Written by Kerry Pieri

Dr Leedia Ryman is a holistic dentist out of Los Angeles who takes mouth health very seriously. Because the truth is, as the word holistic might suggest, good mouth health is overall health. While oral hygiene is wildly important, if you’re living with mercury fillings, all of the flossing and oil pulling won’t counteract having a toxin in your body. Mercury poisoning can have long-term detrimental effects that range from autoimmune disease to kidney damage. So who needs mercury fillings removed, what are the dangers if they are leaching into the body, how do you safely remove them if you choose to, can you safely live with your mercury fillings, and how do you properly detox afterwards if you do choose removal? Dr. Leedia breaks down all of our dire questions on mercury and beyond. 

Why would someone need to remove their mercury fillings?

Mercury is one of the most toxic substances on the planet. Actual mercury comprises 50% of the mercury filling. Over time there is mercury leakage from the filling and they start to break. The strength of the mercury filling isn't comparable to the strength of the tooth. So the heat and the chewing process and heated foods and drink, can create microfractures in the mercury filling or between the mercury filling and the tooth. They're just really not biocompatible. Mercury causes neurological issues, muscle issues, gait issues, so many issues. I had a person with severe anxiety remove 13 mercury fillings, and it improved her anxiety. Usually when you have a lot of mercury fillings, it coincides with not having the best nutrition or your upbringing was a little compromised, maybe your parents didn't know the value of teeth. So maybe oral hygiene wasn’t a priority, nutrition wasn't a priority, supplementation wasn’t a priority, so it really goes hand in hand. Generally, they still place mercury fillings in lower socioeconomic status areas, and insurances still pay for mercury fillings, which is horrific. And they also don't look good, right?

When your mouth is clear of mercury fillings, you're getting rid of toxins. And also your mouth is very close to your brain, so any toxins, any infection, any chronic illness stemming from the mouth, really impacts our brain, our spinal cord, everything.

Do you recommend that anyone who has any mercury in their mouth get it removed?

That's a very good question. I'm not one of these holistic dentists that are like, "Every single mercury filling must be removed." Things aren't black and white. Some people don't have access to holistic dentists, so it's much more important to remove these fillings safely. If you have three mercury fillings and you don't have a holistic dentist, I prefer you maintain them and keep them in your mouth rather than to remove them unsafely. The exposure from filling removal is extremely high. When I say exposure, I mean that mercury is swallowed or absorbed through the mucosa, so it needs to be done safely.

Some people are old school. They're like, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I'd say 20% of our patients, say, "We just don't want to have our teeth drilled right now. We're not having symptoms.” We'd rather they detox. They do their binders, they sweat, et cetera, just to cleanse the system. If  the mercury filling is fully intact, it's much better and safer to keep it in than to remove it unsafely.

Do you recommend testing for mercury in your body before going through the process?

Some people feel like they have mercury toxicity or mercury poisoning. And mercury doesn't only come from amalgam fillings, it comes from fish consumption and other environmental factors—but dental amalgam is a huge mercury exposure for people. We don't test everyone. They know they should be removed. But if somebody is unsure whether their symptoms are from mercury or not, there's a special test by a company called Quicksilver that we use. It's a hair, urine, blood sample that we take, and it helps us determine inert versus organic mercury in the body.  If you want to test, you can test. If I had mercury fillings and I had to allocate my funds wisely, I'd allocate them towards removing them safely, because they do need to be removed. And then if there are any symptoms, any chronic symptoms, any neurological symptoms, muscular symptoms, gait issues, then we can test. But we don't test everybody before we remove the mercury. 

How does a holistic dentist who’s trained in this remove mercury fillings as opposed to a dentist who goes in and starts pulling?

This is so important. When you're sitting in the dental chair, there needs to be a few things around you that show that it's being done safely. What you swallow, what you breathe and what you absorb are how environmental toxins come into your body. When you're removing mercury fillings, you need to make sure there's a big suction—both the suction that a dentist uses in your mouth, and also a large suction outside. It's not an air filter, it's literally a huge vacuum. Not only are we protecting the patient, but we're also protecting my assistants and myself. 

