SHOW NOTES 

Guest: Dr. Lewis Ehrlich

Official site: doctorlewis.com.au

Instagram: @doctor.lewis

Facebook: Dr Lewis Ehrlich

“Low Tox Life” Podcast, Ep. 368 — Episode with Dr Lewis Ehrlich 

SHDC Blog (on Sydney Holistic Dental Centre website) 

Featured in “Day On A Plate” — Interview by health blogger Jessica Sepel (JSHealth, Feb 2018) 

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The Truth About Root Canal Treatments: Myths, Facts & What Really Matters

00:00:05 – Intro & topic overview (root canals)

00:02:44 – What a root canal is & why it’s needed

00:04:20 – Infections can exist without pain

00:05:13 – How 3D X-rays improve diagnosis

00:08:21 – Nuance in deciding treatment

00:10:39 – Why starting treatment matters

00:13:51 – Skill, tools & training affect success

00:21:40 – Importance of magnification/microscopes

00:24:24 – Cleaning canals & killing bacteria

00:27:38 – You can’t get 100% sterile

00:31:48 – How root canal success is measured

00:35:21 – Risks & benefits of keeping a “dead tooth”

00:39:44 – Alternatives: extraction, implants, bridges

00:46:38 – Why a “perfect” root canal can still hurt

00:48:20 – The “97% cancer patients” myth

00:54:02 – Cancer patient case study

00:57:33 – Importance of comprehensive oral exams

01:00:06 – Final takeaway: avoid extremes, value skill

Dr Ron Ehrlich(00:00:05 )

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Well, we’ve covered many dental topics in the 600 plus episodes that I have done, podcast episode, and I’ve had many guests on to talk about oral health from many different perspectives, be it periodontal health, be it toxicity, be it cardiologist Dr. Thomas Levy, who has very strong views about the importance of a comprehensive oral exam, a point that I totally agree with him on. 

And today we are going to be covering a contentious issue, root canal treatments. What is a root canal treatment? Should you be having a root canal treatment? What are the consequences of having one or not having one? I’ve often said in my 40 plus years of practice that I wish I was more dogmatic because it would be much easier to just to say to a patient, all root canals are bad, all root canals must come out. Well, that’s really simply not the case.

And by guest today is Dr. Lewis Ehrlich. Lewis was, I guess, last week talking about evidence-based medicine. And it was for a very good reason that we started with that to lay down the foundations of this week’s episode on root canal treatments. And well, I’m not going to spoil it for you. I think it’s an important episode. It is the truth about root canal treatments and spoiler alert here, the answer to should you have a root canal treatment or not.

Here’s the spoiler alert. It depends and it depends on quite a lot and that’s what this episode is about I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Lewis Ehrlich. Welcome back to the show again Lewis. 

Dr Lewis Ehrlich

Good to be back Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich  (00:01:48 )

Lew, last episode we talked about evidence-based medicine and that is hopefully the foundation or at least evidence-informed Medicine is the basis on which a lot of clinical

work and decisions are made. Today I wanted to touch on a topic that people will have heard a lot about. The most of what they will have heard if they’ve been following the story at all is very negative and that is the root canal issue to do or not to do a root canal treatment. Headlines that people will often read is ‘97 % of cancer patients have this treatment’ or root canals are bad, blah blah blah blah blah. So I wanted to really explore this treatment a little bit and for those listeners that may not be familiar with what we’re actually talking about, what is a root canal treatment?

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:02:44 )

Okay, so essentially within a tooth, there is a nerve and that has a blood supply which keeps it alive, has its own immune system. And when it gets damaged, either through tooth decay, which is where bacteria eat away at the tooth, softening the tooth structure and creating what people would know as a whole, or they, you know, grind their teeth a lot or…

Hit their tooth on the side of a pool or what have you. There’s a traumatic reason that the nerve, the blood supply within the tooth can die off. You can get an infection of that tooth where you get a, if you take an x-ray, you’ll see a little round black area at the tip of the root. And that’s where the bone, is usually really, really solid and strong becomes soft and mushy on the on the back of you know bacteria eating away at the bone so they get into the canal system the root canal system and make their way up the tip of the root and start eating away at the bone which is obviously an immune stressor so not good for your system you want to be you want your immune system to go and fight other things other more important things in the body and so if it’s distracted by an infection in the jawbone as a result of trauma or tooth decay, then you need to do something about it to support your immune system.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:04:20 )

Now, people would often say that sounds incredibly painful. It doesn’t necessarily need to be that, which makes it even more insidious in a way. Pain isn’t always associated with these things.

Dr Lewis Ehrlich (00:04:30 )

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we can find a infection within a tooth and a patient will often go, I’m not in any pain whatsoever. And this is often the case, right? So using pain as a barometer of whether something is wrong or right, or if you’re in health or not in health is not great because they’ll often…be in a chronic state. So it can be either chronic or acute. Acute is when you’re in agony, you’ve got a full-blown toothache, you can’t sleep, it’s sensitive to hot, cold, a chronic state. It can just be sitting there and you’ve got no idea that that’s there at all. But nonetheless, it’s still an immune stress.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:05:13 )

Now you mentioned this shadow at the tip of a root which is picked up with X-rays