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Welcome to Word of Mouth, where dentists talk about how oral health is related to overall health, which is also known as the oral systemic connection. Although it might seem obvious that dental conditions and materials interact with the entire human system, there is a clear need for the mainstream medical community, policymakers, and the public to be educated about this reality, as shown in recent research. That’s why the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, the IAOMT, bring you this podcast. The IAOMT strives for safer dentistry and a healthier world. Learn more about the IAOMT and the oral systemic connection at www.IAOMT.org.

The information provided on this video is not intended as medical advice and should not be interpreted as such. If you seek medical advice, please consult with the health care professional. Also, the information in this video represents the thoughts of the individual speakers and the views expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views of the IAOMT, its individual members, its executive committee, its scientific advisory council, its administration, its employees, contractors, sponsors or any other IAOMT affiliate.

This podcast is being sponsored by Bio-Botanical Research Incorporated. Bio-Botanical Research provides health care professionals with broad spectrum botanical formulations as nutritional support to address oral GI tract and systemic immune challenges such as biofilms, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO, lime and other microbial imbalances. Their newly released dental products, dental side and toothpaste, and oral care solution have shown remarkable effectiveness in recent pilot studies. For more information, visit Bio-Botanical Research Online at biocidin.com. 

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Griffin Cole: Good morning, I’m Doctor Griffin Cole at the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology. I am very excited to be here with our first speaker, Doctor Valerie Kanter, who just spoke in the main hall for us just now. Great information. So, I want to cover a lot of things today. Doctor Valerie Kanter is a Board-certified endodontist practising in Los Angeles and also on the faculty at the UCLA School of Dentistry. Welcome back Doctor Kanter.

Valerie Kanter: Thank you so much. Thank IAOMT for having me on the mainstage here, it was was really exciting. Great turnout. Great group of people and I’m really excited to spend some time with you this morning. 

Griffin Cole: Awesome, awesome. Well listen, let’s just get it out from the gate here. This is probably the biggest topic in healthcare right now. Root canals.  So I’m going to get into the whole documentary root cause, which I know a lot of our listeners want to get too. We’ll get to that in just a second. I want to first just cover some of the things that you covered today, because I think it’s important. Off the very, very, top here, can you help us differentiate all the terminology? People throw out the term root canal like it represents the whole process. Can you differentiate that? 

Valerie Kanter: Absolutely. I think this is one of the most critical points in this whole discussion, is that we as practitioners and educators and you, the public understand what we’re talking about when we say root canal. There’s the anatomical structure of a root canal. Every single one of your teeth has a root canal in it. That’s where the nerves and blood vessels come through from the bone from the ligaments to nourish the tooth. Now, we often just say the term root canal and I believe what people mean is root canal infections when they’re talking about that. For example, in the movie ‘The Root Cause’, in just common terminology, oh, you have this root canal. It’s causing this problem in your body. It’s not the root canal itself. That’s the anatomical structure, but then we have root canal treatment or root canal therapy where specialists and endodontists and other practitioners go inside the tooth, they clean everything, all the soft tissue, all of the live tissue, all the dead, infected tissue, whatever is going on in there. We have to get that out. So that the body can reach a homeostasis around the tooth. That’s a root canal therapy. Those are extremely effective. They work in 97% of the cases over long periods of time. We can retain these teeth. The question is, how clean are we getting these teeth? And that’s something that we’ll talk about further in the podcast today. The last thing that we need to address is root canal infections. This is where the problem is, so if you have a root canal, you know treated tooth in your mouth, we need to make sure that it’s healthy and that is not infected because root canal infections are correlated with a lot of other systemic illnesses. What that means is that when you have root canal infections, there’s this inflammatory process happening in your body and we’re all learning more and more that low grade inflammation is causing these systemic diseases. It’s not a cause and effect, but it’s a correlation. So, if you’re, if you have diabetes or if you’re overweight, or if you have other things going on in your body, there’s all this inflammation being created, and that’s correlated with this inflammation down your tooth and they kind of piggyback on each other, and now the inflammation is rising in your body. You have all these little fires going on and your body just trying to control. So, root canal infections can actually, you can be more prone to that if you have other issues, and if you have other issues, the root canal infection could maybe make it even worse, and so that’s kind of the battle we’re dealing with. So, if you have a root canal infection, it’s a problem. You need to address it, whether the tooth has had a root canal before, or whether it’s just an infected tooth for the first time, if you have an infection, you really do need to address it. If you have a root canal treatment, you should definitely get it checked on. Go to a specialist, make sure it’s healthy. If it’s healthy, you’re in good shape and you can just monitor it over the years and make sure everything is in check

Griffin Cole: So, let’s go a little bit further with the root canal infections, because I have plenty of patients who will come in and they say, “Oh this tooth is killing me”. We’ll do an x-ray or a 3d scan and sure enough we’ll see an abscess. Whether I can’t tell if it’s, if it’s acute or if it’s chronic. We go through their symptomology and all that, as always. Touch on a bit about not only working with a specialist who’s trained, has the right equipment, that’s critical, but also catching something early enough and maybe you doing what’s called vital pulp therapy versus a full-blown root canal. Can you differentiate between those for us?

