I understand your pain. It sounds as if you've had a really emotional time with a tooth. I had something similar - no pain in a tooth, had a filling, and in two weeks a huge swollen infected tooth.
I felt angry as all I'd had in 30 years were two tiny fillings and I didn't trust that it was really necessary and I was now faced with a huge molar infection!
I too read the '
root canal danger' stuff (some of the people you list are quacks by the way, and
Hulda Clark is downright insane/evil/both). Common sense dictates that keeping a dead organ in the mouth is bad. It IS likely unhygenic. However, can we trust the 'extreme
root canal danger' advocates? Well, much of it is based on old Weston Price studies. He said that if you simply placed a
root canal tooth in a rabbit the rabbit would get any diseases from the owner of that tooth! It's so simple that any budding medical researcher could try and replicate the studies - but they haven't. Why?
More modern 'studies' are virtually all hearsay with very little published in mainstream journals. 'One of my patients had X and got better after we extracted a tooth'. It needs more than that really. A tooth infection CAN make you very sick so it's reasonable that removing a tooth can help to clear it up better than a badly-done or failing root canal, but that's fairly mainstream stuff.
You are right - many people have
root canals and seem to be in great shape. My other half has a root canal, a mouthful of mercury and crowns and has 100 times the energy I do! Some alt-dentists suggest that pretty much every traditionally extracted tooth is likely to form 'cavitations'. Well, my grandad lived to 98 with full dentures - so a mouthful of 'cavitations' can't be that bad!
On the flipside, now that I've spoken to many friends and aqauintances about rot canals, a VERY high proportion have had problems with them and needed retreatments or eventual extraction. In other words, the '95% are successful' position of the dental establishment is probably untrue - perhaps 50% is closer to the truth. Is keeping a bothersome tooth for another year or just a few more months a success? Root canal teeth often have small fractures that don't show up until they are extracted, even if you have a retreatment with an endodondist and his/her microscope thing! It's often money, time, and emotional energy down the drain.
I know this - I still have the twice-treated root canal, don't feel 100%, and the area is sometimes nigglesome and the tooth very slightly sensitive to pressure from the side. I'm still in a quandry. My current dentist (who I found after the root canal treatments) is holistic, does 'bone cleaning' extractions but also does root canals. She knows that root canal extraction can help SOME patients and knows that some root canal extractions show signs of infection invisble on xray but equally knows others have no problems at all with them. They CAN BE a dropping tap, she says. Her approach seems perfect in my opinion - she's not going to scare me into one thing or another based on limited information. I have to decide - and who else should decide?
You may have had that tooth extracted anyway - especially if it wasn't in great shape. Many more 'fail' than dentists let on.
I suspect you've had an emotional rollercoaster with the tooth. Anger. Fear. Worry. It's hard to shrug off. You really need to forget about it now. Pursue interests. Millions of people have missing teeth and live utterly normal happy lives.