Is this you? Are you constantly so tired that you find it difficult to complete simple tasks like tying your shoelaces? And your children – are they travelling from one remedial therapist to the other to try and improve their well-being and concentration span?

The key to improving your health and that of your children may lie in your mouth in your amalgam restoration.

When your dentist mixes substances together to make up your silver filling, they also use mercury, a poison. Updated research suggests that the key to diseases like Yuppie Flue and Alzheimer’s may start the moment you open your mouth in the dentist’s chair.

Amalgam contains 50% mercury, one of the most toxic substances known to man. Of course, fillings also contain silver, copper, zinc and tin, and once combined, the mercury is said to be ‘locked in’ and therefore no longer hazardous.

The South African Dental Association states that mercury in amalgams is safely locked in. Dr Neil Campbell of the association explains.

Dr Neil Campbell, SA Dental Association: ‘We do believe that mercuric vapour is given off during the insertion and during the removal of fillings, so there is a small risk during that period of time, but it is very, very small. And we believe that an inter-metallic compound is formed when the filling sets and that very, very small – if any – mercury vapour is given off at that point in time.

Dr Pieter Cloete runs an advanced medical practice in George – one of only nine in the world. Here he tests the metal levels in the bodies of patients.

Dr Pieter Cloete, medical doctor: ‘We don’t want to get into a controversy about the issue of amalgams. To us it’s a clear-cut issue. So those people that are still fighting the idea of whether there’s poisoning, whether there’s absorption, whether there’s corrosion, really this is wasting time, as far as we’re concerned, on the patient’s part.

High mercury levels are linked to the number of amalgam fillings. He believes that there is enough scientific research available to prove this.

Dr Cloete: ‘You can go and look at studies which have all been written up in peer review journals, where, by chewing, you will more than double the amount of mercury that appears in the saliva after chewing – a matter of 10 minutes.’

Dr Peter Clark, a homeopath, maintains that the release of mercury from amalgam breaks down the immune system components.

Dr Peter Clark, homeopath: ‘This slide is interesting in that it illustrates the amount of bacterial activity that is frequently evident in patients with mercury amalgam fillings, and what the immune system will allow is the cultivation of these micro-organisms so that they absorb the mercury. But it’s a kind of trade-off that doesn’t work that well because these micro-organisms also have their own functions – they have their digestive and excretory systems, which play a large role in
creating toxins in the body.’

Tisha Bransby is a registered nurse who suffered – over a period of 38 years – a combination of symptoms, including kidney problems and facial neuralgia. It is only when a homeopath advised her to take out her amalgam fillings that her health improved – but it came at a price.

Tisha Bransby, medical nurse: ‘From two weeks after the first time I had my first three fillings removed, and then the second Saturday after that I had my four top lefts removed, and I went straight into detox. By the Sunday night I was dumped into it.’

For almost a year after Tisha’s fillings had been removed her chest and face peeled and blistered as her body got rid of its toxic load – mercury.

Les Aupiais: ‘Did you have a lot of work done on your teeth?’

Tisha: ‘I had 15 fillings, full-tooth fillings – all my back teeth were full mercury. When I had the neuralgia, they actually thought it was toothache, so they took out the old fillings and put in new ones, over and over again. And we just never correlated it with my symptoms just exploding.’

Tisha’s extreme reaction to the mercury load in her body cannot be ignored if you look at photographs of her at that time. The dental association states, however, that only a small group of people suffer an allergic reaction.

Dr Campbell: ‘There are certain people who are allergic to metals. The most common metal for allergies is nickel, but of course you can be allergic to any metal at all, including mercury, including silver.’

Worldwide there is a more holistic approach to health. Access to the Internet means that more and more people can look up on the latest research, which is why so many South Africans contacted Swedish doctor Christer Malmstroem to find out about the potentially toxic effects of amalgams.

Dr Malmstroem is a dentist who has researched the use of amalgam in dentistry over the last 25 years. He is a key scientist involved in an ongoing government survey on the toxic effects of mercury. Now, after five years, this government report will be published in early June. This report involves 3600 studies and the work of more than 700 scientists. Some of the conclusions are that amalgam presents a serious risk for brain development in foetuses.

