Root Cause Netflix Documentary – is it worth the watch? A Dentist’s opinion.
As many people scrolling through Netflix menus would have seen – one of the recommended trending documentaries has been ‘Root Cause’.
The contention of the documentary was that root canal treatment at the dentist not only is ineffective, but can lead to further long-term systemic diseases like cancers, heart disease, chronic fatigue and male impotence. This is based on the ‘focal theory’, which hypothesises that because we cannot kill all bacteria when doing modern root canal treatment, that the resulting chronic inflammation associated with these teeth then leads to the start of those systemic diseases.
Believe it or not, the ‘focal theory’ was actually coined up in the 1920’s by dentist named Weston Price. That’s right, this 100-year-old theory was made before the discovery of penicillin and antibiotics as well as the before the real cause of tooth ache pain was actually discovered in 1945. The reason why Dr. Weston devised this theory was that he noticed a pattern – he noticed that people who came in with dental disease also had poor general health. The big thing to remember is – this is a pattern (or correlation) NOT cause and effect. It’s akin to saying that, compared to people who regularly run marathons, people who don’t run marathons have a higher rate of heart disease – which is true; but really the reason for this is not the marathon itself – it’s the fact that people who don’t run marathons regularly are more likely to be unfit.
It’s actually a very known fact that when dentist do root canals, we cannot remove all the bacteria. The difference in modern dentistry, with modern cleaning agents, is that we’re now very good at killing enough so that the body’s immune system isn’t overwhelmed and can do the rest of the job.
As with any treatment option at Polished Dental though, we realise that at the end of the day it is not our mouth we are working on and that we are here to guide you to make the decision that is right for you. There are always options that are NOT root canal, and if this your opinion, then we will help you with your dental needs.