Valerie Kanter: Yeah, absolutely. So, there’s, there’s, a slow process that happens when you have decay. There’s some sort of disruption in your ecosystem in your mouth, in your body, so you end up with a cavity or maybe a cracked tooth because your teeth aren’t moving together properly. Maybe your teeth are crowded. You’re not sliding around properly. You’re not able to chew your food or you’re grinding. There’s all these reasons why the nerve can start to get damaged. If the nerve is damaged to the extent that it’s reversible, we have options like vital pulp therapy. So, with vital pulp therapy we can go in, we can clean out the problem, we can kind of monitor that crack, bonded together in a way to restore the tooth and we have advanced technology like lasers and GentleWave technology which can remove the irritated or the infected part of the pulp or the nerve, but sometimes you can actually save the part that’s below, and that’s what I’m so passionate about.  

Griffin Cole: So you actually avoid doing a full root canal, right? 

Valerie Kanter: Exactly, it’s like a partial root canal, you call it a vital root canal. These are procedures that have been around for a long time, but because of the new technology that we have, we can do them in a way where we can almost sterilize it inside of the tooth and the body can take care of the rest.

Griffin Cole: Right

Valerie Kanter: And then, we have biomaterials like bio–ceramics and PRF, platelet rich fibrin, and when you put all these things together, you can create this magic little sandwich in the tooth and underneath as you saw as I presented earlier from Doctor Randy Garland in Southern California, beautiful case with the general way where he was able to use that, remove the infected part of the tooth, then put PRF down. 

Griffin Cole: Yeah, yeah. 

Valerie Kanter: Then put the bio–ceramic and the tooth stayed alive. It came back to life. It created a new tooth structure. It uses its own stem cells to grow new tooth structure and that tooth stayed vital. We love that.

Griffin Cole: Yeah

Valerie Kanter: There’s the regenerative endodontist like him and I out there are loving this. We’re trying it. We’re open to trying it, it’s not going to work on every case and it’s disappointing when patients come in and they have a big infection already and they want to try to save their tooth. I would love that, and I think we’re going in that direction, but right now the safest, most effective way of treating these infections is using advanced technology like laser activated irrigation, which is basically a generic term for PIPS (Photon Induced Photoacoustic Streaming). It’s been around for a decade but just not a lot of people know about it. Not all people understand it and what it’s able to do is able to clean these areas in the tooth that we’ve never been able to clean before. So, when we talk about root canals being, you know, having still some bacteria in there, we know that. It’s been a struggle to get all of it out. These are complex anatomical structures deep inside the tooth and we’re working through a hole a couple of millimeters big. It’s incredible what endodontists do and general dentists, but it’s important that you have a microscope. There’s, that’s the only way you can see them these, these, teeth, so if you’re having a procedure you need to have, uh, a practitioner with a microscope, with high–power magnification or loops and those loops are really long, okay, because there’s different variations and you really need to be able to see down the canal. It’s absolutely critical. I can’t tell you every single day how I’m working down 10, 15 millimeters down a tooth with little instruments and negotiating little pieces and making sure it’s perfect, there’s no way I could see that if I didn’t have the right magnification, so that’s critical. Also, moving these solutions around in the tooth is critical, and that’s what the equipment that’s out now is able to do. So general wave, the Fotona light walker laser. You have to find practitioners that are using these. I feel so passionate about it. That’s what I spent most of my lecture talking about today because these, these, are the tools that are needed to perfectly clean these teeth out. We’re seeing it in every study that comes out. We’re just getting better and better results. So, it’s always just about its pushing it forward like we want to do the best treatment that we can. Let’s address old infected root canals. Let’s redo them. It is possible. I do re-treatments all the time. They work, they heal, but we have to make sure we’re addressing the root cause, which is these bacteria and also what’s going on in your body. And that’s what it really connects to is like, how is your terrain? Because one person may have 20 root canals in their mouth, and they’re doing just fine, and they have no problems and another person may have one and it’s causing havoc in their body. So, let’s step back. Let’s look at the genetics. There are ways that your doctor can actually test the genetics to see, are you susceptible to these issues, yeah? Or are you going to be a good candidate for these treatments and we really need to start treating patients on an individual level and breaking down all of these and talking about nutrition. 