Dr Christer Malmstroem, dentist: ‘You can measure much higher mercury and silver levels in the brain, kidney and liver of the babies whose mothers have amalgam fillings than for those who have not.’

Dr Malmstroem researched the effect of amalgam on unborn babies because he was alarmed by the large number of spontaneous abortions and stillborn babies amongst dental nurses.

Dr Malmstroem explains that the foetus has only an inlet,¬ resulting in mercury accumulating for over nine months in the unborn baby.

The report also states that mercury influences early childhood development negatively. And Dr Malmstroem’s research shows that certain actions – like brushing the teeth and eating – increase the release of mercury.

Dr Malmstroem: ‘No amalgam in the mouth, no mercury. When you have amalgam you have always mercury in your mouth. When you eat, it doubles. When you brush your teeth it’s nearly ten doubles. And if you polish the tooth it can rise 100-fold.’

A microscopic image shows to what extent fillings corrode and, according to Dr Malmstroem, modern chemicals in food and products contribute to this corrosion and subsequent release into the body.

Dr Malmstroem: ‘Mercury and silver also pass into the brain through the blood.’

Once in the brain, it could be linked to some of the alleged symptoms that patients display.

Dr Malmstroem: ‘Concentration difficulties, forgetfulness, short-term memory, unmotivated crying, feeling frozen. There are many, many symptoms.’

Other common symptoms are headaches, extreme tiredness, heart palpitations, infections, diarrhoea, clouded vision, hypersensitivity to light, sound, smell, taste and electricity.

Dr Malmstroem: ‘You can’t diagnose by single symptoms what is characteristic with amalgam poisoning. It’s the pattern of the symptoms.’

Dr Clark looks at the patterns in blood as keys to the health of patients with amalgam fillings.

Dr Clark: ‘These cells are joined up in such a way that they cannot provide oxygen adequately, so this is where you see intracellular respiration interfered with. These formations cut down on the surface area of the blood available to provide oxygen for the patient. In another picture, normal blood, healthy, full of activity, the cells repelling each other.’

Dr Malmstroem would like to see the use of amalgam in dentistry banned. ¬ He maintains that it also affects the absorption of vitamins and nutrients negatively. The green column in a graphic shows the improvement in health in a study group after amalgam fillings had been removed,¬ as opposed to the red column which shows how sick they were.

Dr Campbell: ‘People get desperate. They have diseases medical science can’t help them with, and so they look for possible causes. That’s why we are so keen to have scientific evidence. If we have scientific evidence, then there’ll be an immediate change around in the whole dentistry industry around the world.’

Dr Clark: ‘People who attend this clinic, who suffer from chronic degenerative disease, almost inevitably you find that, on examination, they have either a small or large amount of so-called silver fillings.’

Richard Weeden of the African Health and Development Organisation would like to see a change in present legislation in South Africa. Here the fact that it is cheap and durable plays a larger role than in Sweden.

Richard Weeden, African Health and Development Organisation: ‘If you look at the more expensive alternatives to amalgam, that’s obviously out of the reach of a lot of people. But I think that the next step that we could go to here would be at least to have dentists warn their patients that there is amalgam, so you have that informed consent, which isn’t really happening at this stage.’

Yet there are a couple of amalgam-free practices, like that of Dr Andy Effting.

Dr Andy Effting, dentist: ‘It’s at the time of placement of fillings and the time of removal of fillings that the patient is more at risk to mercury exposure. And it’s imperative that if they’re already sick and toxic with mercury in their system, that they don’t get a further load of mercury.’

Les Aupiais: ‘How do you remove it in a safe way?’

Dr Effting: ‘The first thing that we do is to apply a rubber dam, which is a latex membrane that gets fitted over the tooth and it screens the rest of the mouth from the toxicity of the particles that are released in the process of the removal. So no amalgam bits touch the soft tissues, and there’s no possibility of any ingestion or inhaling of the mercury particles.’

Dr Campbell: ‘I would advise viewers not to panic if they read something about amalgam toxicity. I believe that nothing has been proved yet.’

A composite filling should cost you about R513 and a traditional amalgam filling about R383. The choice is yours.