Molly, I hear you! Unfortunately I don't think the wall between modern medicine and natural medicine will ever come down. And that's because modern medicine (at least in terms of disease curing and health restoration) is quackery pure and simple.

It's elaborately maintained only by oppressive legal actions, draconian corrupt and anti-competitive government regulations world wide, and supported with quasi Science invalidated by data manipulation and massive conflict of interest.

It boggles the mind how much money and oppression is required to keep the fraud intact. And of course we all pay for it through the nose.

It's funny when you think of it how misdirected it all is. The approach to disease is fixing people like you'd fix a machie. Cut this out, stick a new part in, screw it back (or sew it up) and use abrasive chemicals to kill the bad stuff.

We're biological creatures first, not primarily chemical or mechanical. And we happen to have an amazingly efficient self repairing mechanisms built right in to us - which modern medicine almost completely ignores in its approach to healing.

As Hippocrates stated years ago, the only healing comes from your body (paraphasing). And "Let your food be your medicine". (quoting) Doctors still take the Hippocratic oath while disgarding the principals. Is it all because medicine knows so much better after all these years? Not from where I sit.

Thanks for taking the time to explain - that's very interesting.

For me though, it still begs the question: If infection in the mouth and teeth have such important consequences, why doesn't dentistry devote itself to treating infections rather than amputation as the first course?

Here's what happened to me. I went to a dentist because one of my teeth that a filling dropped out of was in big pain - it was obviously infected. Before I even saw the doctor the aggressive receptionist (probably his wife) told me I would need a root canal.

I asked how she would know that and she replied "because 99% of the time when patients have lots of pain in the tooth, that's the only way to treat it. You do want to save the tooth don't you?" I said I thought that a root canal meant killing the tooth - and she responded that other teeth would go bad if they don't do the root canal. Mind you nobody had even looked in my mouth at that point.

I finally got in to see the dentist and he looked in my mouth and said I'd need two root canals and lets discuss payment options. I asked him that since my filling was out and the root exposed if he couldn't put some kind of Antibiotic in there and seal it up with a temp filling while i think it over.

No, an Antibiotic wouldn't help, but he very reluctantly put the temp filling in. So I decided to go home and pull with oregano oil - but it was too bad I didn't apply oregano oil directly while the filling was still missing.

But after a very painful day, enough oregano oil must have been absorbed in the gums to kill the infection. I believe that was a couple years ago and both of my teeth have been painfree and back to normal ever since.

Certainly in the year 2009, Science and medicine has come up with many different delivery systems for Antibiotics and antibacterials that would work fine in the mouth and for teeth. Maybe even better than swishing antibacterial oils.

So why is dentistry still focused on killing teeth instead of killing infections as the first course of action? My guess is it would be very difficult to talk a patient into shelling $1000 out to simply topically or otherwise apply Antibiotics to an infection.

Much easier to justify putting out that kind of money for a painful four hour extraction. Must be our puritan upbringing..

Very interesting.

What would an injection of Antibiotic do to the infected site?

""Anything you don't know will be used against you."

i love it. so true. seems like the guiding principle of the american economy."

..and Government, and Organized Religion, and on and on..

I'm glad I didn't know all this stuff when I was young - I would have gone Amish years ago.