Griffin Cole: I’m going to circle back to that in just a bit, but I want to just go a little further with what you were saying about root canal infections and as a dentist, I’ve known this for a long time, but I think most dentists don’t realise that the reason why we even hear about such a high failure rate is because there are dentists who are not doing it correctly and I love that you’re talking about the lasers in the microscope and all that technology because I just want all the listeners out there and all the viewers to realise that, you know, let’s not do apples and oranges here. Let’s, let’s really do a true comparison, and the reason why we hear about any root canal failures is more than likely technique error. Am I right? 

Valerie Kanter:  Absolutely, I, I, believe, my guesstimate would be that probably about 90% of practitioners out there doing root canals are using, you know, basic techniques, standard needle irrigation. Most root canals are actually done by a person, general dentist because they love, they trust that person and we as practitioners, we love our patients and we want to make them happy. Sure, I’ll do that root canal, but we really have to ask ourselves, are we doing them a service or are we doing them a disservice? Because when there’s someone up the street that has the advanced technology, has special training, it’s really that conversation and you patients out there when you want to save their dentists and they’re trying to guide you to a specialist. I would step back for a second and, and listen to what we’re talking about here because it’s really, absolutely critical and what’s also interesting is sometimes you can have these infections going on and not even feel it. Literally half the time, you have a chronic infection in your jaw and you don’t even know, and then you’re dealing with others, these other issues and then we can start to put the pieces together. But when the dentist tells you there’s an infection in your jaw, it’s critical that you take care of this, because that’s just one other burden that we can lower that inflammatory load on your body. We really, really need to start thinking about this and addressing this in a proactive way. 

Griffin Cole: Yeah, I’m very fortunate that my endodontist colleague uses the Gentle Wave technology and I got him trained in ozone therapy and he works through microscope. 

Valerie Kanter: That’s perfect. 

Griffin Cole: So, for those of you out there though, yeah, it’s a magic combination but and, and I love that he was so willing to learn about ozone as well because that was new to him and he got trained and loves it and cooperates service just like you do. So, my point on that is that those of you out there who are other dentists listening or endodontists even, please look into this please, please, look at Val’s work, look at all the researchers out there, get the right equipment, and then we can change this whole, this whole ideology on root canals. 

Valerie Kanter:  Actually, my goal is to share this knowledge. I am holding courses, I want to train endodontists, I want to train general dentists how to do these vital pulp therapy cases because they’re the ones like in the trenches. They’re removing these cavities, and when you do them in the proper way, you can save these teeth, which is really cool and exciting. I’m really, really thrilled. My passion is to share this knowledge. I don’t want to do all of these treatments myself. I want to teach all of the practitioners… 

Griffin Cole: Right, right. 

Valerie Kanter:  … around me and from far away, how can we do these procedures and I want to learn from other people like some of your cases with ozone. ..

Griffin Cole: Yeah

Valerie Kanter:  And jaw necrosis and that it’s incredible what this, what can you do? I’ve, I’ve, learned it’s been humbling. I’ve learned so much from just oxygen, just oxygen, the earth…

Griffin Cole: Yeah, so simple idea, but yes. 

 Valerie Kanter: It’s the best gift, the best medicine, just … breath yeah, but then we can use it in our treatments and really, really incredible what it’s able to do and the patients that get it. They come searching for it. 

Griffin Cole: That’s awesome, so let’s now circle back to the nutrition part of it and just the overall body terrain and how I get real specific, though, because we talked about Vitamin D and, and, we all know it’s so critical for life, but I want you to just go into detail about Vitamin D and K2 if you will and, and, talk a bit about the stats that you shared today about how they affect teeth and root canal therapy and all that. 

Valerie Kanter: Well, it was interesting. I’ve already known about Vitamin D, in my, in my presentation today I connected it. There was a cross–sectional study where they looked at a thousand kids in Canada and they’re saying, “Okay, which kids have caries and what’s going on with their nutritional deficiencies?” and strong correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and increased cavities in kids. Here we go. We’re all deficient. Elderly are, deficient, like 70% of our elderly are deficient. Americans in general are so deficient. I know a lot of us live in Florida, and we, you know we’re getting sun but in general, we’re all very deficient in Vitamin D, so I was sitting with Doctor Rick Miranda at a coffee shop down in Florida a couple days ago and he’s like, “Val, check this study out” and then we’re just such nerds and we’re sitting around the computer and he’s like “You’re not going to believe this”. Let’s look at implants. So, implants are replacements. So, if a root canal infection does go bad, or if you’re missing a tooth for some other reason, it cracks, now we have an option, luckily to replace the tooth with an implant.  There are all different kinds, and there’s all different specialists placing them. I’m not one of them, but I do understand that when you place an implant, you need the bone to heal around the tooth properly. What’s really interesting is there’s always been issues with smoking and diabetes. If you have these things going on, you’re maybe not as likely to heal if you have an extraction or an implant placed. So, those implants can fail and they’re expensive, so you want to make sure it’s going to work the first time you place it in. Same thing with an endodontic treatment or any other type of surgery, you want to make sure it’s going to work, so it goes back to the terrain. So, if you’re deficient in Vitamin D, there’s actually an 11% failure rate for implants.

