I'm going to use is going to be sensitive on you. But it might be okay for me. So, everybody's individual, our bodies are individual. And so we have to look at an individual approach to any of this kind of therapy and what might be, you might be totally happy and okay with a partial denture, but some people don't want something that's removable. So, then that's where you start talking, maybe implantology or traditional bridgework.

 

So, we only have a couple of minutes left in today's show. So, thank you for being with us. But one of the things that I did want to touch on with you is sedation. There should be no reason why people don't go in and get good dental care. And one of the things that you do is, you provide sedation for people who have dental anxiety.

 

Yeah. I started that back in about 1985. I went out to, maybe 86, went out to UCLA, got trained by Stan the man Milliman. OK, the expert at that time on. Stan, the man. Shout out to Stan if you're out there. Anyway, but Stan wrote the textbook on (41:34) of dentistry back in the day. Now say there's been a tremendous evolution again in this area of dentistry. And there are courses that a variety of dentists can go to to get different levels of sedation. But the sedation is a range, I guess, you know, in a sense. I mean, obviously, most dental offices have nitrous oxide. Well, that's a sedative, but it's a very light one. Now it's very safe for most people unless you have the MTA (42:06), then it's not safe. Okay? But for most people, you know, nitrous oxide, they can just get a little bit relaxed and it wears off very quickly. They can even drive themselves to and from the appointment. But we have oral sedation. And then we have IV sedation. 75 percent of the adults in this country do not seek dental care because they're frightened.

 

Right. So, there are options and you provide one, which is sedation. So, for people who want to learn more and to make an appointment with Dr. Anderson, visit ToothBuilder.com or call (651) 735-4661. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, for joining us. And thank you for joining our conversation today as we awaken to natural health. To find a podcast of this show on AM950Radio, on Apple and Google Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, Progressive Voice of Minnesota, and I'm wishing for you a lovely day!