This article first appeared in the June 2017 issue of Austin All Natural magazine.

© 2018, Austin All Natural

DRAIN THE BRAIN: Can your dentist help prevent brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis?

by Dr. Matthew Carpenter

In June 2011, Derek Sivers wrote an article entitled Fish Don’t Know They’re in Water , suggesting someone’s so submerged in something they’re no longer aware of it. I’m reminded of that as a way to introduce information to share with fellow Integratively Minded Austinites (IMA’s).

Like fish in water, we exchange with our environment. Water and air seem different, but both act as a medium for exchange, a way for organisms to expel wastes and get precious, life-sustaining oxygen. 

Our exchange process hasn’t changed for thousands of years. What’s changed is the environment with which we’re exchanging. It’s become increasingly toxic – air we breathe, water we drink, soil we grow food in, ways we communicate, materials for making, clothes, cosmetics, houses. Even soap for bathing, containers for drinking, and pastes for brushing teeth contain poisonous substances.

What’s an informed person to do? A baby born today already contains over two hundred toxic, non-biodegradable substances, half of which are carcinogenic. This is horrifyingly astounding, but helps us understand the trend we’re seeing.

Children are being born with increased cognitive impairments (autism and other spectrum disorders), impaired healing and detox (methylation) systems, and heavy metal poisoning and adrenal fatigue. At birth, human liver, kidney, brain, and immune functions aren’t fully developed or strong enough to deal with the poisons newborns have to contend with today.  

As the world becomes more toxic, your brain becomes more toxic. 

We’re in an osmotic equilibrium with the environment, becoming increasingly affected. The toxic milieu we exchange with supports the growth of unhealthy, pathogenic micro-biome in the brain and gut – parasites and infections, strongly interacting with the epigenetic regulation of our genes.

We are, in other words, beginning to express less than our genetic best, as epigenetic damage is passed on to offspring, affecting people, animals, and plants, generation to generation. 

I’ve noticed this in my practice – impaired healing with younger people, and the negative impact mercury and infections from procedures like root canals have on an already weakened and impaired healing and detox system. Several young patients, women eighteen to twenty-five, have had their lives completely derailed by a single root canal. 

Like Derek Sivers suggested in his article, we’re so surrounded with local culture – in this case, toxins we eat, breathe, bathe, and make love in – we can’t see the universal truths and human rights violated in the name of industry. 

My intention is to help raise consciousness regarding the truth about what’s happening, and what we can do to alter the course we’re on regarding neuro-inflammatory illnesses like Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and Parkinson’s.

In the June 2015 issue of NeuroscienceNews.com an article titled Researchers find missing link between the brain and immune system… implications profound for neurological diseases from autism to Alzheimers to Multiple Sclerosis revealed a stunning discovery, overturning decades of false medical training and textbook teaching.

The melatonin connection. 

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine determined the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist. Called the glymphatic (glial lymphatic) system, this system is designed to help drain toxins from the brain. Here’s how it works:

When you chew, muscles in your face pump lymphatics. 

Although this isn’t research based, I believe this is why we’re seeing more people grind their teeth during the night – in an increasingly toxic world, the body’s compensating by increasing muscle activity at night through grinding and stress. 

Research does demonstrate losing vertical height of your face from grinding affects your glial lymphatic system’s ability to drain – losing 3 mm of tooth structure from grinding could contribute to up to fifty percent less ability for your brain to clear toxins. 

This has become an important reason in our integrative dental practice to evaluate grinding (bruxism) potential in patients, as it relates to supporting competent brain lymphatic drainage. It’s even been shown “rhythmic skull compressions” during rest and “anterior neck lymphatic drainage” can increase your ability to drain brain toxins.

            By pumping cerebrospinal fluid through brain tissues, the glymphatic system flushes waste from your brain into your body’s circulatory system. From there, wastes eventually reach your liver, where they’re eliminated. 

The glymphatic system ramps up at night during sleep, becoming ten times more active than during wakefulness and allowing the brain to clear out toxins – including harmful amyloid-beta , the buildup of which has been linked to Alzheimer’s.

Clean your head. 

Employing traditional German neural therapy, a technique used at Transcend Dental Health assists drainage of harmful toxins built up in the brain from any number of reasons – unsafe environment (like a dental office using toxic materials, or removing them unsafely), poor sleep, no light control during sleep, history of leaky gut syndrome. 

We use a safe anesthetic to stimulate ten to twelve different lymphatic areas, including the neck chain, tonsils, adenoids, resulting in the stimulation of the glial lymphatic system, helping to reduce brain inflammation and toxicity. 

The entire procedure, taking less than fifteen minutes, is completely safe, with no harmful chemicals. It’s designed to trigger and stimulate your body’s natural channels for drainage, at your own pace. Binders like chlorella, charcoals, or clays are sometimes employed if there’s a potential to drop heavy-metal toxic loads. It’s also helpful to have vitamin C therapy in conjunction with the protocol – affectionately named Clean the Head. 

We’ve seen tremendous results with this protocol, including immediate improved mental acuity and less brain fog – and, with repeated exposure, improved psychological attitude and emotional wellbeing from reducing toxic loads on the brain.

To help patients preventively with brain health, a history and initial exam are taken prior to any therapy, including:

Examination. A single digital X-ray and oral exam helps see if you’re exposing your brain to toxic dental materials like nickel, aluminum, and mercury.  Sometimes, removing these materials through safe, well-controlled dental procedures is the first step of any detox program, to slow down or completely stop exposure to substances you wish to reduce.  

A history of scars . Scars left after removal of tonsils, or scars in bone caused by improper healing after tooth removal or root canal therapy, can allow migration of anaerobic, flesh-eating bacteria, resulting in dead jawbone tissue up to 5 cm from the treated tooth. These scars act like blocked highways, preventing proper head lymphatic drainage. 

Removing infection . Head and neck drainage of brain toxins are sometimes improved by removing infected root canal-treated teeth and cleaning out necrotic jawbone infections, called cavitational osteonecrosis. Neural therapy and ozone are sometimes used in conjunction with surgeries at Transcend Dental Health.

Family history . Other integrative providers are used to assess genetic inabilities to manufacture and regulate neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, through genetic testing specific for supporting brain detox pathways, muscle-tested for accuracy. Many people have genetic inabilities to drain toxins like metals because of impaired liver or kidney function.

Support the body. We frequently recommend homeopathic kidney, lymph, and liver systemic drainage formulas, to reduce your body’s toxic load naturally and safely through improved drainage and support of your body’s intrinsic drainage pathways. We work with integrative providers that can energetically assess many important factors supporting proper drainage – critical to any person wishing to stay well, given the toxic nature of our current world.

            Legal cannabinoids.   We also support brain nourishment, and reduce inflammation, through the use of CBD oils and other legal cannabinoids, shown repeatedly in research to reduce brain inflammation radically and naturally.  

If you have a history of neurodegenerative disease in your family, are experiencing brain fog related to environmental or occupational exposure, or just want to be proactive about protecting your brain health, it’s possible to push the limits of natural healing, plasticity, and regeneration. Protecting the health of your brain is a God-given right everyone has.

Dr. Matthew Carpenter of Transcend Dental Health uses drill-free air abrasion, ozone therapy, natural alternatives to antibiotics, non-surgical treatment of gum disease, safe mercury and root canal removal, and natural heavy metal elimination. To schedule a consultation to discuss a plan to protect your brain, call (512) 255-3618.

www.tdhtx.com