Operator
I take great pleasure in introducing Dr. Louisa Williams, who received the naturopathic training at Bastyr University. She holds a Master’s degree in psychology, [always raised me] and a degree in chiropractic and is the author of Radical Medicine which is in itself a wonderful departure from the world of, well, drill, fill, and bill dentistry and see it, and that is, you know what that is, right? You show up, we see you and see you, that’s it. So Dr. Williams?
Louisa Williams
Thank you, John. Appreciate it. So thank you for asking me here, it’s such an honor to present in front of my favorite dental group and it’s so great to see friends, some of them I hadn’t seen in 20, 25 years. Feel like we have been through the wars together. You know, as holistic physicians and biological dentists, we have been through the wars together. So thank you so much for allowing me to present here.
So my first presentation is on naturopathic prophylaxis, it’s there in your notes. I have changed the name of your time, sorry. And I never know how long these talks are going to go. So why don’t we go ahead and get started because at the end, I have a – I am going to be having you guys workshop together on a new test I want you to try and perform in your office. So I want to have enough time for that.
All right. So you all know this but what changed in April 2007? After over 50 years, what standard of care was largely discarded that was very significant for all dentists but especially biological dentists? There you go. Antibiotic prophylaxis, it’s no longer — it was no longer advised for mitral valve prolapse and mitral valve disease typically, which is a big population, rheumatic heart disease, bicuspid valve disease, aortic stenosis and regular congenital heart conditions. However, it was still advised for high-risk patients, serious congenital heart conditions, patients that had undergone surgery, artificial heart valves, a significant history of infective endocarditis. And I think this is in your notes but I added recently the first two years following joint replacement, which is a sizable percentage nowadays, right? Lots of patients of ours are getting hip and joint surgery.
So what happened is American Heart Association, a group of 23 doctors along with American Dental Association dentists got together and did a retrospective study for 56 years. They did this huge longitudinal study of a MEDLINE search to try to figure out if giving antibiotics for the transient bacteremia after dental drilling or any kind of dental procedure was indeed worthwhile. And Walter Wilson, the head of the group concluded that only an extremely small number of bacterial endocarditis affecting the valves or infective endocarditis might be prevented by antibiotic prophylaxis for dental procedures, if – if it was even effective. And he went on to say, there is actually no evidence that it works after 56 years of giving patients preventive antibiotics. This is a huge population.
And I kept looking in the article, you’re like, where is the I am sorry or anything? Can you imagine it, naturopaths for 56 years had been giving statin and we found out it doesn’t even work? Anyway, no, I’m sorry, just this is what they had found. So no research, no prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled studies. Of course, this policy, this recommendation began in the 1950s throwing antibiotics at everything, right? It was kind of like that was the style, that was the standard of care at that time, and it just kept going, which for many people it still does overprescribing of antibiotics.
So for us biological dentists and biological physicians, I like that John biological physicians too, we look in the mouth and work with dentists or biological physicians, yeah I like that new term. So for us, it was an excellent change because you know, we don’t like giving any antibiotics unless it’s really necessary, because we know the side effects and the real damage to the gut and dysbiosis that it can cause. George Vithoulkas, a very famous Greek homeopath, wrote a good book on the damage from antibiotics and other drugs and “A New Model for Health and Disease” is the title and he said that our quality of health depends almost entirely on the quality of microorganisms that exist normally within our bodies. If our gut is healthy, our immune system is functioning just as simple as that.
So antibiotics have been labeled as ecological marauders by Dr. Nigel Plummer. He’s a British microbiologist and expert on antibiotics and dysbiosis and also probiotic. So he has found that cephalosporin erythromycin families are capable of eliminating 99% of Lactobacillus species, the most common microorganisms, in our esophagus tube. By the way there is lactobacillus predominately in our esophagus as well as in our intestines, especially small intestine. Of course, we know that our bodies have the ability to recolonize afterwards after a bout of antibiotics but if you’re eating sugar and a toxic diet and you’ve had a lot of rounds of antibiotics that gets less and less possible.
