Congress needs to turn its attention to medical device safety

This article was originally published by STAT (www.statnews.com) on December 21, 2016:

With the landmark 21st Century Cures Act now signed into law, Congress needs to turn its attention to another pressing health issue: the safety — or lack thereof — of medical devices.

Thousands of medical devices are on the market today, with a steady stream of new ones coming along. They include spinal and breast implants, pacemakers, TENS devices for pain, transvaginal mesh slings, tubal occlusion sterilization coils, dental amalgam, prosthetic joints, and more.

The Food and Drug Administration puts medical devices into three categories. Class I devices are simple and have little potential to cause harm, such as bandages. Class II devices are more complicated and present a greater risk or harm. These include motorized wheelchairs and simple implants such as radio frequency identification chips; they are often approved with special guidelines for control. Class III devices help support or sustain life or present a potentially significant risk of injury. Examples include pacemakers, artificial heart valves, and joint replacements.

For all the good that medical devices do, they can also cause harm. I know this because my health was almost irreparably harmed by the mercury-based dental amalgam used over my lifetime to fill cavities — it turns out that genetic susceptibility is a factor. I have friends, relatives, and colleagues who have endured cancers and autoimmune diseases, allergies, rashes, pain, memory loss, and incredible emotional strain from problems caused by various medical devices.

Click here to read the complete article. 
https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/21/medical-devices-safety-congress/

OLD HARD AND NEW FAST WAYS OF LEARNING ABOUT THE GENOME, THE TOXOME, AND HOME

I learned the old hard way (20+ years of chronic disease), then the new fast way about gene types and toxins: two years discovering biocompatibility issues in dentistry and medical devices, and immersion in the sciences and arts of investigative and scientific research. An economist and ethicist by training, with a new vocation and skill set by life's necessities and the fundamental urge to be well.

What am I learning? Health and chronic disease has a lot to do with methylation, and other basic biochemical and bioelectrical pathways essential for human life, animal life, probably plant life. We are the biome, the toxome, the home. Much as we like to think we are a higher being or species, our higher creative and economic capabilities come back to bite us when we ignore the fundamental economic, social, medical, environmental externalities at the scale of patient, profession, and  local, national and global levels.

It's all about luck in the gene pool, and in the toxins pool.Those with great genes can swill toxins and expel them with ease, and dance and compose magna opi in their 90s. Those with bad luck in methylation, detoxification, and immunological pathways can still be healthy - but only if they avoid toxins like the plague. Because they are ubiquitous, and stick with us given our genetic glitches, we begin the long slow decline, the long sunset, and the long goodbyes much too early, before our time.

But there is hope! We can now learn our gene types and our toxins, separate the bad from the bad, and strengthen the good.The body, brain and psyche has an astonishing capacity to heal itself when, like a computer or a car, we clean out bugs, reboot/reset electrical pathways and get things humming in the right direction again.

After being 25 years clinically older, I am now 25 years clinically younger. At 60, I may live to 101 like my grandmother relatively intact, instead of mid 80s with a horrible last few years like my mom. When my time comes I'd vote for a massive heart attack in my sleep or the ice floe or ocean to reenter the great sea and circle of life from which it began.

There are clinical trials underway in Sweden of a compound that boosts glutathione to help with metals toxicity because the FDA wouldn't grant orphan drug status. People travel even overseas for biologic dentistry because dental plans have no patient protection nor medical necessity rules, they are strictly commercial contracts that write their own rules. Health insurers would be so wise to cover biologic dentistry like any specialty, make referrals, and incorporate all things dental into EHRs.

Dental is the root of much inflammation and oxidative stress throughout the body and brain. Teeth are god's plan for mortality. Dental infections, and toxins - conveniently denied by the ADA and the FDA - cheat us of years of health, vitality, cognition and mobility. Dental mercury poisoning is acknowledged in many advanced countries, not in the USA. Toxins - bad for humans - are synergistic.

Biologic dentistry, functional medicine, integrative and holistic approaches are growing by leaps and bounds not just because they make people feel better, but because they work.

I am interested in partners for fascinating ventures. New interests include health innovation, apps and IT, wellness, chronic diseases, etiology, epidemiology, QR codes, old and new medicine, genomics, toxicology, pharmacology, cellular bio-chem-electrics, medical devices, FDA, Form 3500s, govt regulation of dentistry and medicine, self regulation of the professions, patents held by professional associations, conflicts between professional and commercial roles, civil rights, genetic rights (none where it counts in dentistry and not enough in medicine), constitutional law, health law, conflicts of interest among top regulators and industry, lobbying and campaign spending reports, media, censorship and journalism. 

The Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow: Mercury Does Not Belong in Your Mouth - May 2012

Laura: Mercury does not belong in your mouth

   

Laura Henze Russell is a member of the Massachusetts delegation to the Safer Chemicals Healthy Families' Stroller Brigade for Safe Chemicals in Washington DC.

Laura grew up on Long Island, New York. The horror of cancer hit home early for Laura when one of her friends lost her mother to the disease in high school. Unfortunately it didn't stop there.  Over time, the the majority of her friends from the neighborhood, and their mothers, have contracted breast cancer.

Cancer hit her family too. Laura's mother got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in her 60s, her father--who was not a smoker--was diagnosed with lung cancer in his 80s, and Laura herself had breast cancer in her 40s and got fibromyalgia 20 years ago. 

She says of her childhood neighborhood, "We lived down the street from a mansion that was converted to a dairy, which sounded pretty wholesome. However, we later wondered what the dairy released into the water supply as they packed their products."  When that many people have cancer, questions start to get asked.

Today, Laura lives in Sharon, Massachusetts with her husband and 20 year old son, and health problems with links to toxic chemicals have not left her alone. Last year she experienced escalating and aggravating health problems including finger tremors, unexplained skin problems and infections, allergies and sensitivities to foods she'd eaten her whole life, and continued challenges with her fibromyalgia. After a year of inconclusive doctors appointments and a battery of expensive tests, the culprit was finally found: mercury.

Like so many of us, Laura had a mouth full of mercury. A common dental filling material known as "amalgam," also referred to as "silver" is made of 43 to 54 percent mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Laura had many such fillings and the mercury level in her body was elevated to more than 40 percent over the normal range even two months after starting detox.

Laura is on a mission to prevent others from having to go through what she did. "Physicians, labs and hospitals are not equipped to recognize and diagnose mercury poisoning," she said. "I got third opinions from numerous specialists who said that it was all in my head. It was not even raised as a consideration."

She sees friends and colleagues experiencing similar health problems and wonders if they too have been impacted by mercury or other toxic chemicals.

Her mission is an economic one too.  "Mercury and other toxic chemicals wreak havoc on the immune and central nervous systems and and open the door to many heath problems and diseases that are extremely debilitating and raise health care costs," she said. "If we want to keep health care costs down we need to stop poisoning people."

Thankfully, this saga turned into a success story; within a week or two of starting mercury detox, she had a dramatic reduction of some of her symptoms. Now, two months later she says, "I am stronger and healthier than I've been in 20 years!"

The Poison in Our Teeth - On Massachusetts' Limitations as a Medical Mecca - May 29, 2012

• Russell: The poison in our teeth

Posted May. 29, 2012 @ 12:01 am

• Updated May 29, 2012 at 1:01 AM 

  
  

  By Laura Henze Russell/GUEST COLUMNIST
  

  I learned the hard way over the past year that while Boston is a great place if you need a face transplant, if you have a vexing medical condition — even one widely known in past centuries — not so much.

  During the past year, I had a vexing medical problem. It led to a series of co-infections, also confounding and not properly diagnosed.

  I went on to develop a systemic fungal infection, skin crawling and nerve firing sensations that were especially bad at night, allergic skin reactions and sensitivity to yeasts, gluten, corn and soy, falling immune markers, anxiety and mood swings, balance issues, dulling of hearing and smell, fatigue, finger tremors, memory issues, mental fog and neuropathy in my legs. Nearly a dozen specialists concluded I was imagining things, and it was all in my head.

  Turns out, they were half right. The problem was all in my head — amalgam fillings over the years, which are 50 percent mercury. How we continue to let this poison enter and remain in people’s mouths is beyond me. We have stringent lead testing and lead paint remediation laws, a Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarettes, and instead of leading the charge to ban mercury, the ADA persecutes dentists who remove it — using strict safety protocols — from sick, suffering patients’ mouths. First, do harm?

  How did I get enough mercury in me to be toxic? Let me count the ways. All eight of my molars once had amalgam fillings. They had given way to three root canals and five crowns, which involved drilling amalgam without protections and spitting out what I didn’t swallow. Many if not all still have some amalgam under them. Additionally I had two amalgam fillings in the past 10 years in upper bicuspids. A biologic dentist said my bite was heavy on my bicuspids, and I was grinding my teeth at night, which explains the worse symptoms at night. To add to cumulative exposure, when I grew up chemistry sets had mercury — it was kind of fun. I also had a mercury thermometer break when young. Then there is fish, to top off the tank. I now carry a fish mercury level wallet card, no more swordfish and tuna.