The patient needs to have 100% pure oxygen on their nose. Just in case anything slips, it dilutes whatever goes in. Their hair is fully covered, because your hair traps in debris. Their clothes are fully covered with a drape. Then a square piece of rubber that isolates the particular tooth  from the entire mouth needs to be placed. Then there's a high speed suction inside the mouth as well. 

This seems small but it’s not. The dental burrs or drill bits used can be really cheap and some dentists use the same bur over and over. It gets dull and it creates a lot of heat in the tooth, and it's not clean-cutting. When you want to drill mercury out, we use only brand new burs so that we can get the cleanest, quickest cuts that don’t transfer a lot of heat to the tooth. This also prevents root canals. 

What could be the results of having mercury fillings removed by someone who doesn't take these precautions?

Mercury poisoning, for sure. There's something called an amalgam tattoo in the mouth. I actually had a mercury filling removed unsafely when I was younger, and I had a little area in my mouth that looked like a black tattoo. Literally, your mucosa can absorb the mercury. It imprints. You can remove it with a laser or surgically. You're pretty much getting exposed to the most toxic molecules [when the filling is improperly removed]. There’s a long list of side effects, symptoms, and most of the time, it's neurological symptoms because mercury goes to your nerves and it attacks them.

If you're predisposed to any conditions, including chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases, it can trigger a reaction. It makes your immune system work harder, and that can convert something into an autoimmune disease if you're already prone to it. If you have, for example, Lyme disease or any preexisting condition, it can make it a lot worse. 

Do you recommend any detox protocols to go along with getting them removed safely?

Part of our safe amalgam removal protocol is everybody gets a mild detox kit. It comprises chlorella, vitamin C, glutathione, a binder, a charcoal binder, and two homeopathic medicines, Arnica and Hypericum that helps with nerve and inflammation support. But for people who have full on mercury poisoning, we don't do the detox in our office. We send them to a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor that can do chelation and deeper detox.

It's very important to detox properly if you have mercury poisoning. If you're not detoxing properly through urination, poop, and sweat, then you will have Herx reactions, which are very uncomfortable reactions due to the inability for the body to detox. Detoxing needs to be done very meticulously under the supervision of someone who knows what they're doing.

When people are getting cavities filled now, what is your recommendation for the filling?

We replace the mercury filling with either a filling or a porcelain restoration. Porcelain is much more biocompatible. The specific porcelain doesn't matter, but the one that we use in our office is an Emax porcelain, and it looks beautiful. It flows with the mouth, and it's bonded chemically, and the bonds are really great now. A lot of people are like, "Oh, porcelain can fall off." And yes, it can fall off, but I'd rather have porcelain fall off than a mercury filling in my mouth.

The filling we use is a BPA-free composite. Most of our fillings are BPA-free, unless it's a cosmetic filling, and in that case, it's a very small amount of filling material that we use, and we always tell our patients obviously. 

What are your thoughts on other metals living in your body long-term like permanent retainers?

It's not ideal to have any sort of metal in the mouth at all. Most of our patients want us to remove it. I worry less about retainer metals, and I worry more about porcelain fused to metal crowns, which is heavily covered by insurance. It's porcelain that covers metal, and that metal is an alloy of metal, so I can't tell you the composition of it. It can have nickel. If you have a nickel allergy, your gums are screwed around the porcelain fused to metal, and I see that so much.

Almost 100% of the cases that I see in people's mouths, the gums are very infected around it. There's chronic inflammation in the gums. The crowns look really bad, they're not aesthetically pleasing, and over time, they can cause grayness in the gums and around the tooth.

And what do you want people overall to know about choosing the right dentist?

I think having a relationship with a trusted dentist is so important so that, if you do have a mercury filling or a problem arises, you feel like you can trust somebody. Your mouth is a very intimate area. I've had moms tell me, "I'd rather give birth to a baby than get dental work done." There's a lot of phobia around your oral cavity. I focus a lot on women's dental health. Your mouth, your lips, your tongue, all are part of your throat chakra, and when we're working in your mouth, it brings up a lot of feelings. And it may have nothing to do with your teeth, by the way, but when you're unable to talk, it can trigger other things and other traumatic incidents in which you have not spoken about or you are not able to talk about. It's all so connected from an emotional point.