Alexander Fleming who accidentally discovered penicillin, right, was quite honest in the early 1940s, mid-1940s. He cautioned people the misuse of penicillin could lead to mutant forms of bacteria resistant to the drug back in 1945, long time ago. So good for him and his honesty. He was already seeing this in his laboratory. So now we have MRSA, we’ve had MRSA for quite a while. In the 1950s, penicillin was 95% effective in killing staph aureus, 95% effective in the 1950s. Now we have methicillin resistant staph aureus, these little bugs have figured out how to be resistant to the methicillin. And so doctors and hospitals where these infections ran rampant, started using vancomycin.
Well then vancomycin started having a resistance to Staphylococcus. The vancomycin-resistant staph aureus bug, bacteria figured out how to thicken cell walls so that vancomycin couldn’t get in. And we know that MRSA infections are very dangerous, these are the flesh eating bacteria, so called necrotizing fasciitis where it eats away of the skin and the subcu tissue and even the organs, causes toxic shock syndrome and cause death. So it’s a very serious problem. So antibiotics aren’t the answer, they were in the ‘50s, they were amazing at first but as anything that’s toxic and synthetic, it won’t hold up in the long run, right? We know that, it just won’t hold up and it’s not holding up.
So nosocomial infections, hospital-induced infections, another one is the Clostridium difficile, this bacteria is resistant to antibiotics. This one is so pathogenic it literally peels off the lining of the intestine, very dangerous. I have a patient in Rhode Island. He’s 85 years old and he’s just gone through that. And we’ve got him back in good shape but he was in the hospital twice and almost died. So it results in a very explosive debilitating and often lethal form of diarrhea. So often what they use for Clostridium difficile is vancomycin, and that’s not working for Clostridium all the time now anyway and so sometimes they’ll use metronidazole which is Flagyl which nowadays has a warning label, has caused cancer in mice and rats. Literally that’s a dangerous drug to take, but it’s like, what is the biggest gun, what do we do now? If this doesn’t work, then what do we do? This is a very important study.
Antibiotics, overuse of antibiotics can cause cancer. This is a Washington State study, more than 10,000 women, there were exactly 2266 women older than 19 with primary invasive breast cancer and then they had this huge control group, 7953 random control group. And they found that women who have taken more courses of antibiotics have doubled the chances of getting breast cancer. I can’t tell you exactly how many rounds of antibiotics that was because it was based on the age. So it’s more a percentage thing but this is a very important study well-controlled study. There was only one other study before that, when you think about it, who’s going to fund these studies? It’s not like the drug companies are going to fund this.
So there was a Finland study in 1999 before that was reported in the British Journal of Cancer in 2000 and in Finland, they found that women with chronic urinary tract infections that took antibiotics a lot were much more prone to get cancer. And they even controlled for the urinary tract infection bacteria. So it wasn’t the bacteria, it was the antibiotic use.
So is Dr. Huggins here? Not yet. Well I love Hal Huggins because he says things so clearly. So in a recent Weston A. Price journal he said, antibiotics are not like John Wayne, right, and we feel that way and you hear patients say that sometimes like I am just going to break down, I am just going to take the antibiotic and get rid of it. And it does cause short-term usual decrease in symptoms but Dr. Huggins said when he fired at the bad guy John Wayne, the bad guy fell over dead, right? You’re going to kill the bug, when in fact, what happens in our body as the bacterium explodes, we don’t have the knowledge and wisdom of the immune system sending out macrophages and white blood cells and CD cells and quarantining and getting rid and eating up of the particular bacteria. We have an explosion, hundreds of bacterial endotoxins, fragments of the pathogenic bacteria and then the body must try to eliminate them.
So autoimmune disease is a result of this, giving so many antibiotics to the tissue just gets more and more congested and what happens with all these foreign proteins and foreign toxins and byproducts of chronic infection is that the tissue no longer recognizes itself. In autoimmune disease as you know is just epidemic. Now the Merck manual, our conventional medical manual we all have, we all study, has actually clearly said lupus interstitial nephritis, myasthenia gravis, it’s already admitted to several autoimmune diseases that are clearly the result of taking antibiotics. Now when you think about it, most autoimmune diseases are rather slow in coming, right? So these are just the ones that are obvious most of the time, who knows how somebody develops an autoimmune disease.
