How Biological Dentistry Saved My Life

This is Part One of my story. It is about the questions that led me to biological dentistry, the memories I had pushed aside, and the moment I chose to trust my intuition.

When no one had an answer

It was 2015. I had been bedridden for nearly two years with mercury poisoning and what I understood as mercury-induced dementia. Most days, I was living with no fewer than 50 chronic symptoms. My illness had followed a tetanus shot, and my body seemed to have lost its ability to handle metals it once processed with ease.

I was considered a hopeless case. When I asked one gastroenterologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles what happened to people like me, she looked up for the first time since I arrived and warned that I wouldn’t like her answer: cases like mine, she explained, drift internally from doctor to doctor and never get solved. Her tone implied that everyone moves on with their lives except the “hopeless” patient. Well, she was right. For nearly three years, I did not move on. I drifted deeper and deeper into a state of near incapacitation and fantasized daily about the relief death might bring.

Then, in May 2016, a functional doctor in Austin ran a battery of tests and found severe mercury poisoning. She suggested that my 35-year-old fillings could be part of the problem. She was partially right.

When I told my family that a doctor had suggested removing my mercury fillings, I heard a barrage of conventional and dramatic opinions. The message underneath them all was familiar: This must be all in your head.

Up until then, I had allowed other people to dictate who I should be and what I should believe. I had not once considered following my intuition.

Until that moment.

Searching for a biological dentist

I spent the next several months looking for what is known as a “biological dentist.” Ignorant of the term, I sank deep into a new and fascinating universe of information. I consumed hundreds of hours of podcasts and documentaries delving into the root cause of many neurological and seemingly “incurable” diseases — resulting not only from mercury fillings, but also from root canals.

There were miraculous stories of people experiencing immediate remission from MS, ALS, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by simply removing their amalgam fillings — stories that are almost completely censored on the internet these days. I was able to dig up this nifty vintage 60 Minutes clip about mercury fillings. That segment got torn down as soon as it aired. Makes you miss the old world, where truth wasn’t public enemy number one.

I could feel my consciousness expand to include the reality that people and children everywhere are being lured into chronic illness without their consent. Worse than that, the people who should be advocating for them have been lulled into being complicit. Yet I was thrilled to have an answer to my debilitation for the first time since the tidal wave of horror blanketed my old life. My outlook changed. Hope returned.

Dr. Hal Huggins is considered the godfather of biological dentistry, and he became well-known for his “controversial” ideas about the dangers of conventional dentistry with his first book, It’s All In Your Head. Highlighting the irony of conventional medicine’s knee-jerk attitude toward illnesses they don’t understand, Huggins went on to pioneer healing modalities through biological dentistry that changed the course of medical mysteries. It is a known fact that if you come to a physician with more than half a dozen symptoms that have persisted for more than six months, you will be referred to a psychiatrist.

I am living proof of how right Dr. Huggins was. It WAS all in my head — ALL my poisonous fillings, those necrotic root canals ROTTING under the gum line, and disease-causing cavitations in my jaw spreading bacterial infections into my brain.

In a paper published in Alternative Medicine Review in 1998, Huggins claimed that changes in cerebrospinal fluid that are typical for multiple sclerosis remitted after the removal of amalgam fillings and root canals. He claimed that dental care according to his understanding of dentistry allowed wheelchair-using patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis to walk unassisted within weeks. Of course, the powers that be try to distort these findings as being misaligned with conventional medicine’s understanding of MS. I should HOPE his views contradict conventional medicine! Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made the groundbreaking discoveries he did. I am unaware of any breakthrough cures that Western medicine has for neurological diseases.

And follow the money. Among the many drugs for MS, Avonex is one of the more common. The cost is around $7,240 for a supply of just 4 doses — and the required dosage is weekly. That is roughly $30,000 per month, per customer, for one drug, of the many drugs they sell. They make Bernie Madoff look like a true stooge, primarily because he went to jail. This is where greed tends to override humanity.

It warrants saying: I don’t think all medication is bad — and sometimes it does exactly what it needs to. But the system of censorship, corruption, and money that has grown around all of this has broken us. According to singlecare.com, 66% of the United States is on prescription medication.

One documentary in particular stands out: The Root Cause — an in-depth story of one man’s journey to find healing from his decade-long chronic illness, only to discover that the cause of his “mysterious” and “incurable” disease was his root canals. After the movie was released, the American Dental Association sent cease and desist letters to Netflix and any platform distributing it, citing violations of “public health.” This film should be required viewing by every dental and medical student alive. Unfortunately, it is still banned on most streaming platforms.

