We’re Pulling Teeth. Antibiotics Are a Must.
A whole lot of animal dental work ends up wiping out beneficial gut flora, a major part of the immune system of your animal. Some estimates see these microbes as comprising 80–90% of everyone’s immune system! The danger of a malfunctioning immune system should be pretty obvious by now.
So, this microbiome is not something to wantonly kill, but it happens all too easily.
Why?
Dr. WhiteCoat usually prescribes something like this:
Not entirely sure what’s going on, but let’s give some antibiotics and see if she improves.”
In animal dental procedures specifically, here’s the tired old party line:
There are some seriously scary bacteria around those teeth, maybe even a whole pocket of them around that tooth we’re going to pull. Abscess! Germs are baddddd! With extraction comes bleeding. Bleeding means the blood will pick these bacteria up and circulate them. {Shudder} They could land on the heart valves, and make them fail. They could wind up, well, anywhere in your poor animal’s body! Gaaaa!”
Have you been told something similar and bought it? If so, read on and you’ll gain the confidence to just say, “No!”
Common, But Not Needed
When I hear symptoms in their animals that owners don’t think of as symptoms, I have a thought-provoking phrase that helps clarify things:
“This is common, but not normal.”
Examples include:
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ears that build up wax and need weekly cleaning.
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dogs that smell, well, “doggy.” Especially when they get wet.
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cats on 100% moist food who drink water daily.
To a thinking homeopath, these are all subtle symptoms of disease.
In dentistry, the “common but not needed” variation takes hold when we speak of giving antibiotics “prophylactically.”
Reality Check. Experts: “Speak!”
Let’s get some real experts to weigh in on this. Here’s what some board certified veterinary dentists have to say about giving antibiotics around dental work.
Although periodontal disease is caused by the body’s reaction to bacteria, antibiotics should never be part of a treatment strategy (3). The mechanical disruption of plaque (dental scaling/polishing) is needed to obtain effective results.
Because of the excellent blood supply, wound healing in the oral cavity is rapid and uncomplicated. Therefore, infectious complications are uncommon.¹
These vets, who specialize in animal dental work refer to research from the human world to support their stance: Tong et al
Here’s another human reference from the literature, where the researchers did an exhaustive search to find if there was any good reason to give antibiotics around dental work.
Even looking at people with established disease, like immune suppression while on chemo for cancer, or those with heart disease or diabetes, they concluded,
The authors found little or no evidence to support this practice or to demonstrate that it prevents distant site infections for any of these eight groups of patients. No definitive, scientific basis exists for the use of prophylactic antibiotics before dental procedures…”
Better Prophylaxis: Immune Support
If you want to do something likely to increase the odds of your animal sailing through dental work without any aftermath, or if “germs on the loose” still scares you, it makes good sense to stimulate your animal’s immune system before and after dental work.
My method of choice is using the transfer factor products. These tiny immune molecules have over 50 years of research behind them and they boost the immune system’s intelligence.
Practically speaking, that means they help the immune system to intelligently:
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recognize foreigners (like those bad, bad mouth germs),
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respond effectively (which includes shutting down when the job is done), and
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remember those germs for future reference.
I have used these in my practice for the past decade, and take them myself. They work. Better than anything they’ve been measured against in terms of immune boosting.
You can get a free book I’ve written on how I use them for various conditions when you join the Vital Animal Pack. Membership is free, and members get immediate [soon: it’s being rewritten] access to my ebook, Insider Immune Protocols. I’d suggest following the surgery protocol, as dentistry is a similar challenge.
Help Healing After Dentistry
There are a couple of well known homeopathic remedies that match the state of trauma incurred in getting teeth pulled. I described how to use them earlier on this page.
And, in case you missed it, this discussion has its roots in last week’s post, Rotten Teeth Cause Cancer. Read that article to learn the correlation between funky mouths and cancer.
So, get the bad teeth outta there, but do it intelligently and don’t buy the “antibiotics are necessary” part of the package. You can clearly see the experts don’t recommend them.
Tell us in the comments if you’ve been through dentistry without antibiotics and how that’s worked for you. My patients, when they’ve needed dental work, have done just fine without them.