So another autoimmune disease that is rather a new acronym is PANDAS, many of you have heard this and this is an autoimmune disease due to the tonsils. This is Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus Infection. So after as a sore throat, after tonsillitis, after otitis media, children can begin to exhibit obsessive compulsive disease syndromes, Chorea like movements, involuntary movements, tics, it’s very similar to Tourette. And in the old days Sydenham’s chorea, which has been around for over a century and has been written on, that was that Saint Vitus Dance when the involuntary movements were very strong, that’s been recognized for over a century. As a result of streptococcus bacteria causes these neurological symptoms.
So when I have a Tourette’s patients, what do I always look for, is it tonsil focus? Be sure and ask about the history of that and usually it’s after tonsillitis and then antibiotics and that just drives the autoimmune disease in deeper. Now unfortunately, what’s the conventional treatment? They’re blaming it all on strap, not the antibiotics too and the conventional treatment is just more antibiotics. So I have – you won’t find this if you google it because I just made this up, but this is called [Grandist] and we all know as biological dentists and physicians. What is Grandist? Well, it’s a chronic tonsil focal infection. Chronic tonsil focal infection which are really even harder than dental focal infections. So this is for all of us adults that still have a little OCD or tics or worry or anxiety, huge population of patients.
So how do you diagnose [Grandist] in an adult – well, the person almost always has a significant childhood history of sore throats, tonsillitis, ear infections and then what they remember of how many antibiotic rounds they took in, it’s hard to say. As an adult, you may or may not have sore throats and swollen glands, sometimes you can or you may have no symptoms at all. Now we’re talking about everybody, not just people that haven’t had a tonsillectomy, without a tonsillectomy, you can still have the symptoms because remember we have five tonsils. We don’t just have two. We don’t have the palatine pharyngeal tonsils only, right? We got tubal tonsils that relate to the ear, lingual to the tongue, and the laryngeal to the windpipe, to larynx. So this Waldeyer’s ring is all going to be infected as well as the chain of lymph nodes and cervicals, you can’t take it out, you can’t slice it all out, you can’t improve things, but it’s better to treat it holistically, treat the whole body.
So chronic tonsil focal infections are grandest as an adult, anxiety and obsessive worrying, subtle compulsive movements, tapping, twisting on your fingers, knee jerking, fidgeting, constant clearing of the throat, little tics. I now I’ve had these things. So – and of course, as adults we cover it up. You notice you’re kind of doing this with your leg or fidgeting and you could say, what is that, why is it my nervous system quiet and relaxed and enjoying this beautiful Carmel weather. What’s going on with this? A lot of it is streptococcus bacteria and our tonsils are in that lymphatic area causing chronic autoimmune neurological stress.
So the good news, so the new April 2000 guidelines, I think we were all really excited about that, because it will reduce antibiotic resistance and antibiotic induced illnesses for a significant percentage of the population. However, what’s the bad news about that? Well, what do we do about bacteremia, bacteria migrating in the bloodstream to different areas in the body after of any kind of dental work? So is bacterial metastasis to the heart, for example, after dental drilling significant? So here’s some research studies just periodontal probing measuring pockets in patients with gingivitis and periodontal — periodontitis create significant bacteremia from 10 to 40% of the time. Well, we agree with that because when you have gingivitis and periodontitis obviously you’re going to have bacteremia. So these are more vulnerable population, but many of our patients are quite a vulnerable population. Bacteremia from dental procedures, inter-ligament injection, injections most of the time, 90% of the time, wedge dam placement 32, rubber dam placement, 29, polishing teeth 24, this is in pediatric cardiology though.
So this is a healthy population of children. So this is just in healthier children, not even in adults that have more chronic illnesses. Bacteremia from extractions, again we’re talking about children, no history of disease. Extractions in children cause bacteremia 69 to 72% of the time as measured by blood cultures and studies indicate bacteremia from extractions 39 to 100%. Of course, extractions really cause a lot of bleeding and that goes into the bloodstream and can be measured afterwards. As we said, patients with gingival disease are more susceptible. Of course, this was — this study was 100 children aged 1 to 8 years old. How many children have that significant gingivitis, isn’t that funny? Yeah, this was in Journal of American Dental Association, they found them.