Why would anyone want change? Big Pharma, the ADA, and the AMA have relentless and powerful lobbyists in Washington. The people that should be advocating for us have been lulled into being complicit. So, once again, I took the reins myself.

The memory I hadn’t connected to my illness

As I looked back, I thought about the dentist I saw as a child in Staten Island. My mind had trouble believing that someone who was supposed to help me could have done something that harmed my health.

Then a memory surfaced.

I was in third grade when I had my first cavity filled. Just days later, I remember coming home from school and throwing myself onto the carpeted landing at the bottom of the stairs. I cried for no reason I could name, staring at the wallpaper collage of the Mona Lisa, Van Gogh, and Monet.

A quiet melancholy settled into my life — the first subtle wave of it, just days after that first mercury filling. It led me down a path of searching for substances to alleviate the sadness, including tons of sugar, which only gave me more cavities, to be filled with more mercury amalgam. The sadness fed the fillings, and the fillings fed the sadness. Round and round it went, for decades, and nobody ever connected the circle.

It hit me like balls of hail: my heavily programmed mind had real trouble believing that the 1970s dentist I saw as a child in Staten Island would do something so devastating to a young child’s health. But there it was, in my own memory, waiting all those years to be understood.

Corruption lives in the details between beliefs based on what is real and those rooted in what is convenient.

That was what I kept thinking about: the space between what we’re told and what we experience; between what is accepted and what our own bodies seem to be saying. I didn’t want to hand over my judgment to anyone else. I wanted to take the reins of my health and ask my own questions.

A small cottage in Santa Barbara

After searching, I found a biological dentist in Santa Barbara. The office was in a small cottage just off the main road. I walked in hesitantly and was met with a warmth that felt like the hug I needed before sitting in that chair.

An intern from Switzerland was training alongside the dentist. My brain could no longer converse in French as it once had, but I tried to make small talk. I asked whether they used amalgam fillings in Switzerland.

“Yes,” she said, “but only on the elderly and the…” She struggled to find the English words, then switched to French. I recognized a number.

Vingt et un.

Twenty-one.

The fluent French files buried in the back of my battered mind were still there, because suddenly I KNEW what she was talking about. She was referring to the chromosome number responsible for Down Syndrome. Wait — was she saying what I thought she was saying? That in Switzerland, they only used amalgam fillings on the elderly and the intellectually disabled population?

As that information sank in, the doctor walked in wearing what looked like a moon landing uniform and put goggles on me. We were about to begin. I let myself pray. I released any expectations. Maybe I was just here to learn.

The two halves of my healing story

Biological dentistry became a turning point in how I understood my illness. But the story did not end at the dentist’s chair.

Over time, I came to understand my illness at its root as a limbic system injury — the missing piece no doctor had named for me. I later did DNRS, a brain-retraining program, and it is where I first learned the limbic system could be retrained. In my experience, detoxification and chelation, alongside limbic retraining, were two halves of the same rescue: get the poison out, and tell the brain the war is over. Neither one alone would have saved me. Together, they did.

Up until that moment, I had allowed everyone around me to dictate who I should be and what to believe during this crisis. Not once did I contemplate following my intuition. Until that moment. NEVER outsource your health. Not once, not a little, not for convenience. No one will ever live inside your body but you. I took my life and my body into my own hands, and that decision is the only reason I am here to tell you this story.

For me, that began with a question I had never let myself ask: What if I listened to what I know?

The procedure was about to begin. I had released my expectations and let myself be there. What happened during the next 48 hours is the story of Part Two.

A question to take with you

If you’re at a crossroads in your own story, pause for a moment and write down:

• What have I been told to believe about my experience?
• What questions have I been afraid to ask?
• What am I ready to take into my own hands?

You don’t have to know how the story ends. You just have to put your headphones on and begin.

And what happened in the 48 hours after that procedure? That is the story of Part Two — and it is the part where everything changed. If you want the whole story now, it is in my memoir, Awakening in an Age of Metals, where this journey lives in full. You can also read the original essay on Substack.

If you feel called to take the reins of your own healing and want a guide, reach out to me at michellekatz2010@gmail.com. This is the work I do, and I would be honored to walk that road with you.