More About Resin Composite Tooth Fillings

I've been somewhat depressed since I got my new resin composite tooth fillings. (I wish I could type from inside a 'box' so that I wouldn't hear voices while typing. This is a 'bad voice day.' They're trying to write sentences for me.) Here is a brief description of what happened when I got the fillings. I wrote lots of notes about it, and was trying to write a blog on the first night of the fillings, but I was so sick that I could not even sit in front of the computer, and I had to abandon the blog.

I got my metallic filling (silver-mercury amalgam) removed from a molar, and a resin composite filling put in its place. The dentist found a new cavity forming on my canine tooth so he gave me a new composite filling there too. I had had only the one molar cavity in my whole life. (They wanted me to write the word 'hole life' as a pun about cavities. Puns are something that they do all the time, along with double meanings and symbols. For instance, I never heard the phrase 'making scents' before. But then I just recently found it in literature about bow hunting. I'll explain later why I'm reading about bow hunting. But this happens all the time: the voices say something I've never heard before, some unfamiliar word or phrase, and then afterwards I go out and find that the word or phrase really exists.)

Anyway.

Over the rest of the day, I developed a headache that got worse and worse. I became manic, happy, and excited, and wrote notes about how the amalgam removal seemed like a miracle cure for my chronic fatigue. But I wanted to wait before I made any such claim. I had three main theories about why I felt so manic and energetic that day:

1. Novocaine is related to cocaine.
2. The newly cleaned teeth were no longer sending bacteria into my body.
3. The removal of the mercury and other heavy metals DID help.

I decided that if the effects lasted only a day or so, then the answer was probably #1 or #2. It turns out that the manic feelings and extra energy DID only last a day or two. For whatever reason, something mysteriously gave me great feelings for about a day, and then I went back to a more 'normal' energy level.

Let me mention that I respect anecdotal observations, and that I DO NOT BELIEVE in the existence of the 'placebo effect.' I don't have time to explain it all right now, but I think the so-called placebo effect is one of those ideas that might be applicable within certain very narrow situations, but the rest of the time it's badly misinterpreted, misapplied, and used to support government propaganda while denying individual observations. If you observe anything at all, such as a drug side effect, withdrawal effect, consequence of surgery, effects from eating certain foods, etc, it is all called the placebo effect (or a sign of mental illness, if it involves psychiatric drugs).

So it wasn't merely a placebo effect that caused me to become manic. Trust me, I was REALLY manic. Something caused it. This is the 'YAYYYY! I'M SO HAPPY TO BE ALIIIIIIIIIVE!' kind of manic.

That night as I tried writing a blog about it, my headache got so bad that I could no longer type at the computer. Headaches are extremely unusual for me. I NEVER get headaches unless I am in very bad caffeine withdrawal. I have just about every other vague health problem that can happen to a person, but the one area where I've had good luck is that I just don't get migraines or even mild headaches.

I started crying and sobbing and had to take a break. Then I lay down and tried to sleep but couldn't sleep all night. I really felt depressed and cried a lot.

Well, the next day, I had pain and swelling in both breasts. The pain was much worse in the left one. This was totally new and different. The last time I had anything resembling breast pain, I was a teenager - that was a couple decades ago. My parents told me it was called fibrocystic disease, or fibrocystitis. It's when you get benign cysts that hurt, but they're not cancer. People don't always know what causes them. They can be triggered by eating certain foods or drugs. Some websites say that bisphenol-A, a chemical in plastic, causes fibrocystitis, along with menstrual cramps. Bisphenol-A is similar to estrogen. I knew that composite filings MIGHT have bisphenol-A in them, but in the information I read, nobody was sure how bad it was or what effects might happen.

I became very moody and irritable. It was like having PMS. Some people at work noticed that I was being bitchier than usual, and I accidentally hurt someone's feelings. My tone of voice was hard to control, and I was arguing about trivial things.

Over the next few days, the breast pain got worse. I could not ignore it. It mostly went away in the right one, but the left one was so uncomfortable that I was conscious of it all the time. All day long, every time I moved, with everything I did, I felt pain and swelling. This was totally abnormal - I had never experienced anything like this. The very mild pains I felt as a teenager were nothing compared to this.

You know there's something wrong with the medical industry if you're absolutely fine one day, then you take some drug or get some kind of treatment procedure, and the next day, there's a terrible symptom that you can't ignore, and you never had it before, and it's totally new. And you tell them about it, and they say, 'I've never heard of that before,' or 'You must be imagining it,' or something similar.

I got the 'I never heard of that before' when I told the dentist. He told me I should go see a physician. I am not going to a physician.

