Long Before I Questioned My Teeth

My health problems did not begin with one dramatic event.

I grew up in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, when both cities were heavily industrial. I developed severe allergies when I was very young. I remember rows of little skin-prick tests covering my arms, repeated injections, swollen and crusted eyes, and raw, itchy skin behind my knees and around my elbows.

When I was five, our family moved to Riverside Drive on the Detroit River. From about five to fifteen I was what we called a river rat. I loved the water and spent summer after summer swimming in it.

We even lined up for typhoid shots because, as children, we were told that would help make swimming in the river safe.

Looking back, I have no way of knowing what role, if any, those early environmental exposures or childhood treatments played in what came later.

They are simply part of my history.

By my early twenties, I had another addition to that history: as many as 16 mercury amalgam fillings.

The Fillings I Never Questioned

Like most people, I didn't think much about what was being put into my teeth. A dentist drilled a cavity, filled it, and I went on with my life.

I moved to Toronto, worked in the music business, exercised constantly and considered myself a health nut.

My diet also contained a tremendous amount of seafood. For decades I ate fish regularly and consumed a lot of tuna. I thought I was making a healthy choice.

Years later my old teeth and dental work began breaking down.

I had developed a taste for black licorice, and pieces of weakened teeth started chipping away. Eventually I could look into my own mouth and see what appeared to me to be more filling than tooth.

The Day Something Changed

There was one particular period in my mid-fifties that I have never forgotten.

As one damaged tooth deteriorated and the filling became increasingly exposed, I experienced something that frightened me badly.

One day I felt a warm, liquid sensation that seemed to travel from my jaw down through the middle of my body.

Around that same period, a swelling developed high on the left side of my groin. At its largest it was approximately the size of a golf ball.

Early on, I had blood testing and hair analysis that showed elevated mercury on some tests. Doctors did not consider the levels high enough to explain the severity or variety of what I was experiencing.

That left me with a question that would dominate years of my life.

When My Life Began to Disappear

Eventually I reached the point where functioning normally became extraordinarily difficult.

I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto. There were days when getting off the couch felt almost impossible. Walking to the corner and back could be an accomplishment.

My thinking deteriorated so badly that at times I wondered whether I was developing Alzheimer's or some other form of cognitive decline.

My work life slipped away.

My social life followed it.

In 2013 I came to Guelph to stay with my mother. I expected it to be temporary.

It wasn't.

I have lived with her since October 2013.

Getting the Amalgam Out

Eventually I found a dentist experienced in removing amalgam fillings, and I began replacing some of the old dental work with composite material.

The photographs from those procedures stayed with me.

Masks. Protective clothing. Respiratory protection. Suction and equipment designed to control material released while the old fillings were being removed.

Those precautions do not prove that amalgam caused my illness.

But seeing the care involved during removal certainly reinforced my determination to learn everything I could about the material that had been in my mouth for decades.

Then My Body Started Showing It

Some parts of this experience were impossible to hide.

My face and eyes became badly swollen. My skin became red, inflamed, burning and intensely uncomfortable.

My arms and legs erupted.

At times my skin peeled and shed so heavily that I would literally sweep it from the floor.

The Part Nobody Could See

The photographs show the dramatic part.

In some ways, the invisible part has been harder.

My symptoms have come and gone and changed over the years: exhaustion, tingling and burning sensations, disrupted sleep, digestive problems, neuropathy-like sensations in my feet and lower body, poor appetite and a greatly reduced sense of taste.

Some days have been much better than others.

I have experimented with fasting, nutritional supplements, naturopathic care, dietary changes, exercise and other approaches in an effort to understand and improve what was happening to me.

More recently, red-light treatment has helped me considerably with some of the skin problems.

Some symptoms have improved.

Others remain.

But the greatest loss wasn't a rash.

It was my life with other people.

When you spend years feeling miserable, you eventually discover that nobody wants to hear about it every time they see you.

I didn't want to talk about it either.

I've been invited on trips and turned them down. I've withdrawn from friends. Even members of my own family could look at me and have no idea what I was experiencing because, from the outside, I could still appear healthy.

At 74 I still exercise. I still walk. I can still ride a bicycle. I still take care of my mother.

That is one of the strangest contradictions of this entire experience: I can look healthy while feeling anything but healthy.

“Mad as a Hatter” Wasn't Just a Saying

One piece of history stayed with me throughout my research.

The expression “mad as a hatter” became associated with hat makers who were chronically exposed to mercury compounds once used in felt-hat production.

That occupational exposure became associated with neurological problems, tremors and changes in behaviour and personality.

I am not suggesting that their exposure and mine were the same.

They weren't.

But learning that history made one thing very clear to me: mercury's ability to affect the human nervous system was known long before I ever started asking questions about my own health.

Searching for Answers

Over the years I have had blood work, hair analysis, extensive naturopathic evaluations and even DNA analysis while trying to understand what my body was doing.

I have talked to doctors, dentists and other health practitioners.

Again and again, I was told that my dental history could not explain what was happening to me.

I never became convinced they were right.

What I Believe Today

After living through all of this, I believe mercury exposure — including the amalgam fillings that were in my mouth for decades — played an important role in what happened to my health.

That is my conclusion from my own experience.

It is not the same thing as scientific proof.

And I think making that distinction makes my story stronger rather than weaker.

Dental amalgam is not simply “silver.” It contains mercury along with other metals.

I am also not telling anyone with existing dental work to rush out tomorrow and have fillings removed. Removal itself is something that deserves careful consideration and professional guidance.

What I am saying is much simpler.