Griffin Cole: Wow

Valerie Kanter:  Where smoking was only 4 or 5%, diabetes 4 or 5%, twice the amount of failure from Vitamin D deficiency. I think this is really going to take over in the oral surgery world of dentistry, so we really actually have to, like, soup up the amount, of vitamins in our diet before we do these procedures. So now, for example, when patients schedule in my office and I get their images and I know they have these bony areas that need to heal immediately, I’m already recommending the supplements, so when I’m seeing them in three weeks, they are already three weeks into that protocol and my staff is being trained daily, “How do we do this? How do we have these conversations?” and Rick just came out with an amazing product called DentaMedica and this has all of the nutrients that we need to support this, this field in dentistry, has everything except the omegas, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. It’s got all the vitamins, all the antioxidants, proprietary blend. He crushed it with us. The numbers are just skyrocketing. So you have your patient take that for four weeks before do the surgery, and then they’re carried through for two weeks after. It’s going to make a huge difference in the practice of all of these surgeons doing work with the bony generation. And hey, let’s talk about teeth too; it helps with teeth mineralizing and omegas are actually really important for that, and because of the complexity and in supplement, making supplements of omega, he explained, you can’t add that into a multivitamin like this. So, it has to be a separate thing. So, I use Cymbiotika, starts with a C, my friend made this product called with DHA, EPA and the JOE just released a paper and that’s what got me really excited about it, so I started looking around and I found this incredible product. I was like, okay, this is it. I’m giving this to all my patients that have inflammation. My tooth’s sensitive. Well, what’s going on? You have this oxidative stress happening. You have inflammation rising. Omegas actually decrease that. They did a study where they showed if they fed these mice omegas for a month, all their antioxidant levels increase and the inflammation decrease when they had to do like some dental work on there, so it’s like this is really, really critical. Omega is critical and then this vitamin complex, this DentaMedica is incredible, we got to get our patients supported before we go in and do this sort of stressful work on their body. 

Griffin Cole: Right, so for those of us that are watching here, the JOE is the Journal of Endodontics. 

Valerie Kanter: Journal of Endodontics, and so, when you ask me about Vitamin k2, that’s critical. So, if you’re deficient in Vitamin A and D, Vitamin K2 is not going to get activated. Vitamin K2 is critical, and Doctor J. Levy up in Portland, he’s my mentor on occlusion. This man is brilliant. He just started his own series of courses, I’m, I literally was sitting in there. I was, like, crying at one point. It was so emotional, he’s just, he just cares so much and he gets it on the deepest level and so, we are there listening to him talk about Weston Price and he’s like, this man did the most brilliant work and he realized that in our diets now, with these refined sugars, and we’re missing some of these critical nutrients from a young age and we were even in our mother’s belly when she’s pregnant. We are missing these nutrients and our jaws are not developing the same as they used to, we’re a little bit more-narrow. Our pallets, our pallets are so thin that we don’t have room for our tongue in our mouth, and so our tongue gets pushed back and it starts to close our airway and then what happens? We don’t get enough oxygen…

Griffin Cole: Yeah, there you go. 

Valerie Kanter:  Which is the earth’s medicine. So, so it’s really like this cascade of, like, it’s incredible, like my mind has been blown the last five years. I’ve really opened up into all this. I’m still just such a student learning every day, like, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface. I know I am. I want to read all of lessons, books too, but I know the people that have sat down and read page by page and they said, “Val, Weston didn’t say that all root canals are bad”. I said, “Oh, really, please send me what you’re talking about”, he said “Hey, some people are susceptible”, meaning they don’t have a good terrain. They’re deficient. These people, just like the mice he studied, the ones that were deficient. They can’t heal from things, the ones that are healthy. No problem. You put an infected tooth and then boom; I’m going to kick that thing out of my body. 

Griffin Cole: Six days. 

