Thanks to Champus (federally-funded health program for military dependents) I ended up w/ 7 fillings that completely cover the chewing surface when I was 10 which caused immediate horrendous headache / toothache / earaches plus hyper-sensitivity to cold that persists to this day.
I also have bad Peritonitis which is so severe – and I attribute that also to these fillings – that an orthodontist when I was in high school delayed putting braces on trying to improve it. He insisted it had to be because I wasn’t following his instructions but that was NOT it. It is just as bad today as it was then and nothing I have tried has improved it, but at least I still have all but one of my adult teeth. My sister who also had so many fillings done – which may not have even been necessary for all we know – has teeth so brittle that they keep falling apart.
Two aspirin did nothing for the headaches / earaches / toothaches. I had to take three or four at a time just to get a tiny amount of relief – even though I was only 10 and always the smallest in every class I was ever in all the way through high school so that was a very heavy dose by weight. I remember lying awake crying and then holding washcloths in front of a space heater to warm them to put on my ears and face trying to ease the pain and my Mother warming baby oil in a teaspoon to pour in my ears.
I suddenly could not stand the cold. My fourth grade teacher would make me go outside for recess and lunch and I would huddle crouched near the ground chilled and miserable. It was so bad my Father bought me socks that were thigh-high (girls could not wear pants to school back then) – but even that did not help.
My sensitivity to cold was so severe that anything under 60F was too cold for me. When I had to go outside in the winter even in southern California I wore long underwear, jeans, leg warmers, a wool shirt, a flannel shirt, the type of jumpsuit skiers wear (like coveralls) and the best down jacket I could buy plus two pairs of socks (one wool, one heavy cotton), two hats and a scarf. I walked like nanook of the north and would still get so cold I could not warm up.
That has eased since I’ve learned to eat only natural foods and avoid fluoride and aluminum and got worse when I had a steamer that was telfon lined I was using to cook rice in the bottom and fish and vegetables in the top – inadvertantly concentrating fluoride, aluminum and mercury in the rice as the water evaporated. I also used to drink hot tea and repeatedly heated water in an aluminum tea kettle.
WARNING: do not use teflon or aluminum pots/pans/tea pots as the fluoride becomes concentrates as water evaporates and is made worse because of the interaction with the aluminum. I no longer use ANY aluminum pans or utensils.
My health issues were likely made worse by my Father playing with mercury in his job before I was born (he didn’t know any better at the time). For those who aren’t aware, there is now research (available at ewg.org by many scientists and others in the Environmental Working Group) that proves that the toxins in our body ARE passed to the unborn and in the milk of nursing mothers. I highly recommend that site for quality research and their database of how safe or toxic brand name products are. (Many “organic” products are NOT any safer than traditional – do your research!)
We also used Mercurochrome when I was little – I remember when it was banned – and my Mother’s health was poor all her life and made worse around that time. She also had these fillings and severe health problems and depression. Her size (under 4’10” and 85 lbs) probably made the exposure far worse. She eventually had all of her teeth pulled and that improved her health. I thought it crazy at the time as she was only in her forties but maybe she suspected that the dental work are what made her ill. (She had her teeth “fixed” about the same time we did.)
There is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that those fillings caused those and other severe health problems – but no one suspected that at the time. No amount of mercury is safe for anyone. I would love to know if anyone has any research on whether 45 year old fillings would still be off-gassing mercury at this point so I know how much of a priority removing them should be.
Gail Gardner