I told him I wanted both composites removed, and nothing put in their place. I'm strongly considering the use of temporary, makeshift fillings. Primitive tribes occasionally got cavities - though not as many as modern people - and they filled them with gums or resins from plants, or other things. Anyway, the dentist told me it would be unethical to remove fillings and leave the cavities open. I don't want to take too much time writing how I feel about that. I understand his point of view, but I disagree. What I hear is: Don't sue me. He doesn't want to APPEAR unethical, by doing something unusual that doesn't follow the 'normal' procedures.

But I'm not interested in running around suing people. I haven't tried to negotiate anything with him yet and I'm still considering my options. Whatever I decide, it probably won't involve suing anyone.

And, although I've said I don't want to sue anyone, still, if I ever did sue anybody, it would more likely be the company that makes the plastic for the fillings. The company is called Ivoclar, I think - I wrote it in my notes. But I'm sure there are other companies making something similar. Chances are, this lawsuit will happen sometime in the next few years - somebody else will sue them. I think it's VERY LIKELY to happen - it's in the 'almost inevitable' category of predictions, but I don't know exactly when. This will be a HUGE lawsuit and a LOT of people will be eligible. I think they usually call it a 'class action lawsuit,' where you sort of get invited to participate if you want to, but actually I don't know what a class action lawsuit is, technically. I've seen those lawsuits against Wal-Mart, for instance, where you read a piece of paper taped to the front door of the building, and it says that people were mad because they didn't get lunch breaks. (I'm a little contemptful about that lawsuit. EVERY PLACE I'VE EVER WORKED has had that problem! Getting breaks late, or not at all, is NORMAL in low-level service jobs. And people at Wal-Mart are getting HIGHER wages than many fast-food places!) Or you get a letter in the mail, and it says you can qualify for this lawsuit if you meet the following criteria.

Those fillings were put in on June 30. It's been several weeks now. My depressed mood has somewhat improved - I no longer feel like I have PMS constantly. The breast pain has diminished but it hasn't gone away. It gets worse one day, then better the next day. I no longer have a headache - that was only the first night.

I still want to remove the fillings. I don't like my symptoms. They are not entirely gone. The symptoms are nagging, and I'm still feeling some pain and discomfort.

I'm afraid it could cause cancer. I don't like to use the word 'benign' to describe an illness, but it could possibly cause benign tumors. Perhaps they are not malignant. This is just my hope. It seems like it would be too obvious if large numbers of people went out and got composite fillings and developed malignant breast cancer in the first three days afterwards.

In one study that was done, they measured the levels of bisphenol-A in saliva over the first few days after composite fillings were put in. The levels were very high at first and then they went down over time. I could only read a brief abstract of the study. It didn't describe any symptoms the patients experienced.

I'm still not happy about it. I don't feel normal. I don't feel like myself. If I can remove the fillings somehow then I will.

I often feel as though I have esoteric knowledge that other people need to know very badly. I wonder how many people are getting composite fillings put in, and don't know that they have bisphenol-A which causes endocrine disruption. Some people have a whole lot of fillings, not just one or two. Some people aren't observant, or they trust their doctors and dentists when they say, 'This symptom is just a random accident. It was only a coincidence that it happened the very day after you got your fillings. The fillings couldn't have caused that.' Some people can metabolize chemicals more effectively, so they just don't get sick as easily from chemicals. But still it's fairly common to be slightly chemical sensitive. There are varying degrees of how sensitive people are. When I decided to do it, I simply didn't know whether it would bother me or not.

On the good side, I DO have some benefits from having removed the amalgam filling.

First, let me say that I still taste a little bit of metal. I feel like the metal filling wasn't completely removed, and I want to work on that. The metallic taste still happens from time to time. I think maybe he drilled out most of it, but there was a thin film left against the tooth, and he didn't want to drill out any more of the good tooth material. I don't like being able to taste metal, but it's much milder than it used to be, and it happens much less often. It used to happen almost every time I ate or drank anything, especially coffee, or if my mouth was empty and I just chewed or clenched my teeth together. Now it's only occasional.

I used to have a lot of burning sickness in my stomach, every day. This has been greatly reduced! My stomach was easily nauseated all of the time. So I will advocate that if you have constant, chronic stomach problems, you might possibly benefit from removing metallic fillings.

I also used to have a bad taste in my mouth when I woke up every day. But now my morning breath isn't as awful as it was. There was an old, old Garfield cartoon, back when I was a kid, where John or Garfield or Odie breathes on a houseplant and the houseplant shrivels up and drops dead. That's the kind of morning breath I had. I haven't tested it on anybody, but from my own point of view, my mouth doesn't taste as disgusting and toxic when I wake up. It's still not very pleasant, but it's improved.

I don't know about the fatigue. The new fillings have given me that PMS-like depression, which comes and goes. My fatigue is still lingering, but in general, I feel a little different. I can't directly compare it to how I used to feel. The PMS depression itself involves tiredness.

Well, that's the tooth filling story. It's not entirely over yet.