Valerie Kanter:  I’m good, six days versus 40 days, so it’s, it’s, interesting. We always want to find that piece of information that supports how we feel, but I think it’s important, as practitioners, that we go into things with an unbiased look and that’s why I specifically went in and learned about the Gentle Wave technology because I know how important it is to clean these teeth out. I know what kind of magic this laser is doing and I was like, you know what, let me see what’s going on over here and I’m like wow and, now I’m using both because they’re so both incredible and, like, I can use, I can’t use both for everything but I could together, you should see my office now. I just have stuff everywhere. My staff is like crawling around the patients are like, “How do I get in the chair?” but it works and it’s great and they know they’re getting, you know, the best care that I’m able to provide. 

And so, and so it was really cool to see Weston and see him say these things like, hey, some root canals are going to be just fine and you don’t even have to seal them or sterilize them all the way, because our bodies are brilliant, we’re able to heal from all of these sorts of things. If we have the terrain, if we’re we got this homeostasis going on. If we’re taking care of ourselves, sleeping, drinking enough water, I’m talking to myself here to everyone. So, so, yeah. So basically, Weston was critical with the Vitamin K and K is like the orchestrator. It tells our body where to direct the calcium. 

Griffin Cole: Yeah

Valerie Kanter: So, if you’ve got K2 specifically, it tells your body, hey, put that calcium in the bones and teeth where it needs to be, and so K2 is actually, one of the number one nutrients we need to focus on as dentists and I think in dental school too, it’s incredible, the lack of nutrition education we have. 

Griffin Cole: Yeah, no question.

Valerie Kanter: I think it needs to be completely overhauled.

Griffin Cole: No question. 

Valerie Kanter:  And I’m constantly working on that on a daily basis with my students just trying to teach them. I’m, I’m, practising and I’m teaching integrative endodontics and all that means is that I’m trying to integrate a little bit of here and there, the oxygen therapy, the light energy, the laser therapy, the sound energy with the Gentle Wave, the nutrition, and we’re putting it all together and my next step is learning much more about functional medicine. And I’m really grateful for Doctor Mary Ellen Chalmers and Santa Rosa, just a goddess and, and, just everything she’s done for me and just taught me and I’m really looking forward to doing that entire program becoming a functional medicine practitioner in the next year. That’s my next big goal.

Griffin Cole: Shout out to Mary Ellen, right now. Okay, so I’ve always been a career dentist with my patients over my 26 years of dentistry here. I’ve always made them or inform them and then let them make the choice. Okay, so I’ve always said, for instance with root canals, you’ve got an abscess tooth. You got two choices here: You can either go get it treated properly and save the tooth, or you can pull it out. I’m not going to make that choice for you. If they asked me what I would do, I’ll answer that honestly, but I’ve always done that and I love today because I’ve always said to them. “If you start taking out teeth, you’re going to affect your digestive tract for sure. You’re going to swallow larger bowls as a food. It’s going to have a problem.” I, I, just know this and I’ve seen it happen, but you actually cited some studies and I love that. Can you expand a bit on that, about losing the teeth and the effects it has overall? 

Valerie Kanter: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just when you said I think this is so critical. Every tooth has an intense neuro-muscular complex around it, so the ligaments it’s going back into the brain. It’s connected to all of these. It’s the second fastest reaction in the body is that jerk, jaw opening reaction. 

Griffin Cole: Right

Valerie Kanter: You know, when you hit on that little hard thing in your food and you immediately open up because you don’t want to break a tooth. I don’t want to break a tooth. The only faster reflex is blinking of the eye.

Griffin Cole: Right

Valerie Kanter:  Okay, so Doctor J. Levy, I have to just give you, he taught me all of this stuff, love him, love the man. So

Griffin Cole: Shout out to Doctor Levy.

Valerie Kanter: Yeah, he’s just amazing. He’s just everything. So, with that said, when you take a tooth out, you completely are losing that, you’re losing that feedback mechanism. Now, of course, you hopefully have a bunch of other teeth, and our bodies are brilliant and so we can move around them. But the more you start to take out, you start to lose, and now we’re relying on soft tissue of our cheeks and our tongue and all these just there, not quite as good as, like, tooth-to-tooth contact, these fast reactive fibers okay, these are alpha, beta, alpha, delta, fast reacting fibers. Boom, they just shoot out when you know that you need to release. This is critical, so if you’re losing teeth, you’re losing that. Unfortunately, implants, while they replace the tooth and while you feel a real tooth hit the implant,  you’re getting neural feedback from this real tooth, the implants not giving you anything. So, it’s giving you function per se, but your brain doesn’t really know what’s going on, so we have to kind of re-learn and figure it out. Obviously, we’re doing a pretty good job. People are very happy with their implants. They’re functioning; however, we know that, on a, on a small level stuff’s changing. When you chew your food, you’re not chewing it as effectively, yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s more mechanoreception. Actually, somewhat Doctor J. Levy taught me so it’s not really proprioception. It’s mechanoreception on but it is very, very complex. He spent like 3 days literally just nerding, out about it, so I can’t even get into that in all detail. The problem is we’re not chewing our food properly. The bowl is, like you said, what we swallow, it’s a little bit bigger. The pieces in there are bigger. That means our bodies having to try to break it down on a higher level in the gut, and we already have issues in our gut because our soil is lacking micronutrients. Shout out to Doctor Zack Bush with Restore, just incredible, incredible, way to realign the gut to heal that leaky gut, close these gap junctions. This man is brilliant, yeah, brilliant Doctor Zack Bush, he just had a podcast on goop yesterday. Love it. There are so many magical people out there, really doing the light work, really spreading the knowledge and I think as a whole, like our population, we’re getting smarter and smarter. We’re starting to get it. Everything is coming together. It’s really, really exciting. 