So even tooth brushing we should be taking antibiotics, right, after we brush our teeth at night and even tooth brushing, manual brushing 46%, electric toothbrushes 78%. So what does that mean? Eating or chewing gum causes bacteremia. So now you’re thinking, well lots of stuff cause bacteremia, right? But to our patients that can be a very real threat to vulnerable populations. When I used to be less healthy, I’d go to the dentist and get a cleaning and I would feel bad afterwards. I’d have patients feel bad afterwards, especially sensitive patients, and we had means of taking products and stuff that reduced that bacteria just even after a cleaning. So bacteremia – the bacteria in the bloodstream and also in the lymphatics and walking along the nerves to axonal transport, that’s a very real threat and it increases the load on any existing bacterial focal infections.
Let’s talk about bacterial endocarditis. So bacterial endocarditis is an infection of endocardium affecting the inner lining of the heart and its valves, mainly the valves. Now is bacterial infective endocarditis that rare? Well, it’s hard to say because it isn’t seen and it is not diagnosed that often. Now here’s a more broader definition of bacterial endocarditis rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever, nowadays you don’t hear about that much either, right? It’s an acute inflammatory complication of this strap bacteria, and it affects the joints, the brain and the heart, right, because it’s followed — it’s characterized by arthritis, chorea against central nervous system distress and Carditis, heart pain. So with residual heart disease as a possible sequel event.
So this is usually after dental drilling or some kind of trauma or like that the patient comes home and they get severe flu and then they go to the doctor and they are diagnosed with rheumatic fever. So what did Weston Price say that the two worst things were in life in regard to stress to our immune system? What were the two worst challenges in life? Divorce and death. You’re close. So Dr. Price said the two biggest challenges to our immune system in life are pregnancy, it’s a big deal, a woman has to really be taken care of, nourished, and flu for he lived through the 1918 flu. But this is what this rheumatic fever is. It’s characterized by like flulike symptoms which are sometimes diagnosed as rheumatic fever often missed.
Rheumatic disease just to review, this is any disease of streptococcal bacterial origin. Now again this used to be a lot more common and talked about in the 1950s, 1940s but then when antibiotics came in, as soon as you gave an antibiotic, yes that did reduce the symptoms. So it’s not talked about so much. But we know what the antibiotics do, they kill some bugs, other ones cause later problems. So as biological dentists and physicians and practitioners, we know about silent focal infections. That’s why I love this group because we’re very aware of these chronic silent focal infections that conventional dentists and doctors aren’t aware of at all and sadly, holistic practitioners and physicians aren’t very aware of at all.
So what are typical focal infections? The dental tonsils, sinus, genital, other foci, and what do these focal infections do? They are chronically like a machine generating pathogenic bacteria and they are going to migrate and metastasize typically to what’s called rheumatic disturbed fields in the body, rheumatic streptococcal related places that make a happy home for strep bacteria where strep bacteria like to live. And there are five main rheumatic disturbed fields. First of all, the heart, again the endocarditis to the valves, rheumatic fever includes all of these — three of these areas. Joints chronic rheumatoid arthritis, kidney’s acute chronic glomerular nephritis, the gut, appendicitis, stomach duodenal ulcers, and we already talked about the brain. In the old days they called it chorea, nowadays we call it Tourette’s. It’s really the same thing.
It is interesting Tourette’s was diagnosed or identified by a Frenchman Tourette in an 86-year-old woman in the 1880s, unusual? Because nowadays we see it in children and teens and usually after that except for 10% of the time the patient adapts and it’s not so obvious those kind of symptoms or they grow out of it as they say. PANDAS, Grandas and then this whole epidemic of ADD, ADHD, hyperactivity in kids, all manifestations of strep bacteria. So I want to mention Edward Rosenow. Who knows Edward Rosenow? Such an amazing man and if you do get my book, I hope you will read that history as well (inaudible) to my next book the price of root canals, the turn of the 20th century was just amazing. That was just the hallmark, that was the time of focal infection theory that was just exploding, and we had an incredible research that — doing root canals became such a thing, giving antibiotics in the ‘30s and ‘40s, which was huge backlash to that and then it all died. And we are the ones taking up the reins on that and telling people, yes, focal infections are real, we have to address them. You can’t diagnose what you don’t know about and treat.