Captations

Another little known but highly toxic dental condition is the cavita-tion. When the larger teeth are removed in the standard dental fash­ion, cavitations will commonly result.⁵ The tooth sits in a shock-absorbing hammock called the periodontal ligament. This ligament separates the tooth from the surrounding jawbone. When this ligament is not also removed with the tooth, incomplete healing of the remaining hole can be anticipated. Generally, the ligament will not attach strongly enough to the tooth to be removed as well, and a brief but additional procedure is necessary to remove it after the tooth has been extracted. When the ligament is allowed to re­main, the surrounding jawbone has no "realization" that the tooth inside the ligament is gone, and there is no natural signal for bone growth to commence across the ligament and into the hole. Instead, bone heals over the top of the hole from the upper edges of the ex­traction site, where there is no ligament separating the bone cells from the hole. Since the bacteria of the mouth will always get into this hole before the cap heals over, toxins will develop and accumu­late in this cavitation hole after the seal is complete and no oxygen is available, just as they do in the case of a root canal.

Pathologically, a cavitation represents a focus of wet gangrene in the jawbone. Any doctor will tell you that the only treatment for gangrene anywhere in the body is either amputation or a complete

168 Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health

cleaning out of the area. Yet most people, thanks to the almost rou­tine extraction of wisdom teeth, have several of these gangrenous pockets in their jawbones. Typically these cavitations remain unad-dressed for life, yet they are a source of continuous and chronic poisoning.

Without even realizing the existence of cavitations as a routine occurrence following dental extractions, Joshipura et al. published a study showing that tooth loss is also associated with cardiovascular disease.⁶ It would seem that these cavitations represent one more in­dependent risk factor for heart disease, and, undoubtedly, all the other diseases that are aggravated by unneutralized toxicity.