Griffin Cole: Also, you’ve joined that circle now, and that’s why I’m so honored to be here having you do this podcast with me, because this is a great topic and I want to get into this now because people have been waiting. So, there was a documentary called Root Cause that came out not too long ago. It’s been removed since then from Netflix but essentially this movie did its best to destroy your entire profession. Exactly what you do, okay, your specialty according to this movie is unnecessary. So, I want you just to be forthright and honest. What did you think about the documentary? And then I want you to expand and say, what do you say to those people who say, “I don’t care what Griffin and Val say. Root canals are harmful. They, you can never get them. You’ll never get them clean, no matter what technology you use. Pull your teeth. 

Valerie Kanter: I respect the debate for sure. I always have; I knew my place here. I’ve felt this energy building. I wasn’t really ready for it to drop like that. I don’t know where it felt like and I’m sitting there watching it, pausing it, “Oh god” like you know, researching, looking up, it was really an intense night like I was very emotional as calling all my people. I was talking to my mentor, the AAE was talking to all of my, the people that I trust and, and, it was a lot for me because I get it and I get the holistic aspect and so many of people that were featured in the documentary, I have the utmost respect for, and I thank all of them for this debate because it’s important. And I think if anything, it just raised awareness and that’s what I tell all my colleagues at the AAE. Everyone you know, freaking out a little bit and I’m like, “Hey guys, we need to talk about this because the issue is, there’s a lot of root canals being done poorly.” Okay, there’s a lot of root canals that are still working, and that’s because some people are healthy enough to deal with it, but we are entrapping bacteria in the teeth, we’re entrapping toxins essentially, if you’re using standard techniques, old techniques, you’re not getting everything out and, and, you know with the newer techniques, we’re just doing a hell of a lot better job. Right, so, we’ll go back to the old techniques. If you’re doing that, I think that you could be doing better, and I think that’s what’s critical, and when you’re doing that and you’re not really following up with three-dimensional imaging and we’re just looking at regular images, even digital images, they just don’t detect some of these early problems, and sometimes some of these big problems, you saw that case I showed today, huge infection in the jawbone. Almost a centimeter in diameter. You could not even see in a normal x-ray, and it’s because of the density of the teeth and the bone in certain areas, if you get a two-dimensional picture, you’re not guaranteed to see the problem. So it’s really important that we’re evaluating these things, and so when I hear and I look at Doctor Tom Levy, brilliant, brilliant, man and we’ve talked about doing research together because we both want the same thing. We want our patients to be healthy and happy and we talk about, “Hey, how can we really break this down?” What is success? And this is what Doctor Bill Door mentioned to me too when I was writing a paper. He said, “We’ve been, we’ve been looking at macro success. We have been looking at healing in the bone, but what’s really going on, on a microscopic level? What’s really going on with the inflammatory markers around the tooth in the body? Can we test for that?” That’s what Doctor Tom Levy and I were talking about. Can we look at CRP values? Can we look at some of these markers and say, “Okay, you have an infection? Let’s make a, where’s mark where you’re at right now, let’s do this non-surgical root canal procedure with the most advanced technology. Oh, your numbers are down, this is what we want to see. We want to see those numbers dropping right? And if you see those numbers going up, we need to really step back and think, “What are we doing here? How can we make this better? A better system for the body.” So again. It was, it was quite, it was quite a lot watching it and I think it goes back to the terminology like we talked about the very beginning. You know, they’re associating root canals, being a cause-and-effect issue when it’s really there’s a strong correlation with root canal infections in systemic issue, and we really, we really don’t know if one’s causing the other. I believe from all of the reading that I’ve done, and it’s been extensive, is that there’s just kind of this whole pool happening and if you’re susceptible to one, you’re probably susceptible to all, so you really have to take care of yourself. You really have to make sure your nutrition is on point. You’re doing these extra procedures, you’re out in the sun, you’re out of the beach. You’re getting the earth energy to your breathing. You’re meditating, you’re eating right. All your supplementing, all of these things really play a critical role in creating the terrain to be able to bend, you know, things go wrong, we’re going to crack the tooth because it’s just how things are going to go and so we have to be careful. We can’t just take every tooth out, we really need to have scrutiny and look at each of these situations and so, in general, I’m, you know, I’m glad it came out. I think it raised an awareness. It obviously was hard for a lot of mainstream practitioners, I think really got upset by it, but again, I don’t want to say it was bad press, but it’s kind of like it’s one of those things where it’s like, “Hey, we’re raising awareness” and I know I’m very passionate and I know the AAE is very passionate about getting patients educated on what a root canal infection is, what a root canal treatment is. Okay, and how do you get the best treatment? And we need to get people knowledgeable about finding the right specialists, the right endodontist that has extensive training. One month into my residency, I was like, I can’t believe my dental students, my graduates are out practising right now. I’m like, and special yeah, I have learned so much in a month? Yeah, in a month we do so much, just deep diving into the literature, really stuff you don’t get in just dental school. I highly recommend GPRs. I highly recommend these just as much CE as you can do as a practitioner is so critical. I spent two years in my life and all of my money on CE when I first started learning about, you know, more holistic integrative therapies and ozone and laser. I was gone every weekend. Everyone was like, “What are you doing?” 

