Lyme and Teeth

Yesterday, my daughter was told she needs to have a tooth removed because decay traveled through the tooth and there is a white mass in the roots. A filling had cracked and caused it. She doesn't want it removed and I'm not convinced it's necessary yet. Normally, I think a root canal would be done, but she's a holistic dentist and doesn't do those, which I agree with. So I wonder if that white are could be a biomass or something. I just started to research and came across this article, arizonaadvancedmedicine.com/lyme-disease-often-resides-in-the-mouth/ . Have any of you had this done or anything similar? I'd really like to save her tooth and she would too. Any suggestions on saving it are welcome. Thanks! I should say that I suspect she has lyme in her gums. Back to researching...

A video on it, not so much Lyme but in general. tinyurl.com/kw9f7qb

Yes, this dentist has some knowledge of lyme. So do some of her employees and I was told they have other Lyme patients. She even suggested some Lyme treatments and the importance of keeping inflammation down. I'm going to talk to our doctor about it and some other dentists before her tooth is removed. It didn't look like the decay was very wide. She also didn't talk about filling the gap if she does have it removed. It's a center molar (she had 4 removed for braces).

Sorry to hear your daughter is going through this! Not sure that I can be helpful here, but here is my experience:

I now know that I've had Lyme since I was a kid. I've suffered with terrible teeth issues in all of my molars since I was a teenager, but the doctors could never understand why because the teeth looked so strong and healthy from the outside. Several docs said they appear to "decay from the inside" but they hadn't seen this phenomenon before and couldn't understand how or why it was happening. Very frustrating for me because I was terrified of losing all my teeth and kept a meticulous oral hygiene regime since having the first molar pulled at 15 y/o. Thank goodness all the front teeth have been healthy!

I've just recently gotten the diagnosis for Lyme, so a new understanding of my teeth issues is developing. I can tell you that I had many root canals on my back teeth in my teens and 20s; they still broke from weakness and softness under the crowns and needed to be replaced later with bridges and such. I am just learning of the cons of root canals and debating what to do about the implants I now need to get... I'm wondering if some the issues could have been halted if I'd known about the Lyme and gotten treatment earlier. For your daughter, it makes me wonder if she is getting treated for Lyme? If she is, perhaps she should have the root canal now or a larger filling put in (with all the holistic/biological dentistry follow-up such as ozone, etc) and when the Lyme is eliminated she may be spared the future tooth loss that I've experienced... Good luck!

Thanks everyone. We're still waiting for the dentist to send the results to our doctor. I think we'll talk to a couple more dentists to see what they would do in this situation and hopefully find one that thinks it doesn't need to be pulled.

I'm still on the fence about implants. Dr. Mercola suggests using zirconium. I went on a college tour with my other daughter a few years ago and we went down a hall that had several posters up and they were all about implants. Some mentioned nerve damage and some other problems I don't recall, so that stuck in my mind.

Wow trav, you've been through a lot with your teeth! Fortunately that was the biggest problem my daughter had. She has small cavities in other teeth and her wisdom teeth are ok, which she didn't expect. If we had gotten that filling taken care of earlier, then she wouldn't have the problem she does now. I was stretched so thin the last 3 years of my mom's life and my health went down after she was gone, so I haven't been the best mom and feel bad we let it go so long. Some of it was her too, since she turned down offers to get her in to a dentist.

I need to take care of mine and I will probably lose a few that are broken. None of them are painful, so I forget about them. I have fillings that need to be removed too. I was waiting until I recovered from the stress more so my body would deal with it better. I'm feeling battle weary this week.

It's a little hard to say without seeing X-rays and really seeing what's going on. My husband is a dentist. Generally with a cracked tilling and abscess in the root would be treated with antibiotics and root canal. I don't know if the tooth might be fractured as well? Then it's hard to save the tooth. Micro nerves can continue to cause pain. I definitely think you should get other Drs opinions just to be sure and feel better about what needs to be done. Crowns are generally recommended if you have a very large filling that can cause the tooth to fracture and cause you having it extracted. A crown then gives it better protection for the tooth.

Good luck with everything and I hope in some way the tooth will be able to be saved!