Ensuring Safety in Mercury Amalgam Filling Removal: The SMART Approach at Origin Dental Wellness
At Origin Dental Wellness, we are SMART-certified to remove your mercury amalgam fillings safely.
This means taking the precautions necessary to protect you, the patient, from the exposure of the toxic mercury fumes as well as the elemental mercury itself.
Because mercury is a neurotoxin, it is very important to be fully protected from its harmful effects.
We recognize that having a neurotoxin releasing vapors two inches from one’s brain is not a healthy situation. However, we also recognize that in removing this neurotoxin, protection from its ill effects is necessary.
Most people know fillings as simply being “white fillings” or “silver fillings”. The silver fillings are the ones with which we have more concern. Silver fillings are so named because they are silver in color. However, they do not consist of only silver.
Silver fillings are a mix of different metals, which are copper, tin, silver, and zinc. These metals make up 45%-55% of the filling. The remaining 45%-55% of the filling is mercury. Mercury is a toxic chemical that has been recognized as such by every other industry that uses it, except dentistry!
It has been proven that mercury in dental fillings is constantly releasing mercury vapors. These vapors can then be absorbed into various parts of the body, creating human health risks.
An individual’s response to mercury exposure is dependent on many factors, such as diet, genetics, the number of mercury fillings present, and concomitant exposures to other toxins.
Scientific studies have shown a connection between the presence of dental mercury fillings and the following conditions: Alzheimer’s disease, depression and anxiety, thyroiditis, Parkinson’s disease, autoimmune disorders, reproductive dysfunction, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease, just to name a few.
In particular, pregnant women appear to be the most susceptible to mercury dangers. In 2020, the FDA advised that pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant avoid dental mercury fillings. The FDA also included children below the age of six years, people with kidney disease, and people with neurological diseases to avoid mercury dental fillings.
At Origin Dental Wellness, we believe that the healthiest response to mercury is no mercury. So when a patient presents with mercury silver fillings, we have a lengthy discussion about the effects of mercury and how to remove it safely.
Protocols must be set into place to protect the patient and the dental professionals attending to the patient. This is the SMART protocol-Safe Mercury Amalgam Removal Technique.