Griffin Cole: You were learning. Well, I can tell you that one of the best things that you bring to the table in your presentations is you are improving the dialogue and I love this because and I want all of our viewers to realize that, you need the, the one thing about that movie that I love is it did bring awareness and now we’re going to tell them what was missed, what they left out and, and, how this can be improved and I love that you’re doing that because the terminology is everything and, and, most people out there, lay people aren’t going to look that deep. And I remember, in 1994 I met George Meinig who wrote The Root Canal Cover-up, which is all big on, all based on Weston Price’s work and I was a young dentist. I was just a year out and he goes, “Here’s my book,” and he signed it for me. I still have it. I’m so proud of that copy but, even then, it was like George was really careful about if he was going to use Weston’s words, that he literally brought it right from his text, and I love that because he was saying, “Look, this isn’t my work, I’m just, I’ve read this, I’m intrigued and I want to pass it on. You know what? I’m going to let the patients decide this? I’m going to as much as I can, but ultimately, they’re going to make that choice”. And it’s still that way even with all this great technology, we have to let them make an informed choice. That’s what this is about, just I don’t want, because we’re almost at a time here, I, want you to do me a favor. How do we bridge this gap between mainstream dentistry, the AAE as you mentioned, endodontic world, even general dentistry and the alternative world of people who are either on the far extreme and think all root canals are bad, or those of us who, you know, understand that technology is needed to make them a better treatment? How do we bridge that gap?

Valerie Kanter: In my first presentation at IAOMT a couple years ago, 3-4 years ago, I had literally remember this slide and I have my favorite philosopher Alan Watts up, and I have like bridging the gap. I felt like he did a beautiful job between East and West, bridging the gap really taking that like, that type of thinking and bring it into colleges and things, he’s just so brilliant. I love listening to him, especially when there’s music in the background, it’s like this chill-out mix, but he’s, he’s awesome and so, I’ve definitely felt like I have a mission and a purpose to help bridge the gap. It’s like very obvious, like I’m this Board-certified endodontist, I believe in what I do. I see, I’ve seen patients heal for as many cases that you, you know, say, “Hey, I took this tooth out and this patient is getting better.” I’ve seen it too and it feels so good and that’s why I got into endodontics to help treat infections. You know, this is actually my passion and I want to make people feel better can get healthier and so bridging the gap, we just need to open our minds up. We need to all humble, humble ourselves a little bit and look to the science and most importantly, when you’re looking to the science, you really do want to look at systematic reviews. Now unfortunately, there’s not a lot of systematic reviews on a lot of the things we’re doing, like full laser therapy. It’s been around for 10 years. A systematic review is definitely do, anyone out there that’s interested? I might have to take it on myself. The Gentle Wave is very near a few years old, so that’s going to take time, even ozone therapy. There’s not a tonne of this, there’s some reviews, so we really need to like dive in and start. You know, we have to do the work and so, but even though just looking through the research, I think is really critical, but it’s so difficult because you actually have to read the papers. You can’t just read the abstract and conclusion because a lot of times. they’re just slightly skewed to the authors you know what they want you to hear.

Griffin Cole: Right, sure.

