Root Canals & Cancer — What Patients Need to Know | Dr. Dino Prato

When a 52-year-old woman experienced breast cancer recurrence after initial radiation therapy, her oncologist considered a stronger chemotherapy regimen. However, her compromised immune system and high inflammation in the body indicated a need for a different approach.

In this episode, Dr. Prato focuses on performing a root cause analysis to address these deeper issues, moving beyond just cancer treatment.

🎯 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Do root canals cause cancer?
• How oral infections may impact immune function
• What microleakage means in dentistry
• Why some infections go unnoticed
• The connection between inflammation and cancer
• Signs of possible oral health issues
• Why proper dental evaluation matters
• How oral health fits into a broader care strategy

📍 Envita Medical Centers – Scottsdale, AZ
🌐 Learn more: www.envita.com
📞 Speak with a care coordinator: 866-830-4576

“The mouth is not separate from the body — it’s part of the immune system.”

Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your licensed healthcare provider before making any medical decisions. Individual results will vary, and Envita Medical Centers does not guarantee outcomes. Some treatments discussed may not be FDA-approved or available in all locations. Testimonials are shared with patient consent and may not reflect typical results. Do not delay or disregard professional medical care based on the podcast's content. Certain treatments may be available only at Envita’s international clinic in Hermosillo, Mexico. No specific outcomes are promised or implied.
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Outcomes Disclaimer
The results referenced from Envita's Precision Cancer Care: 35-Fold Improvement in Response Rates are from a retrospective analysis of 199 late-stage cancer patients treated at Envita Medical Centers between 2021 and 2023, as published in the Journal of Cancer Therapy. These outcomes are not guaranteed and will vary based on individual factors such as cancer type, stage, genetics, immunity and prior treatments. Any comparisons to standard care or clinical trials are based on published data and internal analysis, not head-to-head studies. Individual results will vary.

You can read the full peer-reviewed study at: 