  How did I get a diagnosis? I had to work the problem. It took a year, going way beyond the confines of my health plan, and the third opinion consults from numerous of the specialty disciplines in Boston’s Medical Mecca. It included an integrative doctor, a parasitologist from Arizona, a biologic dentist and my PCP’s support for not giving up hope. It was additionally confirmed by a blood test by a neurologist I saw at a teaching hospital after I developed finger tremors. Two months into a detox protocol, my blood mercury level is 40 percent above the top of normal range.

  The root cause was predominantly dental material toxicity — mercury poisoning. There are only a half-dozen biologic dental practices in Massachusetts who practice safe removal for people with mercury toxicity. I began a protocol of homeopathic detox, which was markedly effective within the first two weeks in reducing nerve and skin sensations. It also includes herbs, nutritional support, lymphatic massage and diet. The biologic dentist discovered an infection deep in a facial muscle over an old root canal, and prescribed a highly effective antibiotic and two more antibiotics for another hidden infection.

  • Now, I am on the mend. Amazingly, some chronic health challenges are cured, my body is strong and energetic, my memory is better, I am brimming with health, and I feel like the clock has been turned back 20 years.

    The AMA, ADA, Boston area doctors, dentists, medical and dental schools, teaching hospitals, and computer-aided diagnostic programs evidently consider mercury poisoning a quaint artifact of the past, as the score of doctors and specialists I saw were clueless about this as a potential cause. I ran into a woman at my church whose father, grandfather and great grandfather were physicians — she was immediately familiar with it. Because I lost much of the last year to this fiasco, I am resolved to prevent it for others.

    What if I hadn’t discovered people who have gotten to the root of the problem and its causes, learned of and followed unusual treatment protocols, and paid for much of this out of pocket? The costs of treating accelerating medical, neurological, physiological, psychological, and problems in every other dimension of my body, mind, psyche and spirit are off the charts. Mercury wreaks havoc on the neurological system and the immune system, opening the door to all sorts of costly and debilitating conditions and disease from movement disorders to neurological degeneration. Multiply this by the number of boomers and older adults with aging mouths, silver smiles, and grinding teeth.

    I was a very costly date in the health care system last year, both to my health plan, and to me and my family. There is no excuse for this. If we want to bring down health care costs, stop putting a poisonous element permanently in people’s mouths. It’s that simple.

    The FDA convened a scientific advisory panel twice in recent years, 2006 and 2010. Both concluded that dental amalgam should not be used in children, pregnant women and hypersensitive adults. I am a poster child for the fact that mercury can cause hypersensitivity, so nobody is safe from it. We all age. The FDA has not acted and there is no timetable for action. Whatever happened to, “First, do no harm?”

    It is high time to follow in the footsteps of other nations and strike up the BAND — Ban Amalgam Now in Dentistry. Pass Legislation, issue an executive order, launch a ballot initiative — whatever it takes.

From Ocean Lifeguard to Health Lifeguard

Hidden River Health Challenge: A Social Innovation Enterprise

April 23, 2012

From Ocean Lifeguard to Health Lifeguard

I was an ocean lifeguard and have the lifeguard's mission to protect everyone in and out of the water. 

If there is a rip tide, I'd swim out and help guide people in safely to minimize risk. I'd help them understand what to do next time to stay safe. I'd give anyone who needed it first aid. I also loved to teach Red Cross swimming lessons - how to enjoy the ocean, bay and lake while enjoying nature, exercise, and breaking waves' ozone and endorphins. 

After being chronically ill, and finally figuring it out, and working to regain and restore my health and vitality, I have a new calling: as a sort of Health Lifeguard.

Hallelujah, I am Healthy Again!

After 20 years of chronic disease and a year of escalating health problems, I'm healthy again! 

The keys to understanding chronic diseases are unfortunate combinations of gene types and toxins, which trigger inflammation.

Inflammation, causes a raft of awful, no good, very bad, cognitive, immune, neurological and psychiatric diseases, as well as damage to cells, nerves, organs, senses and skin.  

I am healthier! I lost years of health, lost years of income, and still have years of higher dental and medical costs.  

I don't want others to have to go through what I went through, physically or financially.

Join us at Hidden River, to help ourselves and others too.