Valerie Kanter: So, you really have to dig in and maybe find someone, find someone you trust that’s really good at breaking these papers down. It’s important, so that’s really critical is following the science 100% and that’s what I love about, I do love about the AAE is that they’re going off the science and I think the, I think the issue all goes down to the communication and the language. I think the AAE is like, “Hey, root canals aren’t causing a problem,” but all in their journal is saying “Hey, root canal infections are an issue, we need to address them. We need to treat them and we can do that for you and we can heal this problem.” Whereas, you know, a lot of the terminology over here and in The Root Cause, they’re saying root canals themselves, it’s not the root canal. It’s the root canal infection that’s associated with, so we got to clean these teeth out better, and I think it’s all really comes down to terminology. I think it’s beautiful that we’ve started with that, we’re going to close with that, and I think as I think getting nutritional education into the mainstream is going to be critical and I have a vision of creating an educational program for specialists, for new endodontists that are graduates, to come in to be able to use all of the new technology, to be able to learn about nutrition, some sort of externship. It’s all being formulated right now, like all of the pieces are coming together, 

Griffin Cole: So, it’s not ready yet. 

Valerie Kanter: It’s not ready yet, but it’s going to be available. And also that will be open to practitioners, dentists, other people that would love, they love doing endo and want to help save their patients’ teeth and they can come, get trained. It takes work and it takes training and it takes a commitment to buying some of this equipment, 

Griffin Cole: Absolutely

Valerie Kanter: And it’s just, that’s got to happen and if you really care about helping your patients, you’re going to do that. Or you are going to find someone else who did it and, you know, get him in the best hands for these treatments.

Griffin Cole: Well, and hopefully, you can make this the standard of care, in endodontics I mean. 

Valerie Kanter: That’s definitely my goal. The CT is on the way to the standard of care hallelujah. Microscopes are, they’ve been in endodontic residency since 1998, hallelujah. AAE, thank you and we’re getting there. It’s going to be difficult. I’ve already talked. It’s going to be difficult to get sort of these like, you know, these modalities as the standard of care, but it’s 100% my goal is and thank God some of these companies like I really feel that they want, they want this to, they want to help do better care for our patients, and they’re spreading, spreading, spreading. Some more and more endodontists, endodontists are getting this technology, so just do a little search call around in your area. “Hey, you’re using laser, using Gentle Wave. I’m going to start referring to you, and that’s the answer.” 

Griffin Cole: You’ll be, you’ll be real busy guys. Those you specialists out there, who don’t have a laser yet or Gentle Wave or train this technology

Valerie Kanter: Get on it 

Griffin Cole: Get on it because I’m telling you, it’s the only way to do it so. 

Valerie Kanter: I mean, it’s incredible when you look inside these teeth that you’re just like, wow, I’ve never seen anything so clean. It’s just incredible. You got to see it for yourself to believe it I literally did, I had to go down to Arizona. It’s like wow, here we go. 

Griffin Cole: Okay, well I just want to thank Doctor Valerie Kanter for being with me today. As you guys heard, and so there’s so much going on in the world of endodontics that to just rely on something like a documentary The Root Cause to assume that that’s the truth out there is, is, really selling it short, you know, learn the dialogue, run all the terminology. Val is there any way they can reach you?

Valerie Kanter: You can go to my website doctor valeriekanter.com, or you can get there by ask doctorval.com. It’s a little shorter to type in. Everything’s there. Courses that we’re holding, lots of information. The website is constantly getting revamped, so check back some of the stuff that I recommend, the water that I drink, everything, so and reach out. Email us and my staff is happy to talk to everyone and, and, help us along the way, 

Griffin Cole: And we’ll keep you apprised about her program, her vision that she’s got going on, as soon as that is up and running, I promise you, we’ll be the first ones to get you information. So, to all my listeners until next time, safer dentistry, healthier world!

This podcast has been brought to you by the International Academy Of Oral Medicine And Toxicology (the IAOMT). The IAOMT strives for safer dentistry and a healthier world. We are a network of over 1,000 dentists, health professionals, and scientists who research dental products and practises including the risks of mercury fillings, fluoride, root canals, and jaw bone osteonecrosis. We are a non-profit organization and had been dedicated to our mission of protecting public health and the environment since we were founded in 1984. You can learn more about us at www.IAOMT.org and www.thesmartchoice.com. 

The information provided on this video is not intended as medical advice and should not be interpreted as such. If you seek medical advice, please consult with the health care professional. Also, the information in this video represents the thoughts of the individual speakers and the views expressed in this interview do not necessarily reflect the views of the IAOMT, its individual members, its executive committee, its scientific advisory council, its administration, its employees, contractors, sponsors, or any other IAOMT affiliates.