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=132493

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

A 52-year-old woman walks into our clinic with breast cancer. She had surgery, clean margins, radiation, and six months later, the cancer came back. And this time it came back aggressive. Her oncologist wanted to start a stronger chemotherapy regimen, but her immune system markers were struggling. Her inflammation markers were high, and her body looked like it was fighting on way too many fronts. So what did we look at? We looked at deeper root causes. And when we do that, we look at the whole body's terrain and immune system and inflammation, nutrition, toxins, and oral health. And that gets us to today's episode: root canals, oral infections, and how they impact cancer. And that's when we found another piece of the puzzle in her case. Testing the dental imaging suggested chronic oral infections and inflammation, including old root canals that were treated incorrectly. Now, let me be clear. This is not the only factor that was driving her cancer. And I don't want to say that root canals are the cause of cancer, but it's one of the things that's going to cause immune stressing and it's going to cause immune suppression. And if we can identify it, because like I tell you, infections are a big part of cancer and we can get rid of it and we can help rebuild the immune system, we can help this person get well. And so today we're going to talk about root canals and cancers and oral infections, a topic that often is controversial but doesn't need to be. I'm Dr. Dino Prado, founder of InVita Medical Centers. For the last 25 years, my team and I have helped thousands of patients who had no other options tried the top hospitals across the country. And with these techniques, we've been able to help them using precision targeting. So before I get started, make sure you're working with a doctor. Most people think the mouth is separate from the rest of their body, but it couldn't be further than the truth. Your mouth is connected to your immune system, your bloodstream, your gut microbiome, and there are chronic infections and inflammation in the mouth that can become another drain on your immune system. So let's be clear on the controversy. Do root canals cause cancer? Not alone. There is no study that proves a root canal automatically causes cancer. But you need to make a distinction here. A root canal that's a treated tooth is not automatically healthy forever. Some root canals do very well. I'm not a big fan of them. I think if you have a dead tooth, I'm not a big fan of keeping it, and a lot of dentists are. Others can develop persistent infections because root canals can open up and eventually get bacteria in them and they fail to heal. And you get inflammation deep in the root. That's growing, toxins spilling into the body. That's a real issue. So, no, root canals don't equal cancer on their own, but they do equal immune suppression. They equal toxicity. And that, along with other factors, brings cancer about or makes it difficult to treat cancers. The real issue here is that ongoing oral infections are often overlooked in patients with cancer. And that's why you should be working with a good dentist, a good holistic dentist, an integrative dentist, or a dentist who understands the importance of immunity related to your oral health and get rid of those vulnerabilities. Oftentimes they can run tests like cavitats or other imaging to look for infection, can have periodontal disease or inflammation or infection at the root level or in the bones. And you want to get rid of those. Here's what we know about root canals in simple terms. When the pulp inside a tooth becomes infected or dies, the dentist removes that tissue, cleans the canal, fills it, and seals it. That can save the tooth structure. And that's what dentists try to do. But the tooth is no longer living. The tissue is dead, it has no internal blood supply. So long-term success depends on the quality of that treatment, the seals integrity. So no infection can get in there. And whether the infection stays or is controlled really depends on the work of that endodontist or dentist. And in some cases, over time, there's a problem that develops. It becomes chronic inflammation and infection around that root tip. Sometimes people will feel pain, sometimes they feel nothing. And that's when you have a problem. And if you test with proper thermoimaging and other tools that doctors can use, you can see that infection. That's why it can get missed. Dentistry has a long history of recognizing something called micro leakage. That means bacteria or fluids can penetrate around the restoration of the root canal's filling if seals degrade or they break down. That doesn't mean that every root canal causes cancer or fails, but when persistent infections or reinfections occur, it can create a low-grade inflammatory burden and immune system problem, making it difficult to get the immune system back on track. And now we can connect this to the bigger picture of cancer and the controversy. Cancer is not just a lump of cells. Cancer is also a battle involving the immune system. I've said this before. The first and last offense against cancer is immunity. So if you're going to build immunity, do immunotherapy, help your immune system, you want to remove all the root causes related to your immune system's dysfunction. You can have lots of infections: bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic, mold, mycotoxins, and bad root canals or periodontal disease and other infections of the oral cavity that affect inflammation and cause problems with your immune system. Because at the end of the day, your immune system is being diverted dealing with these infections. So it has a harder time fighting your cancer or fighting the elimination of those cancer cells. Your immune system is supposed to be able to identify abnormal cells. When it's healthy, 10,000 times a day, it deletes early cancer cells and it develops memory. But if your immune system is constantly dealing with chronic oral inflammation, gum infection, poor sleep, toxic exposure, gut dysbiosis, and other stressors, that's a lot for your immune system to deal with. It's like asking a firefighter to stop a major wildfire while he's also trying to put out five houses at the same time. So this is why, yes, the oral cavity infection is important. This is not controversial. And I know dentists sometimes get bent out of shape when you bring this up, but it is a factor in patients. And not every patient has it. So we have to test for this. And in complex cancers, we want to look at everything that's affecting their immune system. So now let's talk about the mouth bacteria issue for a moment, because this is where the science gets interesting. Research has found that certain oral bacteria are associated with inflammation patterns and can show up in places that they shouldn't. One of them that's most discussed has to do with the oral association of a bacteria linked to colorectal tumors. So there's your data already in studies. There's a relationship here between that bacteria and the oral cavity and colon cancer. That doesn't prove that a root canal causes these tumors, but it is already an association related to these infections. And that's not trivial at all. They can be part of the bigger picture of what's influencing your immune system. That's why we need to look at the oral cavity. We shouldn't make this controversial. Work with a good dentist. Here's some simple signs you can look at as a patient. Do you get bleeding gums? Are you taking care of your oral cavity correctly? Do you have periodontal disease with chronic inflammation? Have you had a proper testing of the oral cavity that looks deeper into the bones to see if there's inflammation and infection or inflammatory signaling? Because if so, you want to deal with that, even if you don't have cancer, because you don't want an oral cavity full of infection. Now, many of you already do a great job with oral hygiene and there's great hygienists out there, but here's some basic tools. Number one, you want to use floss that's not loaded with chemicals. Number two, a dental pick. That water is very powerful, gets in there, and cleads a periodontal disease. And number three, you want to brush. And I don't like to use fluoride. Personally, I don't like any chemicals in my body. I like to use clean products because we have enough chemicals in our environment. But that's not going to solve a root canal. You won't see it. It could be in there. You won't feel it sometimes. So you need a good examination, often by a holistic dentist or a dentist that understands how to look for infections in the oral cavity. So that's how we deal with this. We don't need to make this controversial. We just get the right testing, the right dental exams, the right dentist, and we put this all together. And a cancer patient, or really any patient, now is getting the right care for their oral cavity. Get rid of unnecessary inflammation, unnecessary infections that are putting a burden on your body. So you don't have things like fungal overgrowth and oral dysbiosis. You got to think of the mouth as an ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, biofilm, saliva, immune signaling. And when you see it that way, now this starts to make sense. That's why integrative doctors are so big on the oral cavity and they're big on root canals and inflammatory processes because we want to see people heal. We want to reduce the exposure of these toxins and mycotoxins so that we take the stress off the body. And we do that with food too. We want to eliminate toxic food, refined carbohydrates, all these things we've talked about, environmental toxins like mold and these things will make a difference to your immune system. They will help tremendously. So the mistake that we often make in, I think, standard dentistry is that, well, if there is any infection, the body's immune system will deal with it. And you're correct. If a person has a healthy immune system, but a cancer patient doesn't, a chronic infectious disease patient doesn't, because their immune system has been taxed. That infection needs to be cleaned out. And oftentimes that tooth needs to be removed, that socket needs to be cleaned out, that infection removed. And then oftentimes doctors will use things like ozonated water, antibiotics, other tools to clean up that infection so that we can open up and remove that focal infection of the oral cavity that's causing problems elsewhere in the body. See, everybody is different. Even the root causes of what brings about the cancer are different. So we don't need to make this controversial. All we got to do is test, get the right follow-ups, take care of our oral cavity, stop suppressing our immune system. And back to this patient with breast cancer. Yes, this was a big factor for her. Once we got rid of the tooth, there was lots of infection, it got cleaned up, her immune system responded better. And I'm happy to say she's holding remission now for many years. But we had to look in the oral cavity because it was one of the factors that was playing a role in her immune suppression and elevated inflammation. And the persistence of that infection for her body was too much. And everybody is different. So this is why I encourage you to work with the right dentist, the right integrative doctors, and you look at this information and clean up that oral cavity. And that's going to make a big difference in helping your body fight cancer and other chronic diseases. Now, I know many of you who are watching this have not joined. So I ask you to please join our podcast, share this information so we can move precision oncology throughout the world to doctors and patients and give people out of fear, give them clarity and help them live a better life. I hope you found this episode helpful and may the Lord bless you on your journey to healing.